Data centers are supposed to be quiet. Hum, chill, repeat. But anyone who has stood on the floor knows they are loud with tension. Power budgets strained. Cooling systems improvising. Operators staring at dashboards that tell them something is wrong but never what to do next. That gap between data and action is where Lucend decided to turn the lights on.
The New York and Amsterdam-based company announced a $3.3M Seed round led by Remarkable Ventures Climate, joined by Mitsubishi Electric Innovation Fund, New Climate Ventures, Avesta Fund, Stepchange Ventures, with continued backing from 4impact Capital. The timing was intentional. This was also the moment Lucend stepped out from its former name, Coolgradient, and into a sharper identity built for the U.S. market, where more than half of the world’s data center capacity lives and breathes.
Lucend was founded in 2023 by Jasper De Vries and Rene Gompel, a pair who had already seen the inside of data center operations before the AI infrastructure surge turned every watt into a strategic asset. Their premise was simple and unforgiving. The data already exists. Billions of sensor readings pour out of facilities every day. The industry just does not know how to read the story they are telling.
Lucend’s Transparent AI platform analyzes more than 300 billion sensor readings and turns them into prescriptive daily recommendations that operators can verify, challenge, and approve. No new hardware. No new sensors. No capital upgrades. Just software connecting into existing BMS, DCIM, and SCADA systems, delivering guidance that shows its work instead of hiding behind a black box.
The results have been loud enough to travel. Roughly 40% improvements in Power Usage Effectiveness. About 25% reductions in power consumption. Around 30% less water usage. One facility pulling $4.3M in annual savings. Deployments running across Melbourne, Singapore, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Chicago with operators like Digital Realty, Global Switch, and T5 Data Centers trusting the recommendations because they can see the logic behind them.
Investors noticed. Murat Aktihanoglu and the team at Remarkable Ventures Climate leaned in on the timing. Komi Matsubara and the Mitsubishi Electric Innovation Fund saw a software intelligence layer that could sit cleanly alongside global infrastructure hardware. The rest of the syndicate followed the signal, not the noise.
Lucend means to shine, and this round is not about volume. It is about clarity. Scaling U.S. operations, sales, and customer support so operators stop guessing and start deciding with confidence. In an industry where uptime is sacred and power is scarce, the smartest move is often the one that simply shows you the truth and lets you act on it.
