As spending on AI and cloud computing grows, so does spending on data center construction—by nearly 70% between 2023 and 2024, per a 2025 report by the American Edge Project, a U.S. tech coalition. Along with city-size wattage consumption, a data center may require millions of gallons of water per year to cool its hardware.

That controversy has informed Maxwell Labs’ value proposition: The St. Paul-based company, incorporated in 2022, has developed a way to use lasers for cooling.

Specifically, Maxwell has developed a “photonic waveguide network.” It works by distributing light across a microchip’s surface. From there, Maxwell can convert microchip heat into light, explains CEO Jacob Balma, who co-founded Maxwell with chief growth officer Mike Karpe and CTO Alejandro Rodriguez.

Maxwell’s technology can recover about 90% of the heat it turns into light, Karpe says, adding that this is a huge improvement over cooling that uses air or liquid. Scientists recently found the limits of light’s heat transference are “many orders of magnitude beyond what we thought they were,” Balma says. With light, Karpe says, “you can recover enough [heat] to pay for the entire cost of cooling the data center”—usually 20–40% of the power budget.

Until then, Maxwell is prototyping. The company raised $4.5 million in seed funding, has closed a $5.2 million Series A round, and hopes to commercialize by 2028.

Maxwell Labs
HQ: St. Paul
INC.: 2022
Founders: Jacob Balma, Mike Karpe, Alejandro Rodriguez
Website: mxllabs.com