Cooling specialist firm Submer today announced it has raised $55.5 million in new funding to scale up its sustainable liquid cooling solutions for data centers, aiming to address the artificial intelligence revolution’s growing problem of keeping servers from melting down.

Existing investors Planet First Partners and Norrsken VC joined the Series C funding round, which was led by M&G, alongside Mundi Ventures.

The company said that traditional air-cooling and other liquid-cooling methods have increasing issues related to inefficiencies in design and energy use — especially as data centers scale upward and outward to meet the ever-increasing demand of compute for AI workloads. Immersion cooling, where servers are completely bathed in water or another liquid, have become a more sustainable solution to help solve these challenges.

According to a report from the International Energy Agency, data centers consumed 460 terawatt-hours in 2022, almost 2% of the global electricity consumption, and the figure is projected to double by 2026. Water consumption estimates also show that the global AI demand may rise to 6.6 billion cubic meters of water in 2027 — about four to six times the annual use of Denmark or half that of the United Kingdom.

Submer works by building waterless datacenters by using a fluid called SmartCoolant, a nontoxic cooling fluid that the company calls its “Goldilocks solution” to the problem. It was designed using the company’s hands on experience designing immersion solutions.

The fluid provides high-performance across a range of temperatures, safe handling and stability for infrequent coolant changes, and it’s biodegradable. The company also offers access to other immersion fluids depending on project and performance requirements from Castrol Ltd., Shell plc and ExxonMobil Corp.

“With this strong backing, we are very well-positioned to continue to lead the liquid immersion cooling market and meet the growing demands of hyperscale data centers, enabling us to scale faster with our customers, while remaining focused on driving both growth and meaningful impact in our industry,” said Pol Valls, founder and chief financial officer of Submer.

Now prepared for its next phase of global expansion, Submer said that the funding will be used to help boost business opportunities, reach new customers and support clients with cooling infrastructure needs. A focus will be put on outreach into the United States and Asia-Pacific region.

Image: Submer