A syndicate of investors including A/O PropTech, Banque des Territoires Caisse des Dépôts, Engie Rassembleur d’Énergies, and Groupe Casino, have invested €6 million in Qarnot Computing to support its future growth.
Qarnot is the first company to offer climate-conscious, high performance cloud computing.
Qarnot sells cloud computing capacity to clients and uses the wasted heat generated from its computer servers to heat buildings and water sustainably.
Data centres – mostly owned by ‘Big Tech’ companies – consumed about 3% of the world’s total energy supply in 2018, equivalent to the global airline industry.
Demand for computing capacity is growing at a double-digit rate even if it contributes to climate change.
Qarnot Computing focuses on building distributed, economical, ecological and sovereign infrastructures, with the continued installation of QH-1 computer heaters (buildings), QB-1 digital boilers (water) and QS-1 computing racks (warehouses).
This recent funding follows a period of intense product development and sales activity, resulting in Qarnot doubling its turnover for the past two years.
In 2018 and 2019, Qarnot has significantly accelerated its R&D activity and ambitions for tackling climate change.
- After two years of intense R&D the QB-1 digital boiler was launched for producing hot water with microchips, (the first units were sold in France and Finland)
- The first HPC site of the ScaleMax joint venture with the Groupe Casino was installed to heat warehouses and store reserves in an eco-friendly way
- Qarnot has significantly accelerated its footprint in the 3D animation market, and has recently signed a contract with Illumination Mac Guff (Universal Pictures)
- Qarnot is the only cloud computing provider to serve the three major French banks: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, and Natixis.
- Across France, nearly 1,000 social housing units are heated by Qarnot. In Bordeaux, Qarnot’s technology is being used to heat an entire building using heat generated by computers (Bordeaux – Gironde Habitat – 346 QH-1) – a world first.
The €6 million investment will enable Qarnot to become the European leader in high performance computing (HPC).
With the support of the syndicate of its investment partner, Qarnot can continue to accelerate the growth and diversification of its customer base.
Qarnot will continue to focus on its in-house R&D, which will be consolidated to ensure the company maintains its technological lead in the market.
This will be achieved through an ambitious recruitment plan, with a particular focus on IT and commercial roles.
At A/O PropTech, we are looking to invest in companies that intersect ClimateTech and PropTech.
In other words, companies enabling the decarbonisation of the real estate industry, of which Qarnot is an excellent example.