Firefighting has been stuck on the same track since bell bottoms were considered acceptable PPE. Bigger hoses, louder pumps, more water, more hope. Meanwhile, fires evolved. Climate pressure rose. Structures started burning 8x faster. Water got scarce. Data stayed invisible. That gap is where HEN Technologies decided to stop playing nostalgia and start applying physics.
Founded June 2020 in Hayward, California by Sunny Sethi, Ph.D., HEN Technologies exists because a physicist fluent in fluid dynamics, thermal science, and advanced materials looked at a 50+ year innovation freeze and called it unacceptable. The California wildfires from 2019–2021 were not abstract signals. They were proof the system was failing in real time. Instead of tuning old equipment, Sunny Sethi built an end-to-end intelligent fire suppression ecosystem designed for the fires we actually face.
HEN Technologies announced a $20M Series A led by O’Neil Strategic Capital, with NSFO, Tanas Capital, and z21 Ventures participating, plus $2M in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank. Oversubscribed. Total capital raised now exceeds $30M. In deep-tech hardware, money only stacks when execution, adoption, and differentiation show up together. This round did not close on vision alone.
The performance metrics are not subtle. Fire suppression happening 300% faster. Water usage reduced by 67%. More than 1,000 organizations already deploying the technology across 20+ countries, supported by 100+ authorized distributors. CAL FIRE. The U.S. Marine Corps. Kansas City FD, Ontario FD, Maui FD, Sacramento FD. These customers do not buy science projects. They buy results that work under pressure.
At the core sits Fluid-IQ™, a Physics-Informed Neural Network platform paired with IoT-enabled hardware that finally treats fire suppression as a real-time data problem grounded in physics, not gut instinct. BLADE™ nozzles. TITAN™ master stream systems. TURBO™ back pressure devices. Stream-IQ™ analytics. CFD, AI, and hardware moving together on the fireground, capturing operational data the industry never had before.
The leadership bench matters. Sunny Sethi, Ph.D. brings patented, revenue-producing engineering credibility. Akshay Thakor brings scaling discipline from Postmates, Turing, Lumanu, and McKinsey. Grant Friessen leads engineering execution. Ray McCormack injects FDNY fireground reality into product decisions. This is how hardware survives contact with the field and scales globally.
HEN Technologies is not selling tools. They are selling intelligence, coordination, and water discipline at a moment when every second and every gallon matters. Fires are getting faster. The response finally is too.
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