Vancouver-based startup Wafr Technologies Ltd. announced on Thursday that it has secured $100 million in funding from a group of private investors to advance its energy- and water-efficient cooling technology for artificial intelligence data centres. The hyper-efficient cooling system can reduce water use by up to 95% and cooling power use by up to 80%, according to the company.
Funding and expansion plans
Founded in 2025, Wafr will use the new funds to launch an AI research lab and data centre, while furthering its commercialization efforts. The company plans to hire dozens of technical staff in the coming months and is looking for new sites to build out its operations across Canada. It also intends to raise an additional $200 million “as soon as possible” from government funds and private investors, said Darrell Kopke, co-founder of Wafr and Vancouver executive director for the Creative Destruction Lab. Kopke declined to name the current investors but said an announcement is coming soon.
How the technology works
Wafr’s proprietary technology is a thermal battery that captures cooling capacity when grid electricity is cheap and releases it as required at peak times. This hyper-efficient cooling system is designed to address the massive water and energy consumption of large-scale AI data centres, which house clusters of tightly-packed advanced computing chips that generate significant heat.
Market context and impact
Large AI data centres operated by American hyperscalers like Amazon.com Inc., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. are typically 100 megawatts and above. According to a 2025 analysis from the International Energy Agency, a 100-MW AI data centre in the U.S. consumes around 2 million litres of water per day — on par with the water consumption of 6,500 households.
“This crazy, massive market has a major bottleneck, which is power and water,” Kopke said. “Our technology virtually eliminates the need for water and stops evaporative water for cooling.”
Commercialization and market focus
Wafr has already launched commercialization efforts and has signed letters of intent with international partners involved in constructing AI data centres. The company is prioritizing the United States market, alongside European countries like Germany. “The U.S. has 5,300 data centres. The country that has the next highest amount of declared data centres is Germany at 400. It would be impossible for us to ignore the U.S. It is also the market that has the least sustainable AI and that’s something we can fix,” Kopke said.
Industry trends
Cooling technology has become a lucrative opportunity. In March, U.S. company Ecolab Inc. announced it was purchasing Calgary-based CoolIT Systems Inc., which makes liquid cooling products for data centres, for US$4.75 billion in one of the largest-ever Canadian tech takeovers.
