Sunny Sethi, the founder of HEN Technologies, speaks with a straightforward demeanor that belies the significant impact his company has made on firefighting equipment. His firm manufactures fire nozzles designed to boost fire suppression rates by as much as 300% while using 67% less water. Yet Sethi discusses this advancement in a direct, pragmatic way, clearly more invested in future developments than past accomplishments. His ambitions extend far beyond nozzles alone.

His journey into firefighting innovation is unconventional. After earning a PhD from the University of Akron, where he studied surfaces and adhesion, he started ADAP Nanotech. That company developed a range of carbon nanotube technologies and secured grants from the Air Force Research Lab. He later moved to SunPower, creating new materials and processes for shingled solar panels. A subsequent role at TE Connectivity involved working on adhesive formulations to speed up manufacturing in the automotive sector.

The motivation to enter firefighting came from a personal challenge. After moving from Ohio to the East Bay near San Francisco in 2013, he and his wife experienced a series of devastating wildfires—the Thomas Fire, the Camp Fire, and the Napa-Sonoma fires. In 2019, during evacuation warnings, Sethi was traveling while his wife remained at home alone with their three-year-old daughter, with no nearby family and a potential evacuation order looming. “She was really mad at me,” Sethi recalls. “She’s like, ‘Dude, you need to fix this, otherwise you’re not a real scientist.’”

Drawing on his interdisciplinary background in nanotechnology, solar energy, semiconductors, and automotive engineering, which he describes as making his thinking “bias free and flexible,” Sethi decided to tackle the problem. In June 2020, he founded HEN Technologies—short for high-efficiency nozzles—in Hayward, California. Supported by National Science Foundation funding, he conducted computational fluid dynamics research to analyze how water suppresses fire and how wind influences it.

The outcome is a nozzle that precisely controls droplet size, manages water velocity in innovative ways, and maintains effectiveness in windy conditions. In a comparison video Sethi shared over Zoom, the difference is striking: at the same flow rate, HEN’s nozzle keeps the water stream cohesive, whereas traditional nozzles scatter it widely.

However, the nozzle is just the starting point—what Sethi refers to as “the muscle on the ground.” HEN has since expanded its product line to include monitors, valves, overhead sprinklers, and pressure devices. This year, the company is launching a flow-control device called “Stream IQ” along with new discharge control systems. Each device incorporates custom-designed circuit boards with sensors and computing power, featuring 23 distinct designs that transform basic hardware into smart, connected equipment. Some products even utilize Nvidia Orion Nano processors.

To date, HEN has filed 20 patent applications, with about half a dozen already granted. The core innovation lies in the integrated system these devices form. HEN’s platform uses sensors at the pump to function as a virtual sensor in the nozzle, tracking exactly when it’s active, how much water is flowing, and the pressure required. The system records detailed data on water usage per fire, application methods, which hydrant was used, and prevailing weather conditions.

This capability addresses a critical issue: fire departments often risk running out of water due to a lack of communication between water suppliers and firefighters. This occurred during the Palisades Fire and decades earlier in the Oakland Fire. Pressure fluctuations can also leave one fire engine without water when multiple engines are connected to a single hydrant. In rural areas, water tenders—tankers that shuttle water from distant sources—face complex logistical challenges. Integrating water usage data with utility monitoring systems to optimize resources would be a major advancement.

To meet this need, HEN developed a cloud platform with application layers, which Sethi compares to Adobe’s approach to cloud infrastructure. The system offers tailored solutions for fire captains, battalion chiefs, and incident commanders. It incorporates live weather data and GPS across all devices, providing frontline warnings about shifting winds or when a fire truck is low on water.

The Department of Homeland Security has been seeking precisely this kind of system through its NERIS program, which aims to bring predictive analytics to emergency operations. “But you can’t have [predictive analytics] unless you have good quality data,” Sethi points out. “You can’t have good quality data unless you have the right hardware.”

Currently, HEN is not monetizing this data. Instead, the company is deploying data nodes, installing devices across numerous systems, building out the data pipeline, and creating a comprehensive data lake. Sethi states that next year, HEN will begin commercializing the application layer with its embedded intelligence.

Creating a predictive analytics platform for emergency response is challenging, but Sethi notes that selling it is even tougher. He takes particular pride in HEN’s commercial progress. “The hardest part of building this company is that this market is tough because it’s a B2C play when you think of convincing the customers to buy, but the procurement cycle is B2B,” he explains. “So you have to really make a product that resonates with people—with the end user—but you still have to go through government purchasing cycles, and we have cracked both of those.”

The results support this claim. HEN introduced its first products in the second quarter of 2023, securing 10 fire department customers and generating $200,000 in revenue. Momentum grew from there: revenue reached $1.6 million in 2024 and $5.2 million last year. With 1,500 fire department customers currently, HEN projects $20 million in revenue this year.

Competition exists, of course. IDEX Corp, a public company, sells hoses, nozzles, and monitors. Software firms like Central Square also serve fire departments. Last August, Miami-based First Due, which sells software to public safety agencies, announced a substantial $355 million funding round. Still, Sethi insists no other company is “doing exactly what we are trying to do.”

For HEN, the current constraint isn’t demand but the ability to scale quickly enough. The company serves the Marine Corps, U.S. Army bases, Naval atomic labs, NASA, Abu Dhabi Civil Defense, and ships products to 22 countries. It works through 120 distributors and recently achieved GSA qualification after a year-long vetting process—a federal approval that simplifies purchasing for military and government agencies.

With approximately 20,000 new fire engines purchased annually to refresh a national fleet of 200,000, HEN’s qualified status is expected to create recurring revenue streams. Moreover, because the hardware continuously generates data, revenue opportunities extend beyond initial purchase cycles.

Building this dual-focused company has required a specialized team. HEN’s software lead is a former senior director who helped build Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. The 50-person team also includes a former NASA engineer and veterans from Tesla, Apple, and Microsoft. “If you ask me technical questions, I would not be able to answer everything,” Sethi admits with a laugh, “but I have such good teams that [it] has been a blessing.”

The software aspect points to where HEN’s model becomes particularly compelling. While the company sells nozzles and hardware, it is simultaneously accumulating highly valuable data: specific, real-world information on water behavior under pressure, flow rate interactions with materials, fire response to suppression techniques, and physics in active fire environments. This is exactly the kind of data needed for building advanced “world models”—AI systems that simulate physical environments to predict future states. Training AI on physics requires real-world, multimodal data from extreme conditions, which HEN gathers with every deployment.

Though Sethi doesn’t elaborate, the potential is clear. Companies developing robotics and predictive physics engines would highly prize this category of real-world physics data. Investors recognize this value as well. Last month, HEN closed a $20 million Series A round, plus $2 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank. O’Neil Strategic Capital led the financing, with participation from NSFO, Tanas Capital, and z21 Ventures. This round brings the company’s total funding to over $30 million.

Already looking ahead, Sethi notes that HEN plans to return to fundraising in the second quarter of this year.