Turning computing heat into a practical heating solution for greenhouses.
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:27 PM
Inside of a workstation computer with red lighting. PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Most computing systems have one unavoidable side effect: they get hot. That heat is usually treated as a problem and pushed away using cooling systems. Canaan Inc., a technology company that builds high-performance computing machines, is now showing how that same heat can be reused instead of wasted.
In a pilot project in Manitoba, Canada, Canaan is working with greenhouse operator Bitforest Investment to recover heat generated by its computing systems. Rather than focusing only on computing output, the project looks at a more basic question—what happens to all the heat these machines produce and can it serve a practical purpose?
The idea is simple. Canaan’s computers run continuously and naturally generate heat. Instead of releasing that heat into the environment, the system captures it and uses it to warm water. That warm water is then fed into the greenhouse’s existing heating system. As a result, the greenhouse needs less additional energy to maintain the temperatures required for plant growth.
This is enabled through liquid cooling. Instead of using air to cool the machines, a liquid circulates through the system and absorbs heat more efficiently. Because liquid retains heat better than air, the recovered water reaches temperatures that are suitable for industrial use. In effect, the computing system supports greenhouse heating while continuing to perform its primary computing function.
What makes this approach workable is that it integrates with existing infrastructure. The recovered heat does not replace the greenhouse’s boilers but supplements them. By preheating the water that enters the boiler system, the overall energy demand is reduced. Based on current assumptions, Canaan estimates that a significant portion of the electricity used by the servers can be recovered as usable heat, though actual results will be confirmed once the system is fully operational.
This matters because heating is one of the largest energy expenses for commercial greenhouses, particularly in colder regions like Canada. Many facilities still rely heavily on fossil-fuel-based heating and policies such as carbon pricing are encouraging lower-emission alternatives. Reusing computing heat offers a way to improve efficiency without requiring a complete overhaul of existing systems.
The project is planned to run for an initial two-year period, allowing Canaan to evaluate real-world performance factors such as reliability, system stability and maintenance needs. These findings will help determine whether the model can be replicated in other agricultural or industrial settings.
More broadly, the initiative reflects a shift in how computing infrastructure can be designed. Instead of operating as energy-intensive systems isolated from everyday use, computing equipment can contribute to real-world applications. Canaan’s greenhouse pilot highlights how excess heat—often seen as a by-product—can become part of a more efficient and thoughtful energy loop.
In doing so, the project suggests that improving sustainability in technology is not only about reducing energy consumption, but also about finding smarter ways to reuse the energy already being generated.
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Can SPhotonix’s optical memory technology protect data better than today’s storage?
Updated
January 8, 2026 6:32 PM
SPhotonix's 5D Memory Crystals™. PHOTO: SPHOTONIX
SPhotonix, a young deep-tech startup, is working on something unexpected for the data storage world: tiny, glass-like crystals that can hold enormous amounts of information for extremely long periods of time. The company works where light and data meet, using photonics—the science of shaping and guiding light—to build optical components and explore a new form of memory called “5D optical storage”.
It’s based on research that began more than twenty years ago, when Professor Peter Kazansky showed that a small crystal could preserve data—from the human genome to the entire Wikipedia—essentially forever.
Their new US$4.5 million pre-seed round, led by Creator Fund and XTX Ventures, is meant to turn that science into real products. And the timing aligns with a growing problem: the world is generating far more digital data than current storage systems can handle. Most of it isn’t needed every day, but it can’t be thrown away either. This long-term, rarely accessed cold data is piling up faster than existing storage infrastructure can manage and maintaining giant warehouses of servers just to keep it all alive is becoming expensive and environmentally unsustainable.
This is the problem SPhotonix is stepping in to solve. They want to store huge amounts of information in a stable format that doesn’t degrade, doesn’t need electricity to preserve data and doesn’t require constant swapping of hardware. Instead of racks of spinning drives, the idea is a durable optical crystal storage system that could last for generations.
The company’s underlying technology—called FemtoEtch™—uses ultrafast lasers to engrave microscopic patterns inside fused silica. These precisely etched structures can function as high-performance optical components for fields like aerospace, microscopy and semiconductor manufacturing. But the same ultra-controlled process can also encode information in five dimensions within the crystal, transforming the material into a compact, long-lasting archive capable of holding massive amounts of information in a very small footprint.
The new funding allows SPhotonix to expand its engineering team, grow its R&D facility in Switzerland and prepare the technology for real-world deployment. Investors say the opportunity is significant: global data generation has more than doubled in recent years and traditional storage systems—drives, disks, tapes—weren’t designed for the scale or longevity modern data demands.
While the company has been gaining attention in research circles (and even made an appearance in the latest Mission Impossible film), its next step is all about practical adoption. If the technology reaches commercial viability, it could offer an alternative to the energy-hungry, short-lived storage hardware that underpins much of today’s digital infrastructure.
As digital information continues to multiply, preserving it safely and sustainably is becoming one of the biggest challenges in modern computing. SPhotonix’s work points toward a future where long-lasting, low-maintenance optical data storage becomes a practical alternative to today’s fragile systems. It offers a more resilient way to preserve knowledge for the decades ahead.