Waterless Cooling System Wins Startup Competition At BGU’s SilicoNegev 2019 Event

By Anjali Berdia, NoCamels June 24, 2019 < 1 minute

The winners of the SilicoNegev 2019 startup competition. Courtesy of Osher Ben-Sitrit

An Israeli startup focusing on innovative cooling systems was named the first place winner of the 2019 SilicoNegev Startup Competition held at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), the university announced in a statement Monday.

BGU said ZutaCore, a Sderot-based company that specializes in vacuum chip-based contact cooling, would be awarded a NIS 500,000 ($138,485) investment to continue the development of its flagship product the HyperCool2, a waterless, evaporative liquid cooling system.

“We are thrilled that ZutaCore has won the SilicoNegev competition,” said Shahar Belkin, VP-R&D of the company. “Our unique technology will allow for the cooling of servers and labs and allow our cloud technologies and data center in the world to grow thanks to the huge savings in energy spending.”

HyperCool2 was “designed by a veteran team in Israel and enabled by 14 patent-pending innovations” to alleviate “cooling boundaries at the chip, server, rack, POD, and data center levels,” the company says on its website.

HyperCool2 is a complete hardware system operated by a software cooling system which maximizes its effectiveness at maintaining appropriate temperatures for high-tech devices.

Some 500 people attended the startup competition award ceremony, capping off the full-day SilicoNegev summit, now in its second year. The festival featured keynote speeches by industry leaders, professional development workshops, and a networking event.

Participants included Prof. Dan Blumberg, BGU vice president for industrial and regional development, Ruvik Danilovich, mayor of Beersheba, Shmuel (Mooly) Eden, former president of Intel Israel, Izhar Shay, a prominent venture capitalist, and member of the Knesset and Dana Gavish Fridman, head of entrepreneurship at BGU.

SilicoNegev initially began as a startup competition in 2016 where 20 ventures competed for a NIS 500,000 cash prize. The event has blossomed into a large entrepreneurship festival and startup competition.