---
title: The Swiss Startup Cooling Down AI’s $21 Billion Overheating Problem
description: Microsoft backs Swiss startup Corintis as it raises $24m to scale in-chip liquid cooling for AI data centres, lifting GPU performance and slashing energy use.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2025-09-25T11:25:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-14T11:37:39.942Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/the-swiss-startup-cooling-down-ai-s-21-billion-overheating-problem
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/FOUNDERS-Corintis-founders-Sam-Harrison-Co-Founder-COO-Left-Remco-van-Erp-CEO-Right-holding-Cold-plate-left-and-Microfluidic-core-right.webp
categories: Startups, Science & Tech
content_type: Spotlight
region: Switzerland
publication: Sovereign Magazine
about:
  - type: Organization
    name: Corintis
    description: "Co-founded by Dr. Remco van Erp, Sam Harrison, and Prof. Elison Matioli, Corintis is helping address one of the key problems in delivering ever greater computer power, ever more accessible: managing the heat produced by increasingly powerful computer chips. Founded on research undertaken at EPFL in Switzerland, with tech giants as clients and a collaboration with Microsoft, the company is helping address the next bottleneck in unlocking the power of AI, modelling climate change and drug discovery. Find out more at corintis.com"
    url: https://corintis.com/
    sameAs:
      - https://www.linkedin.com/company/corintis/
---

[Corintis](https://corintis.com/) just raised $24 million to tackle what might be artificial intelligence’s most unglamorous yet critical bottleneck: keeping data centres from literally melting down. The Swiss precision engineering startup is attacking a cooling crisis that threatens to throttle AI’s explosive growth, as the liquid cooling market rockets from $1.1 billion today toward a projected $21 billion by 2032.

![PRODUCTS Corintis products Therminator with cold plates 1024x683](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/PRODUCTS-Corintis-products-Therminator-with-cold-plates-1024x683.webp)

![TEAM Corintis team photo at Lausanne office](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/TEAM-Corintis-team-photo-at-Lausanne-office.webp)

AI workloads now consume 10 times more power per rack than traditional enterprise systems, forcing data centre operators to [abandon air cooling](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/ai-factories-are-the-new-data-centres) for liquid alternatives at unprecedented speed. Liquid cooling penetration has jumped from [14% in 2024 to over 30% this year](https://www.businessinsider.com/rolls-royce-caterpillar-cash-in-on-ai-boom-data-centers-2025-9), with cooling systems devouring 35-40% of total data centre energy consumption.

## The Thermal Bottleneck Choking AI Progress

The scale of this thermal crisis becomes clear when you consider the power trajectory. OpenAI’s early ChatGPT models trained on NVIDIA chips consuming 400 watts. Four years later, new GPUs and AI accelerators are targeting [4,000 watts](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/the-ai-chip-wars-heat-up-how-openai-and-broadcom-are-reshaping-manufacturing-s-future) – a 10x increase that has forced even NVIDIA to adopt liquid cooling for its latest data centre GPUs.

‘Thermal engineers need to pull a rabbit out of a hat on a daily basis to make sure chips don’t overheat and break,’ explains Remco van Erp, Corintis co-founder and CEO. The company’s microfluidic cooling technology co-designs cooling alongside the chip itself rather than treating it as an afterthought.

AI workloads now account for [20-25% of data centre capacity](https://totaltele.com/data-centre-operators-face-infrastructure-reckoning-as-ai-drives-10x-power-demand-growth/) and are growing at 300% annually, creating what industry analysts call an infrastructure reckoning that threatens traditional operating models.

## Microsoft Validates the Breakthrough

This week Microsoft announced a collaboration with Corintis that achieved a breakthrough: an in-chip microfluidic cooling system that removes heat [three times better](https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microfluidics-liquid-cooling-ai-chips/) than the most advanced technology commonly used today. The validation from one of AI’s biggest infrastructure players marks a watershed moment for the Swiss startup.

‘The thermal margin is translated at the software layer to yield more performance and overclocking potential. It also enables new 3D architectures for chips that are not possible today due thermal limitations of stacking high power SOCs without inner layer cooling,’ said Husam Alissa, director of systems technology in Cloud Operations and Innovation at Microsoft.

