This founder cracked firefighting — now he&#...

Sunny Sethi, founding father of HEN Technologies, doesn’t sound like somebody who’s disrupted an trade that has remained largely unchanged for the reason that Sixties. His firm builds fireplace nozzles — particularly, nozzles that it says put out fires as much as thrice sooner than earlier merchandise whereas conserving 67% of water. However Sethi is matter-of-fact about this achievement, extra targeted on what’s subsequent than what’s already been carried out. And what’s subsequent sounds rather a lot greater than fireplace nozzles.

His path to firefighting doesn’t comply with a tidy narrative. After nabbing his PhD on 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 received 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 referred to as TE Connectivity, he labored on gadgets with new adhesive formulations to allow sooner manufacturing within 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 one 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, going through a possible evacuation order. “She was actually mad at me,” Sethi remembers. “She’s like, ‘Dude, you must 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 various issues. Why not attempt to repair the issue?

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

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

However the nozzle is only the start — what Sethi calls “the muscle on the bottom.” HEN has since expanded into displays, valves, overhead sprinklers, and stress gadgets, and is launching a flow-control gadget (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management methods this 12 months. Based on Sethi, every gadget accommodates custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 completely different designs that flip dumb {hardware} into sensible, related tools, some powered by Nvidia Orion Nano processors. Altogether, says Sethi, HEN has filed 20 patent functions with half a dozen granted up to now.

The actual innovation is the system these gadgets create. HEN’s platform makes use of sensors on the pump to behave as a digital sensor within 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 fireplace, 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 within the Palisades Fireplace. It occurred within the Oakland Fireplace a long time earlier. When two engines are related to at least one hydrant, stress variations can imply that one engine all of a sudden will get nothing as a fireplace continues to develop. In rural America, water tenders, that are tankers shuttling water from distant sources, face their very own logistical nightmares. If they will combine water utilization calculations with their very own utility monitoring methods to optimize useful resource allocation, that’s a large win.

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

The Division of Homeland Safety has been asking for precisely this type of system via 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 have got good high quality information,” Sethi notes. “You may’t have good high quality information until you have got the appropriate {hardware}.”

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

“The toughest a part of constructing this firm is that this market is hard as a result of it’s a B2C play if you consider convincing the purchasers to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you need to actually make a product that resonates with folks — with the top consumer — however you continue to must 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 within the second quarter of 2023, lining up 10 fireplace 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 fireplace division clients, is projecting $20 million in income. 

HEN has competitors, after all. IDEX Corp, a public firm, sells hoses, nozzles, and displays. Software program corporations like Central Sq. serve fireplace 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 attempting to do,” insists Sethi.

Nonetheless, 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 via 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 interchange growing old tools 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 information, income continues between buy cycles.

HEN’s twin aim has required constructing a really particular staff. Its software program lead was previously a senior director who helped construct Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. Different members of HEN’s 50-person staff embrace a former NASA engineer and veterans from Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft. “If you happen to ask me technical questions, I’d not have the ability to reply all the pieces,” Sethi admits with fun, “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 attention-grabbing, as a result of whereas HEN is promoting nozzles, it’s amassing one thing extra useful: information. Extremely particular, real-world information about how water behaves beneath stress, how move charges work together with supplies, how fireplace responds to suppression strategies, how physics works in lively fireplace environments.

It’s precisely what corporations constructing so-called world fashions want. These AI methods that assemble simulated representations of bodily environments to foretell future states require real-world, multimodal information from bodily methods beneath excessive circumstances. You may’t educate AI about physics via simulations alone. You want what HEN collects with each deployment.

Sethi received’t elaborate, however he is aware of what he’s sitting on. Corporations coaching robotics and predictive physics engines would pay handsomely for this type of real-world physics information.

Buyers see it, too. Last month, HEN closed a $20 million Collection 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 corporate’s whole funding to greater than $30 million.

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