The Truth About Cooling the Digital World — You’re Sitting on a Heat Engine - Why Ireland’s Newest Invention Is Like Burning the Bog — Only Smarter

Rose Odette
Nov 4
4 min read

Once upon a time, data centers were pristine glass rooms with raised floors — temples of air conditioning and white noise. Engineers would strut around in lab coats, proudly managing massive chillers to push cold air under the floor, through perforated tiles, and over rows of servers that burned hotter than a jet engine. The goal was simple: fight the heat. But the reality was brutal — wasted energy, sky-high power bills, and inefficiency that made every CFO cringe. The raised floor was innovation for its time, but it was also a monument to overengineering. It kept the system alive by brute force instead of brilliance.

Cooling the Digital World - Then came Nexalus:

A spin-out from Trinity College Dublin that refused to accept “cooling” as an expense. Led by CEO Kenneth O’Mahony, COO Dr. Cathal Wilson, and Chief Science Officer Prof. Tony Robinson, this Irish team decided to harness the very thing everyone else was trying to kill: heat. Based in Cork City, Ireland, they looked at the traditional raised-floor data center and asked, “What if the problem isn’t the heat — what if the waste is?” That one question flipped an entire industry’s mindset.

Dr. Wilson, a thermal-engineering expert, was inspired by an Economist article calling data centers “the oil industry of the future.” He knew air was a lousy coolant. So Nexalus built a liquid-cooling system that goes directly to the chip, quietly replacing the clunky HVAC dinosaurs of the past. Instead of cooling entire rooms, it cools where it counts — at the heart of the processor — and then captures the waste heat to reuse it. The result? Data centers that don’t just run cooler — they generate usable energy.

Their go-to-market strategy is pure entrepreneurial gold. Rather than ask customers to rebuild entire facilities, Nexalus designed modular, drop-in systems that retrofit existing racks. They’re not selling replacement — they’re selling transformation. That’s how smart founders think. They partnered with major players like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Munters to validate their tech and scale it fast. Instead of pitching “better cooling,” they pitched “turn your data center into an energy hub.” With their system, a 20-megawatt facility can reduce energy use by roughly 35% and recover enough heat to power thousands of homes. That’s not an improvement — that’s a revolution hiding in plain sight.

And here’s the beautiful twist — they’ve turned waste into wealth. Nexalus has secured patents, built IP partnerships with Trinity, and pulled in more than €6 million in early funding while targeting another €10 million to scale globally. They’re positioning themselves at the center of the AI infrastructure boom, where every watt matters. Their technology - Cooling the Digital World - doesn’t just make data centers more efficient; it makes them sustainable, profitable, and socially responsible. That’s the trifecta investors crave — profit, purpose, and performance.

From a leadership lens, this story is a masterclass. In the glass-room era, the goal was containment — keep the chaos under control. In the Nexalus era, it’s conversion — turn chaos into power. That’s what bold founders do. They stop asking how to manage what’s broken and start asking how to monetize what’s ignored. The old engineers built raised floors to escape the heat; Nexalus built a closed loop that turns it into progress.

Here’s the takeaway for you: every business has its version of wasted heat — unused potential, underleveraged assets, or overlooked byproducts of daily operations. The question is whether you’ll keep cooling it down or start heating it up. Your wasted energy might be your next revenue stream if you dare to think like Nexalus.

Today’s Spark: Don’t fight the heat in your business — harness it. The energy you’re wasting is the power you could be using.

Five Ideals to Live By

Transform waste into wealth. Every inefficiency hides an opportunity for innovation.
Design for impact, not just improvement. Incremental change is safe; exponential change is rewarding.
Think in loops, not lines. Closed-loop systems — in energy or business — multiply value.
Partnership beats perfection. Smart alliances accelerate adoption and credibility.
Sustainability is the new profitability. The businesses of the future will win by being both green and great.

Five Action Items to Execute Now

Identify your wasted “heat.” What resource, time, or idea in your business is being ignored or underused?
Map its potential energy. Quantify the gain — what could it save, earn, or power if you captured it?
Build a pilot. Test one small, closed-loop system in your process that converts waste into utility.
Find your Nexalus. Partner with someone who’s already turning your industry’s heat into value.
Tell your transformation story. Share your evolution like Nexalus did — it attracts investors, clients, and believers.