Cooling specialist firm Submer today announced it raised $55.5 million in new funding led by M&G to scale its sustainable liquid cooling solutions for datacenters, something that is becoming increasingly problematic during the artificial intelligence revolution.

Existing investors Planet First Partners and Norrsken VC joined the Series C funding round alongside Mundi Ventures to support the company’s growth.

The company said that traditional air-cooling and other liquid-cooling methods have become increasingly issue-prone due to inefficiencies in design and energy use. Especially as datacenters scale upwards and outwards 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, datacenters 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, or approximately 4 to 6 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 non-toxic cooling fluid that the company calls its “Goldilocks solution” to the problem and was designed using the company’s hands on experience designing immersion solutions. It provides high-performance across a range of temperatures, safe handling, stability for infrequent coolant changes and its 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 datacenters, 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