What if your water heater could make you money? That’s the tantalizing pitch from WATTER, a Dallas company that has emerged from stealth with $5 million in seed funding. WATTER’s high-tech water heaters use wasted heat from compute devices to heat water in homes and businesses, while reducing demand on the grid.

A spinout of Hunt Innovative Technologies, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Hunt Energy, WATTER is now positioning itself to scale its revolutionary distributed compute model for residences and commercial properties. The company says its breakthrough tech will enable cloud computing to “generate revenue while heating your water, delivering net zero computing.”

WATTER’s innovative water heater. [Image: WATTER]

The seed round was led by Hunt Innovative Technologies and Dallas-based 17Shoals Inc.  

WATTER is led by Co-Founder and CEO James Hancock, a former NASA data scientist and  founder of Parasanti, a Dallas data orchestration/edge computing firm. Hancock was featured among the Future 50 by Dallas Innovates Magazine in 2021. He brings “deep expertise in edge computing, energy markets, and scalable product innovation” to the high-tech spinout, Hunt Energy said.

“The compute market is at an inflection point, with demand surging and energy constraints becoming a critical challenge,” Hancock said in a statement. “WATTER’s model not only improves energy efficiency but also redefines the economics of distributed compute. This funding enables us to deploy more prototypes, validate our technology for scale, and position WATTER as the most energy-efficient compute solution available.”

WATTER app rendering. [Image: WATTER]

‘innovation the energy industry has been waiting for’

Hunt Innovative Technologies has played “a pivotal role” in incubating WATTER, and its leadership remains a key part of the company’s vision, Hunt Energy said.

“We’re excited to see the team at WATTER enter this next stage as an independent startup with strong capital backing to provide advanced compute horsepower in a unique environmental and grid stability enhancing way,” Todd Benson, chief innovation officer at Hunt Innovative Technologies, said in a statement.  “We feel confident that the WATTER solution solves a significant challenge facing humanity today by delivering support for accelerating AI compute demands while bringing economic value to homeowners and businesses alike.”  

Hunter Hunt, CEO of Hunt Energy, said WATTER is “revolutionizing the intersection of computing and energy efficiency, and I could not be more excited to be part of this journey.”

“By turning wasted heat into a valuable resource, WATTER not only reduces grid demand but also enhances resiliency and unlocks a new, sustainable model for energy utilization,” Hunt added. “This is the kind of innovation the energy industry has been waiting for.”

17Shoals’ Tracey Maynor said he’s looking forward to WATTER’s positive impact in commercial markets and local communities.

“I’m so excited to see a technology that solves environmental and grid infrastructure challenges, while relieving financial pressure on economically challenged homeowners,” Maynor added.

WATTER said it will use its seed funding to focus on scaling pilot deployments, securing key partnerships, and laying the foundation for future expansion as it prepares for a Series A raise.

Here’s a YouTube animation of WATTER’s solution in action:

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