The numbers behind the AI boom are staggering, but one tends to get buried. Data centres already account for roughly 1.5% of global electricity consumption, and that figure is climbing fast. What gets discussed even less is water. A single large data centre can consume millions of litres every year, mostly to keep servers from overheating.
Now place those data centres in Texas, Arizona, Singapore, or any of the world’s fastest-growing technology hubs, places where water is not a given, and you have a problem that no amount of engineering optimism has properly solved. Until now, perhaps.
The data centre industry is expanding faster than its infrastructure constraints can keep up, and water is emerging as one of the most binding. Close to half of global capacity already sits in water-stressed regions, and regulators are tightening the conditions under which new facilities can be approved.
Operators are caught between surging demand for AI and growing limits on where and how they can build.
MooCoo Ventures has invested in Enaxiom, alongside Black Nova and Antler, backing a technology designed to remove that constraint.
What Enaxiom does
Enaxiom has developed HydroCool, a patented cooling system designed for the next generation of AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
The claim is simple, and unusually bold: HydroCool doesn’t just reduce water use, it produces ultra-pure water as a by-product of its operation. In industry terms, it is water-positive cooling.
HydroCool can be deployed in both new builds and retrofitted into existing facilities and is offered via a Hardware-as-a-Service model, lowering upfront cost while aligning incentives with performance.
For operators, this means lower total cost of cooling and a potential revenue stream from recovered water. For regulators, particularly in water-constrained regions, it changes what is even approvable.
Underpinning this is real intellectual property: a granted process patent, a PCT covering proprietary materials, and a further PCT pending for data centre applications, with research originating at the University of Western Australia.
Why we invested
I first came across Enaxiom the way a lot of good investments start: slightly sideways.
We had been looking at the second-order effects of AI infrastructure, not the models or the chips, but the physical constraints underneath them. Power gets most of the attention; water, almost none.
The more we dug into it, the clearer it became that water is the harder constraint. You can build more generation capacity. You cannot manufacture water in drought-prone regions at scale, not cheaply, and not without trade-offs.
So, when Enaxiom crossed my desk, the claim sounded almost too neat, a cooling system that reduces energy consumption and produces water as a by-product. That is the kind of sentence that usually falls apart under scrutiny.
It didn’t.
The team
Something that stood out to me was how grounded the technology is in real engineering. Bijan Rahimi, Enaxiom’s co-founder and co-CEO, and the inventor of HydroCool, has built this from first principles, with a PhD, multiple patents, and hands-on experience running pilots. He understands the physics of the problem at a level that is hard to fake and is leading the technology from validated prototype to commercial scale.
Just as importantly, Tia Collings, co-founder and co-CEO, brings over fifteen years of experience across growth, partnerships, and exits. She leads capital strategy and commercial execution, and understands how to take a complex, infrastructure-grade product into global markets.
That combination is rare, deep technical truth paired with real commercial execution.
Ultimately, this came down to something simpler. We believe that as AI continues its current trajectory, the world will need vastly more data centre capacity. If that capacity is constrained by water, then any solution that removes that constraint does not just participate in the market, it enables it. That is the kind of asymmetry we look for.
The opportunity
Existing cooling solutions do not resolve the water constraint well. Evaporative and adiabatic systems consume potable water heavily. Dry cooling avoids the water problem but struggles with performance at the density AI workloads require. Standard chillers are proven, but water-hungry and energy-intensive in hot climates.
HydroCool is one of the few solutions that meaningfully shifts that trade-off, eliminating potable water dependency while reducing energy consumption and producing a saleable by-product.
Enaxiom is starting in Australia, with early activity in Victoria, before expanding into the United States, Texas and Arizona first, followed by markets such as Singapore, the UAE, and India.
Beyond initial deployments, the pathway to scale runs through licensing and OEM partnerships with established cooling providers, opening a credible route to global adoption.
Interested in deals like this?
MooCoo invests deal by deal in thoroughly vetted Australian startups, alongside experienced co-investors and syndicate members who bring more than capital to the table. If you’d like to explore upcoming opportunities, visit moocoo.vc/investment-opportunities or get in touch.