Aphelos co-founders Dr. Gael Andreatta and Dr. Julia Carpenter
The technology industry has serious energy problems. The boom in artificial intelligence (AI) is driving a surge in demand for data centers, turning this once green industry into an energy guzzler. By 2030, the need to cool data centers will account for 6% of global energy use. In this sense, at least, AI is not sustainable.
Enter Aphelos, a Swiss tech startup. The Zurich-based company, which announced a $1.85 million funding round today, has invented a new type of “metal foam” that can aid in the cooling process in data centers. The company’s founders believe that the material can improve the efficiency of cooling systems by 90%, reducing data centers’ energy consumption by up to 20%.
“Our technology has the potential to set a new industry standard and significantly reduce the environmental impact of cooling solutions around the world,” said Julia Carpenter, a materials scientist who co-founded Apheros last year and now serves as its CEO. “This funding will enable us to advance our mission to help our customers achieve superior thermal performance, increase energy efficiency and contribute to a greener future.”
The idea is relatively simple: by covering chips in a data center with Apheros’ foam, you effectively increase the chip’s surface area, allowing heat to escape from the chip much faster. The heat can then be dissipated by the cooling systems the data center employs. Simply put, the foam allows chips to cool faster.
Of course, as ever, simple solutions require complex work. Apheros’ technology was developed as a spin-out project from the Swiss university ETH Zurich. Carpenter has years of research experience in materials and has worked closely with co-founder and current Apheros CTO Gaëlle Andreatta, also an experienced scientist and entrepreneur.
Now that they have perfected their product, Carpenter and Andreatta believe the company has huge potential: “We’re not just selling materials, we’re selling solutions to big problems,” Carpenter asserts.
“While our core expertise is materials manufacturing, we are focused on delivering tangible benefits to our customers: superior cooling performance,” adds Carpenter. “By developing a new generation of metal foams with unmatched thermal properties, we are meeting the growing needs of a variety of industries, from data centers to appliances to automotive. We are delivering products that directly impact both our customers’ bottom lines and their sustainability goals.”
Aphelos is working with technology partners to test its foam and is now moving into the commercialization phase of its business plan. The company expects to scale up production over the next year or so to be able to make several tons of the foam; a typical data center requires hundreds of kilograms of the product.
Apheros is not the only company exploring new cooling solutions for data centers, but the company believes one key advantage of its approach is that it’s relatively easy to retrofit — data centers don’t have to be completely redesigned or built from scratch to take advantage of the technology — and it fits in with the growing movement towards using liquid cooling systems in data centers.
The firm sees good progress from companies in the heat exchange sector, such as Kelvion, Alfa Laval, Danfoss and GEA, as well as emerging technology providers such as Corintis, TNO, Emerson and 3D Systems as competitors. The data center industry itself is also leading the way in cooling solutions, with companies such as Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.
Aphelos hopes to compete with these rivals by emphasizing the cost-effectiveness and scalability of its technology. The company has been largely self-funded, though it has received about $780,000 in grants to date. But investors have shown interest in the company since its early days. Today’s pre-seed funding round was led by venture capital firm Founderful, which Lucas Weder, a founding partner at the firm, hopes will be transformative.
“Aphelos’ breakthrough approach has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and set a new industry standard,” Weder said. Founderful’s funding will enable Aphelos to accelerate its transition to commercial production and build out further research and development capabilities.
