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 enhance suppression charges by as much as 300% 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 lots 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 known 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 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 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 should 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 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 carried out computational fluid dynamics analysis, analyzing how water suppresses hearth and the way wind impacts it. The consequence: a nozzle that controls droplet measurement 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 circulation fee, 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 stress gadgets, and is launching a flow-control machine (“Stream IQ”) and discharge management programs this yr. In response to Sethi, every machine comprises custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing energy — 23 totally different designs that flip dumb {hardware} into good, linked tools, some powered by Nvidia Orion Nano processors. Altogether, says Sethi, HEN has filed 20 patent purposes with half a dozen granted to this point.
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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 hearth, the way it was used, which hydrant was tapped, and what the climate situations have 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 linked to at least one hydrant, stress variations can imply that one engine all of the 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’ll combine water utilization calculations with their very own utility monitoring programs to optimize useful resource allocation, that’s an enormous win.
So HEN constructed a cloud platform with utility layers, which Sethi likens to what Adobe did with cloud infrastructure. Suppose Particular person à la carte programs for hearth captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. HEN’s system has climate knowledge; it has GPS in all gadgets. It could actually 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 its NERIS program, which is an initiative to convey predictive analytics to emergency operations. “However you may’t have [predictive analytics] except you’ve got good high quality knowledge,” Sethi notes. “You possibly can’t have good high quality knowledge except you’ve got the best {hardware}.”
HEN isn’t monetizing that knowledge but. It’s implementing knowledge nodes, placing gadgets in as many programs as doable, constructing the info pipeline, creating the info lake. Subsequent yr, says Sethi, it should begin commercializing the applying layer with its built-in intelligence.
If constructing a predictive analytics platform for emergency response sounds daunting, Sethi says really 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 purchasers to purchase, however the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you need to actually make a product that resonates with individuals — with the top person — however you continue to should 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 yr. This yr, Hen, which presently has 1,500 hearth division prospects, is projecting $20 million in income.
HEN has competitors, in fact. IDEX Corp, a public firm, sells hoses, nozzles, and displays. Software program corporations like Central Sq. serve hearth 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 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 international locations. It really works by 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 army and authorities businesses to purchase).
Hearth departments purchase about 20,000 new engines every year to switch growing older 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 knowledge, 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. “In the event you ask me technical questions, I might not have the ability to reply all the things,” 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 invaluable: knowledge. Extremely particular, real-world knowledge about how water behaves underneath stress, how circulation 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 knowledge from bodily programs underneath excessive situations. You possibly can’t train AI about physics by 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 knowledge.
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 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 yr.
