Lucend announced it has raised a $3.3 million Seed round to expand into the U.S. with software that uses existing sensor data to deliver explainable, “human-in-the-loop” optimization recommendations for data center operations, targeting major gains in energy, water, and labor efficiency.
The company said its Transparent AI platform connects to existing infrastructure without requiring new hardware, ingesting and analyzing billions of data points daily across what it described as 300 billion sensor readings to surface prescriptive actions that operators can review and choose whether to implement. Lucend positions its approach as “showing its work” to enable teams to validate recommendations in complex environments where performance and trust are critical.
Lucend, formerly known as Coolgradient, said it has deployed its system across dozens of data centers since 2023 in markets including Melbourne, Singapore, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Chicago. The company cited work with operators including Digital Realty, Global Switch, and T5, spanning different climates and facility designs, and integrating with cooling and electrical assets such as chillers, IACs, UPSs, and generators, along with operational signals like valve openings, fan speeds, temperature setpoints, and pressures.
Lucend said customers to date have achieved approximately a 40% reduction in power use effectiveness (PUE), a 25% reduction in power use, a 30% reduction in water use, and a 40% improvement in team efficiency. The company said its software can help extend infrastructure life and reduce operating costs without new capital expenditures or operational disruption.
The U.S. expansion comes as operators face growing pressure to increase capacity while managing energy and water constraints. Lucend pointed to tightening state and local rules, including New York State frameworks that penalize high electricity-consuming facilities and requirements in Santa Clara, California, that limit energy availability by reserving substation capacity for surrounding customers. The company also cited a July 2025 White House directive aimed at accelerating data center permitting as another driver of efficient scaling.
Remarkable Ventures Climate (RVC) led the Seed round, joined by Mitsubishi Electric Innovation Fund, New Climate Ventures, Avesta, and Stepchange, with participation from existing investor 4impact capital. Lucend said the funding will be used to scale U.S. operations, sales, and customer support.
Lucend is led by co-founders Jasper de Vries and René Gompel, who founded the company in 2019 under the name Coolgradient and each bring roughly 20 years of technology leadership experience. Mitsubishi Electric, through an executive vice president for business innovation, said it expects Lucend’s optimization technology to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, and described plans to pair Mitsubishi Electric’s hardware and control technologies with Lucend’s AI platform.
KEY QUOTES:
“Lucend’s Transparent AI platform analyzes billions of data points daily and provides prescriptive recommendations that data center operators can review and choose whether or not to implement. Lucend’s human-in-the-loop approach removes risk by ensuring human oversight as operators develop trust in our recommendations that increases efficiency and reliability, and enables new approaches to maintenance and replacement decisions.”
Jasper de Vries, co-founder of Lucend
“As AI’s demand for data centers grows, data center operators need to prioritize efficiency and uptime while also conserving resources like energy and water. Lucend and our Transparent AI platform open a pathway to consistent, measurable efficiency improvements while increasing uptime, without new CapEx, and without disrupting existing operations, while saving some of our customers millions in annual operating cost.”
René Gompel, co-founder
“Lucend has strong competitiveness in AI-driven data center optimization technologies, and we expect its solutions to significantly improve data center operational efficiency and reduce costs. By combining our hardware and infrastructure control technologies with Lucend’s AI platform, we aim to deliver greater value to our customers and strengthen our competitiveness in the data center business.”
Komi Matsubara, Executive Officer (Vice President, Business Innovation), Mitsubishi Electric
“Lucend is a category-defining company led by a world-class team. Jasper de Vries brings deep AI and product leadership and built an intuitive platform UI, with field results that outperform peers. René Gompel complements with decades of B2B software experience and prior entrepreneurial success. The team’s early insight into this market, years before the AI boom, has positioned them well ahead of competitors, many of whom are just now entering the space.”
“Energy availability is critical to the transformation of power transmission for data center operators, cloud providers, and large enterprises. Lucend offers an immediate solution to capture the massive opportunity in the U.S., and we are excited to work with the team to accelerate the company’s growth in 2026 and beyond.”
Murat Aktihanoglu, Managing Partner, Remarkable Ventures Climate (RVC)
