Qarnot Computing announces the completion of a €35 million funding round with Société Générale, Demeter, ADEME Investissement, Colam Impact and Banque des Territoires on behalf of the State under the France 2030 programme.
The startup proposes to heat buildings using the residual energy of data centers, and now intends to “massage” this process on a larger scale. At this roundtable, the French company is focusing on its new generation of data centers based on direct water cooling technology.
Since its inception in 2010, Qarnot has been offering both computing power and the use of energy allocated to heat buildings. The startup released its first models of computer radiators in 2013, and then over the years supplemented its infrastructure with digital boilers and computerized warehouse heating systems.
Qarnot focuses on large heat consumers
With over 100 digital boilers deployed and over 70,000 HPC cores available in the cloud, Qarnot is thinking big. In the next-generation data centers that Qarnot wants to deploy, the IT infrastructure will be “installed directly on heat-consuming facilities” such as heating networks, swimming pools or industrial facilities.
Qarnot plans to deploy data centers in France and Europe with capacities ranging from “several hundred kW to several MW”.
The launch introduces a module called QBx, which is equivalent to a computer bay. The company intends to use direct water cooling technology to “densify high-performance servers and processors while optimizing their cooling,” according to a press release. Thus, this method will recover 95% of the waste heat generated by the servers by producing water above 60°C through the QBx, Carnot explains.
50 recruits in line
This fundraiser comes as major tech companies assess the climate emergency and begin to innovate in the area, especially in Northern Europe.
To support its growth, Qarnot is hiring over 50 people, primarily for technical and commercial roles.
“With the arrival of these major investors, we are crossing a milestone in our history and are clearly committed to large-scale industrial development,” commented Paul Benoist, President and Co-Founder of Qarnot.