## Swiss Precision Meets Silicon Valley Scale

Corintis came from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), which has become Europe’s premier engine for deep tech spinoffs. EPFL startups raised a record [CHF 470 million in 2023](https://deeptechnation.ch/dtn-news/switzerland-the-global-deep-tech-leader/), with several scale-ups completing funding rounds exceeding CHF 20 million.

The Swiss university-industry collaboration has produced notable [semiconductor innovators](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/mosaic-soc-edge-ai-chip-ar-glasses) like Kandou and LIGENTEC. This marries Switzerland’s precision manufacturing heritage with Silicon Valley’s scale requirements – Alpine engineering discipline meeting California’s computational ambitions.

## Heavyweight Financial Backing Signals Market Validation

The $24 million Series A round led by [BlueYard Capital](https://blueyard.com/) brings Corintis’s total funding to $33.4 million, but the investor roster tells a more compelling story than the dollar figures. Lip-Bu Tan, who became [Intel’s CEO](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/challenged-by-openai-advancement-intel-faces-a-sharp-decline-in-its-stock-price) in March 2025, invested personally before his appointment and joined the board as director – a significant endorsement from someone tasked with reviving the world’s most famous chipmaker.

Geoff Lyon, former CEO and founder of CoolIT, also joined the board, bringing decades of thermal management expertise. The combination of Intel’s incoming leader and a liquid cooling veteran on the same board signals serious institutional confidence in Corintis’s approach.

‘Cooling is one of the biggest challenges for next-generation chips. Corintis is fast becoming the industry leader in advanced semiconductor cooling solutions to address the thermal bottleneck, as made evident by its growing customer list,’ Tan explained.

BlueYard Capital’s David Byrd framed the investment thesis clearly: ‘AI’s insatiable demand for compute is pushing chips to unprecedented power densities — Corintis is unlocking the next wave of performance by making cooling a design feature, not an afterthought.’

## From Prototype to Mass Production

The financial metrics reveal a company already achieving commercial traction. Corintis has manufactured over 10,000 cooling systems with deployments running in data centres on leading-edge AI chips, generating eight-digit cumulative revenue since incorporation.

The scaling plan is aggressive: from 55 employees today to over 70 by year-end, with manufacturing capacity targeting [one million microfluidic cold plates](https://www.businessinsider.com/rolls-royce-caterpillar-cash-in-on-ai-boom-data-centers-2025-9) annually during 2026. This confidence comes from demand from multiple tech giants already deploying their systems.

The company’s technology platforms include Glacierware for automating cooling system design, a copper microfluidic manufacturing facility producing features as small as human hair in high volume, and the Therminator platform for physically emulating next-generation chips before production.

## The Broader Implications

Whether artificial intelligence continues scaling ultimately depends on [solving infrastructure challenges like thermal management](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/orbital-ai-data-center-in-space-2027). [GPU scarcity and power consumption concerns](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/india-seeks-cost-effective-ai-model-expansion-as-gpu-scarcity-spurs-cpu-based-solutions) are driving innovation across the industry, with spending on liquid cooling technology expected to grow [60% annually through 2028](https://www.businessinsider.com/rolls-royce-caterpillar-cash-in-on-ai-boom-data-centers-2025-9), faster than any other category across data centre infrastructure including AI servers themselves.

Corintis brings Swiss engineering tradition to the AI age. Their success suggests that while Silicon Valley dominates software and [chip design](https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/chipmind-rtl-canvas-ai-chip-design), the precision manufacturing expertise perfected in Alpine factories might prove equally crucial for AI’s continued evolution. The Microsoft validation and heavyweight investor backing position this EPFL spinoff at the centre of a fundamental transition: cooling moving from afterthought to competitive advantage in the race to build more powerful AI systems.

**About Corintis**

Co-founded by Dr. Remco van Erp, Sam Harrison, and Prof. Elison Matioli, Corintis is helping address one of the key problems in delivering ever greater computer power, ever more accessible: managing the heat produced by increasingly powerful computer chips. Founded on research undertaken at EPFL in Switzerland, with tech giants as clients and a collaboration with Microsoft, the company is helping address the next bottleneck in unlocking the power of AI, modelling climate change and drug discovery. Find out more at corintis.com

[Website](https://corintis.com/)