SprayCool to lay off 52 more workers
Liberty Lake-based SprayCool Inc. will lay off 52 employees and close offices in Seattle and Pullman, the electronics cooling systems company has announced.
Thirty Liberty Lake employees will lose their jobs during the downsizing, part of a move aimed at “scaling back its efforts to diversify into commercial markets,” according to a SprayCool news release. It’s the company’s second significant round of cuts this spring.
The company also has named a new president and CEO: Matt Gerber, formerly executive vice president of the company’s commercial data center division.
More than 100 employees will remain at the company’s Liberty Lake headquarters after the cuts, which will include 13 workers in Pullman, six in Seattle and three who worked remotely, according to the release. The cuts mean that SprayCool’s activities will be limited to its Liberty Lake location.
Company spokespeople denied requests Tuesday for further comments or for an interview with Gerber.
SprayCool in March revealed that it had gained $10 million in new funding but was cutting 45 additional jobs in a restructuring as it intensified its focus on systems commercial data centers.
About 180 employees remained after the March reductions, former CEO Jeff Severs said at the time. Severs has left SprayCool, according to the release.
Those cuts also affected Liberty Lake, Seattle and Pullman.
SprayCool also announced in March that two former executives from Spokane Valley-based Itronix Corp., including Gerber, had joined the company.
Started as Isothermal Systems Research in 1988, SprayCool has largely relied on deals with the U.S. military, and its technology has been used on machines from spy planes to expeditionary fighting vehicles.
SprayCool technology involves closed-loop systems that spray electronics, such as computer processors, with liquid that evaporates, goes through a heat exchanger and is reapplied.
The company decided to target commercial markets in 2005 by focusing on data center computing alongside its older government business, according to the release. It raised $20 million from outside investors toward that goal.
“While the company has seen some success in building its business in the commercial markets, the progress has been slower than planned,” according to the release. “As a result the company has decided to reduce the rate of its investment in these new markets and plan for a longer timeframe.”
The company on Tuesday announced that is has partnered with New York-based information technology firm Align Communications Inc., which has inroads to major financial corporations. Align will use SprayCool’s M-Series product, which cools rack-mounted servers for corporate data centers, according to a SprayCool news release.
Four months in the making, the partnership is the first of its kind for SprayCool, Matt Gerber, new president and CEO of Liberty Lake-based SprayCool, wrote in an e-mail.