The cash-and-stock deal combines two real-time sensor makers into one device that monitors data center cooling fluid.

Omen AI acquired competitor Aquatic Labs for $16 million in cash and stock, roughly six months after closing a $31 million Series A. The two startups build real-time sensors that check data center cooling fluid for failing valves, bacterial growth, and shifting alkalinity, replacing a multi-day process of shipping samples to a lab.

Aquatic Labs chief executive Allan Adams joins the combined company as chief science officer. Omen founder Zach Laberge dropped out of high school to build fluid analysis tools for construction equipment, while Adams trained as a physicist and spent years developing ocean sensors as an MIT professor and Woods Hole researcher. An investor in the filtration space introduced the two founders.

Data centers consume 17 to 19 billion gallons of water a year for chip cooling, and the Water Foundation expects that volume to triple within five years. Real-time monitoring lets operators reuse the same fluid longer, avoid dumping and refilling it, and skip the shutdowns that follow a chemistry problem. Omen’s first sensors target chips drawing 250 to 300 MW, a segment worth $5 billion to $7 billion.

The combined team is merging Omen’s element-detection sensor with the Aquatic Labs alkalinity sensor into a single unit, which the company expects to ship by early next year. Laberge aims to have the hardware installed on chips drawing the equivalent of 1 GW by the end of 2027, and Adams wants the same measurement approach applied to the municipal water that data centers discharge.

What matters

• Omen AI acquired competitor Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash-and-stock deal after its $31 million Series A.
• Operators can keep cooling fluid in service longer instead of dumping it and halting operations.
• The combined sensor should reach the market by early next year, with a 1 GW install target for 2027.

Why it matters

The combined sensor should reach the market by early next year, with a 1 GW install target for 2027.

This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by TechCrunch AI. Source reference: https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/omen-ai-adds-liquid-know-how-in-16-million-aquatic-labs-acquisition/.

Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.