Sunny Sethi, founding father of HEN Applied sciences, doesn’t sound like somebody who’s disrupted an trade that has remained largely unchanged for the reason that Nineteen Sixties. His firm builds hearth nozzles — particularly, nozzles that it says put out fires as much as 3 times 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 completed. And what’s subsequent sounds quite a bit larger than hearth 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 gained Air Drive 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 units 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 Hearth — the one megafire they’d ever see, they thought. Then got here the Camp Hearth, then the Napa-Sonoma fires. The breaking level got here in 2019. Sethi was touring throughout evacuation warnings whereas his spouse was residence 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’ll 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 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 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 identical move fee, he says, however HEN’s sample and velocity management maintain 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 strain units, and is launching a flow-control system (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management programs this yr. In accordance with Sethi, every system incorporates custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 totally 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 thus far.
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The true 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 strain 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 had been.
Why it issues: Hearth 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 Hearth. It occurred within the Oakland Hearth many years earlier. When two engines are related to at least one hydrant, strain variations can imply that one engine out of the blue 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 programs to optimize useful resource allocation, that’s a large win.
So HEN constructed a cloud platform with utility layers, which Sethi likens to what Adobe did with cloud infrastructure. Assume Particular person à la carte programs for hearth captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. HEN’s system has climate information; it has GPS in all units. It might warn these on the entrance traces that the wind is about to shift they usually’d higher transfer their engines, or {that a} specific hearth truck is working 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 carry predictive analytics to emergency operations. “However you possibly can’t have [predictive analytics] except you may have good high quality information,” Sethi notes. “You’ll be able to’t have good high quality information except you may have the fitting {hardware}.”
If constructing a predictive analytics platform for emergency response sounds daunting, Sethi says truly promoting it’s 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 hard as a result of it’s a B2C play once you consider convincing the shoppers to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you need to actually make a product that resonates with individuals — with the tip consumer — however you continue to must undergo authorities buying cycles, and we’ve got 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 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 yr. This yr, Hen, which at the moment has 1,500 hearth division clients, 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 an enormous $355 million spherical final August. However no firm is “doing precisely what we try to do,” insists Sethi.
Both method, 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 international locations. It really works by 120 distributors and 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).
Hearth departments purchase about 20,000 new engines annually to interchange growing older 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 purpose has required constructing a really particular workforce. Its software program lead was previously a senior director who helped construct Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. Different members of HEN’s 50-person workforce embody a former NASA engineer and veterans from Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft. “For those who ask me technical questions, I’d 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 beneficial: information. Extremely particular, real-world information about how water behaves beneath strain, how move charges work together with supplies, how hearth responds to suppression strategies, 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 foretell future states require real-world, multimodal information from bodily programs beneath 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 information.
Traders see it, too. Final 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 corporate’s whole funding to greater than $30 million.
Sethi, in the meantime, is already trying forward. He says the corporate will return to fundraising within the second quarter of this yr.
