Corintis

Corintis closed a $24 million Series A in September 2025 led by BlueYard Capital, with participation from Founderful, Acequia Capital, Celsius Industries, and XTX Ventures. The round valued the company at approximately $400 million post-money.

The company previously raised $9.4 million in earlier funding rounds since its 2022 founding. Notable board additions include former Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and former CoolIT Systems CEO Geoff Lyon, bringing significant semiconductor and cooling industry expertise.

Total funding raised to date is $33.4 million across all rounds. The company has grown from 55 to 70 employees through 2025 and plans to establish new offices in the United States and Munich to support geographic expansion.

Corintis builds microfluidic cooling hardware that routes liquid coolant directly through microscopic channels etched into or pressed against AI chips, rather than relying on traditional metal heat spreaders. The company ships two main product lines: drop-in cold plate modules that replace existing copper plates in liquid-cooled GPU servers, and co-packaged silicon inserts where micro-channels are integrated directly into the chip package.

The workflow begins when customers upload their GPU or ASIC heat maps to Corintis' Glacierware cloud platform. This browser-based tool uses AI-accelerated computational fluid dynamics to design vein-like channel layouts that route more coolant to hot spots while widening at cooler regions to reduce pressure drop.

For validation, Corintis can mill the design into a dummy silicon Therminator that customers bolt into servers to measure real flow, pressure, and thermal performance before final production. The company's Lausanne fabrication facility then laser-drills or etches the channels into copper or silicon substrates, creating features as small as human hair width, before sealing with bonded covers.

The final cold plates snap onto NVIDIA, AMD, or custom AI accelerators and connect to existing liquid cooling loops without requiring changes to rack infrastructure or facility plumbing. Performance results show up to 65% lower GPU silicon temperature rise and 10x higher cooling density compared to conventional solutions.

Corintis operates a B2B hardware manufacturing model focused on AI chip cooling solutions. The company generates revenue through direct sales of microfluidic cold plates and co-packaged cooling modules, with pricing structured around the thermal performance requirements and customization complexity of each deployment.

The business model combines custom design services through the Glacierware platform with volume manufacturing at the company's Swiss facility. Customers pay for both the engineering design work and the physical hardware, creating multiple revenue touchpoints per engagement.

Manufacturing capacity currently supports 100,000 units annually, with plans to scale to 1 million units by 2026. This 10x capacity expansion positions Corintis to serve hyperscale deployments while maintaining the precision manufacturing required for microscopic channel geometries.

The model benefits from high switching costs once customers integrate the cooling solutions into their server designs and validate thermal performance improvements. Long design cycles and the critical nature of thermal management in AI workloads create sticky customer relationships and recurring hardware refresh opportunities.

JetCool, acquired by Flex in November 2024, represents the most direct competitive threat with its micro-jet microconvective modules that deliver over 10x heat-transfer coefficient improvements versus traditional channels. The Flex acquisition provides JetCool with ODM manufacturing scale and supply chain advantages for hyperscaler deployments.

Microsoft Research has developed internal microfluidic cooling capabilities through its collaboration with Corintis, but could potentially become a captive solution or licensable IP that bypasses third-party suppliers. IBM Research maintains patents in 3D-stack cooling architectures that could become relevant as foundry partners move toward chip-stacked AI accelerators.

CoolIT Systems maintains the largest installed base with over 2 million cold plates deployed and is launching 1-2 MW coolant distribution units with professional services to lock in customer accounts. The company's former CEO now sits on Corintis' board, creating both knowledge transfer opportunities and competitive intelligence risks.

LiquidStack is expanding manufacturing capacity with a second Texas facility and shipping 1 MW CDU systems for hyperscale deployments. Asetek leverages its gaming and workstation cooling heritage to target data center applications with established manufacturing and distribution networks.

Immersion cooling providers like GRC and Submer offer alternative approaches to high-density thermal management that compete for the same AI workload cooling budgets. These solutions promise simplified deployment but face adoption barriers around fluid management and component accessibility for maintenance.

Corintis' collaboration with Microsoft on channels etched directly into silicon creates opportunities to package this technology as intellectual property libraries and reference processes. Licensing to GPU and ASIC vendors plus foundries would expand the company from hardware modules into design-in standards across future chip nodes and 3D stacks.

Converting the internal Glacierware design platform into a SaaS offering for OEMs and EDA partners would open recurring software revenue streams while seeding hardware demand. Academic and industry roadmaps show microfluidic channels becoming integral to 2.5D and 3D integrated circuit reliability.

AWS, Google, Meta, and Oracle collectively refresh tens of millions of AI servers this decade, with most reporting thermal headroom constraints. Direct sales or reference designs with leading ODMs like Supermicro, Dell, and HPE could increase unit volumes by 10x.

Department of Energy, EuroHPC, and Japanese exascale computing sites require specialized cooling for 100kW+ nodes, where microfluidics offers smaller footprints than immersion cooling. Edge AI applications in autonomous vehicles, telecom base stations, and military radar systems already exceed air cooling limits.

Plans for US offices and Munich engineering hubs support the goal of growing from 100,000 to 1 million cold plates annually by 2026. Local presence near Silicon Valley OEMs and European automotive customers reduces sales friction while unlocking regional incentives for sustainable infrastructure investments.

The direct-to-chip liquid cooling market is projected to grow from $1.6 billion in 2024 to $6.2 billion by 2032, driven by AI server density requirements and energy efficiency mandates that favor microfluidic solutions over conventional approaches.

Manufacturing scale: Corintis must execute a 10x manufacturing capacity increase to 1 million units by 2026 while maintaining the precision required for microscopic channel geometries. Any production quality issues or delays could allow competitors like JetCool-Flex to capture market share during the critical AI infrastructure buildout period.

Customer concentration: Heavy reliance on Microsoft as a reference customer and development partner creates vulnerability if the hyperscaler decides to develop captive cooling solutions or shifts to alternative thermal management approaches. Loss of this flagship relationship could undermine credibility with other potential enterprise customers.

Technology obsolescence: Advances in chip architecture, synthetic cooling fluids, or immersion cooling systems could make microfluidic cold plates less competitive before Corintis achieves scale. The rapid pace of AI hardware evolution means thermal management solutions must continuously adapt or risk being bypassed by next-generation cooling approaches.