This founder cracked firefighting — now he is creating an AI gold mine

Sunny Sethi, founding father of HEN Technologies, doesn’t sound like somebody who’s disrupted an trade that has remained largely unchanged since the Sixties. His firm builds hearth nozzles — particularly, nozzles that it says put out fires up to thrice sooner than earlier merchandise whereas conserving two-thirds of the water. However Sethi is matter-of-fact about this achievement, extra targeted on what’s subsequent than what’s already been executed. And what’s subsequent sounds so much larger than hearth nozzles.

His path to firefighting doesn’t comply with a tidy narrative. After nabbing his PhD at the College of Akron, the place he researched surfaces and adhesion, he based ADAP Nanotech, an outfit that developed a carbon nanotube-based portfolio and gained Air Power Analysis Lab grants. Subsequent, at SunPower, he developed new supplies and processes for shingled photovoltaic modules. When he landed subsequent at an organization known as TE Connectivity, he labored on gadgets with new adhesive formulations to allow sooner manufacturing in the automotive trade.

Then got here a problem from his spouse. The 2 had moved from Ohio to the East Bay outdoors San Francisco in 2013. A number of years later got here the Thomas Fireplace — the solely megafire they’d ever see, they thought. Then got here the Camp Fireplace, then the Napa-Sonoma fires. The breaking level got here in 2019. Sethi was touring throughout evacuation warnings whereas his spouse was dwelling alone with their then three-year-old daughter, no household close by, dealing with a possible evacuation order. “She was actually mad at me,” Sethi recollects. “She’s like, ‘Dude, you want to repair this, in any other case you’re not an actual scientist.’”

A background spanning nanotechnology, photo voltaic, semiconductors, and automotive had made his pondering “bias free and versatile,” as he places it. He’d seen so many industries, so many alternative issues. Why not attempt to repair the downside?

In June 2020, he based HEN Applied sciences (for high-efficiency nozzles) in close by Hayward. With Nationwide Science Basis funding, he carried out computational fluid dynamics analysis, analyzing how water suppresses hearth and the way wind impacts it. The end result: a nozzle that controls droplet dimension exactly, manages velocity in new methods, and resists wind.

In HEN’s comparability video, which Sethi reveals me over a Zoom name, the distinction is stark. It’s the similar circulate price, he says, however HEN’s sample and velocity management hold the stream coherent whereas conventional nozzles disperse.

However the nozzle is simply the starting — what Sethi calls “the muscle on the floor.” HEN has since expanded into screens, valves, overhead sprinklers, and stress gadgets, and is launching a flow-control gadget (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management programs this 12 months. In accordance to Sethi, every gadget comprises custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 totally different designs that flip dumb {hardware} into sensible, linked gear, some powered by Nvidia Orion Nano processors. Altogether, says Sethi, HEN has filed 20 patent purposes with half a dozen granted up to now.

The true innovation is the system these gadgets create. HEN’s platform makes use of sensors at the pump to act as a digital sensor in the nozzle, monitoring precisely when it’s on, how a lot water flows, and what stress is required. The system captures exactly how a lot water was used for a given hearth, the way it was used, which hydrant was tapped, and what the climate circumstances have been.

Why it issues: Fireplace departments can run out of water in any other case, as a result of there’s no communication between water suppliers and firefighters. It occurred in the Palisades Fireplace. It occurred in the Oakland Fireplace a long time earlier. When two engines are linked to one hydrant, stress variations can imply that one engine out of the blue will get nothing as a hearth continues to develop. In rural America, water tenders, which are tankers shuttling water from distant sources, face their very own logistical nightmares. If they’ll combine water utilization calculations with their very own utility monitoring programs to optimize useful resource allocation, that’s an enormous win.

So HEN constructed a cloud platform with software layers, which Sethi likens to what Adobe did with cloud infrastructure. Suppose Particular person à la carte programs for hearth captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. HEN’s system has climate knowledge; it has GPS in all gadgets. It might warn these on the entrance traces that the wind is about to shift and so they’d higher transfer their engines, or {that a} specific hearth truck is operating out of water.

The Division of Homeland Safety has been asking for precisely this sort of system by its NERIS program, which is an initiative to convey predictive analytics to emergency operations. “However you’ll be able to’t have [predictive analytics] until you’ve good high quality knowledge,” Sethi notes. “You’ll be able to’t have good high quality knowledge until you’ve the proper {hardware}.”

If constructing a predictive analytics platform for emergency response sounds daunting, Sethi says truly promoting it is more durable, and he’s proudest of HEN’s traction on that entrance.

“The toughest a part of constructing this firm is that this market is robust as a result of it’s a B2C play whenever you consider convincing the prospects to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you’ve to actually make a product that resonates with folks — with the finish person — however you continue to have to undergo authorities buying cycles, and now we have cracked each of these.”

The numbers bear this out. HEN launched its first merchandise into the market in the second quarter of 2023, lining up 10 hearth departments and producing $200,000 in income. Then phrase began to unfold. Income hit $1.6 million in 2024, then $5.2 million final 12 months. This 12 months, Hen, which at present has 1,500 hearth division prospects, is projecting $20 million in income. 

HEN has competitors, in fact. IDEX Corp, a public firm, sells hoses, nozzles, and screens. Software program corporations like Central Sq. serve hearth departments. A Miami firm, First Due, which sells software program to public security companies, introduced a large $355 million round final August.  However no firm is “doing precisely what we are making an attempt to do,” insists Sethi.

Both manner, Sethi says that the constraint isn’t demand — it’s scaling quick sufficient. HEN serves the Marine Corps, US Military bases, Naval atomic labs, NASA, Abu Dhabi Civil Protection, and ships to 22 nations. It really works by 120 distributors and just lately certified for GSA after a year-long vetting course of (that’s a federal seal of approval that makes it simpler for navy and authorities companies to purchase).

Fireplace departments purchase about 20,000 new engines every year to substitute growing older gear in a nationwide fleet of 200,000, so as soon as HEN is certified, it turns into recurring income (is the concept), and since the {hardware} generates knowledge, income continues between buy cycles.

HEN’s twin objective has required constructing a really particular crew. Its software program lead was previously a senior director who helped construct Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. Different members of HEN’s 50-person crew embrace a former NASA engineer and veterans from Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft. “For those who ask me technical questions, I might not have the ability to reply every part,” Sethi admits with amusing, “however I’ve such good groups that [it] has been a blessing.”

Certainly, it’s the software program that hints at the place this will get fascinating, as a result of whereas HEN is promoting nozzles, it’s amassing one thing extra useful: knowledge. Extremely particular, real-world knowledge about how water behaves underneath stress, how circulate charges work together with supplies, how hearth responds to suppression methods, how physics works in energetic hearth environments.

It’s precisely what corporations constructing so-called world fashions want. These AI programs that assemble simulated representations of bodily environments to predict future states require real-world, multimodal knowledge from bodily programs underneath excessive circumstances. You’ll be able to’t educate AI about physics by simulations alone. You want what HEN collects with each deployment.

Sethi gained’t elaborate, however he is aware of what he’s sitting on. Firms coaching robotics and predictive physics engines would pay handsomely for this sort of real-world physics knowledge.

Buyers see it, too. Last month, HEN closed a $20 million Sequence A spherical, plus $2 million in enterprise debt from Silicon Valley Financial institution. O’Neil Strategic Capital led the financing, with NSFO, Tanas Capital, and z21 Ventures collaborating. The spherical introduced the firm’s complete funding to greater than $30 million.

Sethi, in the meantime, is already wanting forward. He says the firm will return to fundraising in the second quarter of this 12 months.