Sunny Sethi, founding father of HEN Applied sciences, doesn’t sound like somebody who’s disrupted an business that has remained largely unchanged because the Nineteen Sixties. His firm builds fireplace nozzles — particularly, nozzles that it says enhance suppression charges by as much as 300% whereas conserving 67% of water. However Sethi is matter-of-fact about this achievement, extra centered on what’s subsequent than what’s already been executed. And what’s subsequent sounds lots larger than fireplace nozzles.
His path to firefighting doesn’t observe 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 gained Air Pressure 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 units with new adhesive formulations to allow quicker manufacturing within the automotive business.
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 house 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, it is advisable repair this, in any other case you’re not an actual scientist.’”
A background spanning nanotechnology, photo voltaic, semiconductors, and automotive had made his considering “bias free and versatile,” as he places it. He’d seen so many industries, so many alternative 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 consequence: 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 circulation charge, he says, however HEN’s sample and velocity management preserve the stream coherent whereas conventional nozzles disperse.
However the nozzle is just the start — what Sethi calls “the muscle on the bottom.” HEN has since expanded into screens, valves, overhead sprinklers, and stress units, and is launching a flow-control machine (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management techniques this 12 months. In line with Sethi, every machine incorporates custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 completely different designs that flip dumb {hardware} into sensible, linked tools, some powered by Nvidia Orion Nano processors. Altogether, says Sethi, HEN has filed 20 patent functions with half a dozen granted thus far.
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The actual innovation is the system these units 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 many years earlier. When two engines are linked to at least one hydrant, stress variations can imply that one engine all of a sudden will get nothing as a hearth 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 techniques 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 techniques for fireplace captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. HEN’s system has climate information; it has GPS in all units. It may possibly warn these on the entrance strains that the wind is about to shift and so they’d higher transfer their engines, or {that a} specific fireplace truck is operating 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 deliver predictive analytics to emergency operations. “However you’ll be able to’t have [predictive analytics] except you’ve got good high quality information,” Sethi notes. “You possibly can’t have good high quality information except you’ve got the appropriate {hardware}.”
HEN isn’t monetizing that information but. It’s implementing information nodes, placing units in as many techniques as potential, constructing the info pipeline, creating the info lake. Subsequent 12 months, says Sethi, it’ll begin commercializing the applying layer with its built-in intelligence.
If constructing a predictive analytics platform for emergency response sounds daunting, Sethi says truly 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 shoppers to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So it’s important to actually make a product that resonates with individuals — with the top person — however you continue to should undergo authorities buying cycles, and we now 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 presently has 1,500 fireplace 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 firms like Central Sq. serve fireplace departments. A Miami firm, First Due, which sells software program to public security businesses, introduced a large $355 million spherical final August. However no firm is “doing precisely what we try 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 not too long ago 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 businesses to purchase).
Fireplace departments purchase about 20,000 new engines every year to switch ageing tools in a nationwide fleet of 200,000, so as soon as HEN is certified, it turns into recurring income (is the thought), and since the {hardware} generates information, 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 embody 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 every thing,” 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 fascinating, as a result of whereas HEN is promoting nozzles, it’s amassing one thing extra invaluable: information. Extremely particular, real-world information about how water behaves underneath stress, how circulation charges work together with supplies, how fireplace responds to suppression methods, how physics works in energetic fireplace environments.
It’s precisely what firms constructing so-called world fashions want. These AI techniques that assemble simulated representations of bodily environments to foretell future states require real-world, multimodal information from bodily techniques underneath excessive circumstances. You possibly can’t train AI about physics via simulations alone. You want what HEN collects with each deployment.
Sethi gained’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.
Traders see it, too. Final 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 complete 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.
