The AI-driven demand for compute power has data centers looking to squeeze more from every rack of GPUs. One consequence? Bacterial outbreaks. The liquid for liquid-cooled chips is a mixture of water and a substance that inhibits bacteria growth. To run the chips hotter, data center managers can change the mix to include more water, which absorbs heat better, but leads to nasty contamination that clogs the flow. To solve that, they flush the system, which can mean shutting down a rack for five or six hours at a potential cost of millions of dollars. Omen AI has a solution: A tiny spectrometer that can monitor that fluid health in real time, spotting bacterial growth before it becomes a massive problem. “You’re not risking huge amounts of downtime because you have no insight into what’s going on chemically,” explains CEO and founder Zach Laberge. Today, Omen AI said it raised a $31 million Series A round, led by Nava Ventures and including participation from CRV, Vanderbilt University, Mann+Hummel, Starhill Holdings, Hard Launch Capital, as well …