MayimFlow aims to stop data center leaks before they happen

The mania around the data center there are many companies that are looking to become providers of “picks and shovels”, by building profitable businesses that are compatible with gold-rushing gigs selling server access or advanced training for AI models.

MayimFlow, this year’s Built World winner TechCrunch hackit is a good example. The startup focuses on one mission: preventing water damage.

Data centers use a lot of water, and that water can present a significant risk, even if the spill is small. Founder John Khazraee told TechCrunch that many data centers have solutions to water leaks. This can stop companies with downtime and set back millions of dollars if it happens.

Khazraee would know. He spent over 15 years building infrastructure for IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. With MayimFlow, they created a combination of IoT sensors and machine learning that can detect signs of an impending leak.

“I’ve noticed this in data centers, and the only answer they had was: ‘when there’s a leak, we find it,'” he said in an interview. “Now you have to spend a lot of money to fix this problem. Now you have to shut down the servers. Now the data is getting lost. So I decided to do something about it.”

Khazraee assembled a small team of experts to tackle the challenge. Jim Wong, MayimFlow’s chief strategy officer, has years of experience working with data centers. Chief technology officer Ray Lok has developed a water management and IoT infrastructure.

Beyond the dire consequences of undetected water leaks, there’s another thing Khazraee is trying to do with MayimFlow, which she said stems from her childhood.

“I grew up in a very poor family, you know, I don’t want to say a poor family, but we weren’t a very rich family,” he said. “And my father always, when I was taking a shower, would tell me, ‘Hey, you took too long.

As she got older, Khazraee said she found she was always thinking about how to make things work – especially when she studied engineering. In college, he worked at a facility that collected cooking oil from restaurants and turned it into biodiesel. It was “messy work,” he said, but he liked the results.

Khazraee is now trying to mix that interest with what his team is doing. They believe they can give data workers 24 to 48 hours of advanced warning that repairs will be needed.

MayimFlow has collected a large amount of data from various industrial water systems that allows them to make these kinds of predictions, he said. The company can provide sensors that can help monitor water flow or connect its existing machine learning systems if companies have similar equipment.

Khazraee said he wants to bring this solution beyond data centers to commercial buildings, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and even utilities. In fact, any company that wants to detect leaks early, or optimize water use, can become a customer.

Khazraee considers it a great privilege to have turned down positions in big tech companies while building MayimFlow over the past two years.

He said: “I really believe in this vision. “Water is becoming one of the greatest things in the world.”