Wafr Raises $100m Toward Water-Saving AI Cooling and Canadian Lab

Wafr Technologies has announced plans to build an AI research lab in Canada and has raised $100 million toward a $300 million fundraising goal, advancing a cooling technology it says can sharply cut the water and power that AI data centres consume. The British Columbia-based company frames the initiative as a step in reducing the environmental cost of AI computing, with the funding earmarked for the lab, expanded research and development, and commercial deployment of its systems. The move positions Canada as a potential hub for what the company calls sustainable AI.

 

The Resource Problem It Targets

 

The technology addresses one of the most pressing sustainability strains in the AI buildout: the water and electricity that data centres burn to stay cool. On average, the company notes, typical data centres use up to 10 million litres of water per megawatt each year, with cooling accounting for 30 to 45 percent of total electricity load. As AI pushes computing density higher, those demands are climbing, often in regions already short of water.

Wafr's proprietary cooling system is pitched at closing that gap. The company says its technology cuts water use by up to 95 percent and cooling power use by up to 80 percent without compromising computing performance, savings it argues translate into billions of litres of water conserved each year. Those figures are the company's own and remain to be independently verified at scale, but if they hold they would address precisely the constraints, water scarcity and grid pressure, that are increasingly limiting where data centres can be built.

 

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Building a Sustainable AI Base in Canada

 

The fundraising is tied to establishing a research lab intended to bring together researchers, engineers and industry partners to develop next-generation AI infrastructure. Beyond the lab itself, the campaign will fund the expansion of engineering and research teams, commercial deployment of the cooling technology, partnerships with governments and academic institutions, and the global commercialisation of Canadian-developed intellectual property.

The national framing is central to the pitch. Co-founder Darrell Kopke argued that Canada has an opportunity to lead the world in sustainable AI, presenting economic growth and environmental stewardship as complementary rather than competing goals. That positioning has drawn support from Foresight Canada, a clean-tech partner and major contributor to the proposed lab, which named Wafr among its most investible Canadian cleantech companies in 2025 and described sustainable AI cooling as a potential game changer for an industry facing water and grid constraints.

 

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A Bet on Sustainability as Competitive Advantage

 

The company's leadership frames the environmental case as inseparable from the commercial one. Co-founder and chief executive Bikram Singh said the aim was to ensure AI does not come at an environmental cost to future generations, and the broader proposition is that cutting resource use is what makes the technology valuable to operators wrestling with scarcity and rising costs. The team points to prior deployments of its approach in India and Dubai as evidence the technology works in demanding conditions.

The venture sits within a crowded field of companies racing to solve the AI cooling problem, and its progress will hinge on execution: whether the efficiency claims hold across commercial deployments, whether the remaining $200 million is raised, and whether the Canadian lab attracts the researchers and partners needed to turn early promise into scaled technology. As water and grid limits increasingly shape where AI infrastructure can be built, the demand for solutions of this kind is clear, but whether Wafr's specific approach captures that demand will only become evident as its systems are tested at scale.