The technology sector has a serious energy problem. Surging demand for data centres, largely caused by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, is turning a sector that once had a very green profile into a voracious user of energy. By 2030, the need to keep data centres cool will account for as much as 6% of all global energy usage. AI, in this sense at least, is simply not sustainable.

Enter the Swiss technology start-up Apheros. The Zurich-based company, which is today announcing a $1.85 million funding round, has invented a new type of “metal foam” that will help in the cooling process in data centres. The company’s founders believe their material can increase the efficiency of cooling systems by 90% – and therefore reduce the energy consumption of a data centre by as much as 20%.

“Our technology has the potential to set new industry standards and to significantly reduce the environmental impact of cooling solutions worldwide,” says Julia Carpenter, a materials scientist who co-founded Apheros last year and now serves as its CEO. “This funding round will allow us to advance our mission of helping our customers achieve superior thermal performance, increase energy efficiency, and contribute to a greener future.”

The idea is a relatively straightforward one. By encasing the chips in a data centre in Apheros’s foam, you effectively increase their surface area; that allows heat to move away from the chip at a much faster rate. It can then be dissipated through the cooling system that the data centre employs. In simple terms, the foam means that the chip is able to cool down more quickly.

As ever, of course, a simple solution requires complex work. Apheros’s technology was developed as a spin-out project from ETH Zurich, the Swiss university. Carpenter has years of research experience in the materials field, and has worked closely with co-founder Gaëlle Andreatta, now Apheros’s CTO, another experienced scientist and entrepreneur.

Having perfected their product, Carpenter and Andreatta believe the potential for the company is huge. “We are not just selling a material, but a solution to a critical problem,” argues Carpenter.

“Our core expertise is materials manufacturing, but our focus is on providing a tangible benefit to our customers: superior cooling performance,” Carpenter adds. “By developing a new generation of metal foams with unmatched thermal properties, we are addressing a growing need across multiple industries, from data centres to consumer electronics to automotive. We offer a product that directly impacts both our customers’ bottom line and their sustainability goals.”

Apheros has been working with a technology sector partner to test its foam and is now moving into the commercialisation phase of its business plan. The company expects to scale up production over the next year or so, enabling it manufacture several tonnes of its foam. The typical data centre would require a few hundred kilograms of the product.

Apheros is not the only business exploring new cooling solutions for data centres, but it believes one critical advantage of its approach is that retro-fitting is relatively simple. Data centres do not need to be completely redesigned or built from scratch to take advantage of the technology. It is also compatible with the growing move to use liquid cooling systems in data centres.

The company sees competitors coming from the heat exchange sector, where businesses such as Kelvion, Alfa Laval, Danfoss and GEA are making good progress, and from emerging technology providers such as Corintis, TNO and Emerson and 3D Systems. The data centre industry itself is also working on cooling solutions, led by players such as Lenovo, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

Apheros hopes to take on these rivals by stressing the cost-effectiveness and scalability of its technology. The business has been largely self-financing to date, though it has benefited from grants of around $780,000. However, investors have taken an interest in the business from its earliest days. Today’s pre-seed fundraising round is led by the venture capital firm Founderful, where founding partner Lukas Weder is hopeful it can prove transformative.

“Apheros’s groundbreaking approach has the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and set new industry standards,” Weder argues. Founderful’s funding will enable Apheros to accelerate its move to commercial production and build out further research and development capacity.