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 thrice quicker than earlier merchandise whereas conserving two-thirds of the water. However Sethi is matter-of-fact about this achievement, extra centered on what’s subsequent than what’s already been achieved. And what’s subsequent sounds rather a lot greater 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 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 units with new adhesive formulations to allow quicker 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 couple 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 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 pondering “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 carried out computational fluid dynamics analysis, analyzing how water suppresses hearth 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 stream price, 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 displays, valves, overhead sprinklers, and strain units, and is launching a flow-control system (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management programs this 12 months. In line with Sethi, every system incorporates custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 completely different designs that flip dumb {hardware} into sensible, linked gear, some powered by Nvidia Orion Nano processors. Altogether, says Sethi, HEN has filed 20 patent functions with half a dozen granted to date.
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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 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: 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 linked to 1 hydrant, strain variations can imply that one engine all of the 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 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 could 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} explicit hearth truck is working out of water.
The Division of Homeland Safety has been asking for precisely this type of system by means of 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 could have good high quality information,” Sethi notes. “You may’t have good high quality information until you could have the proper {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 whenever you consider convincing the purchasers to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you must actually make a product that resonates with individuals — with the tip consumer — however you continue to need to undergo authorities buying cycles, and we have now 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 12 months. This 12 months, Hen, which at the moment has 1,500 hearth 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 firms like Central Sq. serve hearth departments. A Miami firm, First Due, which sells software program to public security businesses, introduced an enormous $355 million spherical final August. However no firm is “doing precisely what we are attempting to do,” insists Sethi.
Both approach, 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 means of 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 army and authorities businesses to purchase).
Fireplace departments purchase about 20,000 new engines every year to exchange growing old gear 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 objective has required constructing a really particular group. Its software program lead was previously a senior director who helped construct Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. Different members of HEN’s 50-person group embrace a former NASA engineer and veterans from Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft. “If you happen to ask me technical questions, I might 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 helpful: information. Extremely particular, real-world information about how water behaves underneath strain, how stream charges work together with supplies, how hearth responds to suppression strategies, how physics works in energetic hearth environments.
It’s precisely what firms 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 underneath excessive circumstances. You may’t train AI about physics by means of 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. 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 taking part. 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.
