🦄 Everything You Need to Know Today

1. The AI trade just went physical. Ecolab, a 100-year-old water and hygiene company, dropped $4.75B to buy its way into liquid cooling for data centers, and closed the deal early because demand is outrunning every forecast. Chips and models are old news; power and cooling are the new chokepoint everyone's racing to own.

2. A drone-boat maker just became Europe's newest defense unicorn. Kraken Technology Group crossed $1B on a $175M round backed by NATO's own innovation fund. Defense tech isn't a side story anymore; it's pulling serious institutional money.

3. Meta wants to stop renting and start owning. It's putting its own AI chip into production this September, aiming to double data center capacity to 14 gigawatts. When the platforms start building their own silicon, that's a signal the compute crunch isn't easing anytime soon.

🌴 Top Deals You Can’t Miss

1. Ecolab, valued at $4.75 billion, closed its acquisition of CoolIT Systems, positioning a century-old water and hygiene company at the center of the AI data center cooling race.

2. Kraken Technology Group, $175 million Series B, reached a $1 billion valuation to scale the uncrewed surface vessels it sells to NATO and allied navies.

   

3. Oxylabs, $130 million, took its first outside capital from Warburg Pincus at a $3.6 billion valuation, backing the web data plumbing behind agentic AI.

🐠 Dopamine Dealflow

Series B+ & Growth

• Kraken Technology Group | $175 million | Series B | United Kingdom
  The company builds uncrewed surface vessels, the drone boats navies use for patrol, surveillance, and strike work, and the round pushed it past a $1 billion valuation. DTCP led the financing, worth about €152.9 million, and was joined by the British Business Bank, the NATO Innovation Fund, and Rheinmetall.
  

• Oxylabs | $130 million | Growth | Vilnius, Lithuania
  The company sells the plumbing for gathering public web data at scale, now pitched as core infrastructure for agentic AI, and runs about $350 million in annual recurring revenue across 350,000 tech teams. Warburg Pincus made the investment through its Capital Solutions Founders Fund, the first outside capital the business has taken since it launched in 2015.

Seed & Early Rounds

• Gradium | $100 million | Seed | Paris, France
  The company builds real-time voice AI models and spun out of the nonprofit lab Kyutai, whose founders wrote much of the research behind today's speech technology. Nvidia joined as the headline new backer alongside FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global, and Eric Schmidt, seven months after launch.

Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

• Ecolab | $4.75 billion | Strategic M&A | St. Paul, United States
  The century-old water and hygiene giant bought its way into AI data center cooling, folding CoolIT Systems and its direct-to-chip liquid cooling into a high-tech unit it wants to grow to $4 billion in sales by 2030.

IPOs / Direct Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

• Shein is pursuing a Hong Kong IPO as soon as August, aiming to raise about $2 billion to $3 billion. Reuters reported the company is scheduled for a Hong Kong IPO hearing on Thursday, and separate reporting says China has already approved the listing plan.

Market-moving IPO story

• SK Hynix remains the biggest recent IPO story in the market. The company priced its Nasdaq ADS deal at $149 per ADS on July 9, raising $26.51 billion, and Reuters said the debut has become a key benchmark for Asian tech firms seeking foreign capital.

VC Funds Raised & Raising

• Primo Capital | €120 million | Fund II, raising | Italy
  This second space and deeptech fund follows a debut vehicle that returned about 8x capital and ranks among the larger dedicated space funds in Europe. The team is targeting institutional and strategic backers as defense and space startups pull in record money.

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🦋 Read of the Day

Ecolab just spent $4.75 billion to keep AI chips from cooking

A 100-year-old water and cleaning company is now one of the biggest names in AI data center cooling. Ecolab closed its $4.75 billion purchase of CoolIT Systems this week, months ahead of the original timeline, because demand for liquid cooling is running far ahead of what anyone modeled when the deal was signed in March.

The Strategy
Ecolab spent a century selling water treatment, hygiene, and cleaning services to restaurants, hospitals, and factories. CoolIT gives it direct-to-chip liquid cooling, the coolant distribution units and cold plates that hyperscalers bolt onto racks of Nvidia and AMD accelerators. Ecolab already manages water and chemistry inside data centers, so it can sell the cooling hardware and the systems that run it to the same buyer. The company wants its high-tech unit to reach $4 billion in annual sales by 2030.

The Backstory
CoolIT's sales have more than doubled this year as AI racks pack more power into every square foot and air cooling stops keeping up. That surge is why the deal closed early. Ecolab expects CoolIT to bring in about $550 million in sales over the next twelve months, and it is folding the Calgary company into a broader push to become the water and thermal layer of the AI buildout.

Why It Matters
The richest AI trades are moving past chips and models and into the boring physical bottlenecks. Power and cooling now decide how fast a data center can grow, and a century-old cleaning company just paid $4.75 billion to own a piece of that chokepoint. Expect more industrial and utility names to buy their way into the AI supply chain, competing for deals that once belonged to venture and growth funds.

**Read The Whole Story Here**

Other News You Don’t Want To Miss

• Meta Plans To Put Its Own AI Chip Into Production In September, Aiming To Double Compute
  Reuters reviewed an internal memo showing that Meta's in-house MTIA chip, designed with Broadcom and built by TSMC, is intended to help increase data center capacity to 14 gigawatts.
  

• Nvidia's Next-Generation "Kyber" AI Rack Slips To 2028 On Manufacturing Snags
  A SemiAnalysis report says trouble with the 78-layer PCB midplane pushed the flagship NVL144 system back more than a year, giving AMD and Google a rare opening at the high end.
  

• Big Tech's AI-Linked Debt Has Doubled To About $350 Billion
  Tech Funding News reports that hyperscalers are leaning on bond markets to fund the AI buildout, as capital spending outpaces the cash their core businesses generate.