A climate tech startup tackling one of the biggest concerns about AI data centres, water use, has raised US$1.8 million (A$2.5M) in Seed funding.
The round for Enaxiom was led by Singapore-based all-female investment collective Epic Angels, with support from BlackNova and Antler. The startup, founded in Sydney in 2023 by Bijan Rahimi and Tia Collings, has now raised US$2.7m (A$3.7M) in total.
The funds are for commercial deployment of its data centre cooling and water efficiency system, Hydrocool, boosting headcount, and accelerating US expansion.
Enaxiom is focused on a specific layer of the data centre cooling stack: heat rejection.
The company’s patented system, based on a decade of research, is designed to work alongside modern liquid cooling technologies such as direct-to-chip and immersion cooling. It uses non-potable (as opposed to drinking) water, including wastewater streams, and is designed to recover high-quality water as a by-product.
That results in a cooling system that contributes to water reuse.
Get the best of Startup Daily straight to your inbox
Want to know the latest in startup news? Subscribe to our daily news and analysis coverage on what’s happening to ANZ startups, investors and the broader ecosystem. And best of all, it’s FREE!
By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
After a 40kW pilot system delivered proof it works, Enaxiom is now looking to develop modular systems at commercial scale.
Collings, Enaxiom’s CEO, said water scarcity is becoming a defining challenge for the industry.
“As AI infrastructure scales, the real constraint is shifting from compute to energy and water,” she said.
“We’re building cooling infrastructure that tackles this at the heat rejection layer — one of the most overlooked but critical parts of a data centre cooling system.”
Epic Angels founding partner Maaike Doyer said their investment is part of a broader commitment to supporting female founders in deep tech.
“Data centers are one of the defining infrastructure challenges of our time, and water is rapidly becoming as critical a constraint as energy,” she said.
“What makes Enaxiom compelling is that they have flipped the problem: instead of treating water consumption as an unavoidable cost of cooling, they have built a system that recovers it. And Tia is exactly the kind of founder we back: a female leader building deep technology in a space that has historically had very few of them”
