From Cryogenic Cannabis Extraction to Cooling the AI Revolution: Prodigy Launches CRYOLOOP
The same engineering team that built the cannabis industry's coldest extraction platform has turned its cryogenic expertise toward the single largest energy problem in modern computing: data center cooling.
Prodigy USA LLC — the parent company behind Prodigy Processing Solutions — has officially launched CRYOLOOP™, a patent-pending closed-loop liquid nitrogen cooling system designed to eliminate the conventional chiller plant from AI data centers, high-performance computing clusters, and quantum computing facilities.
This isn't a pivot. It's a technology transfer — and it may represent one of the most significant breakthroughs in sustainable infrastructure cooling in decades.
The Problem: AI Is Burning a Country's Worth of Electricity Just to Stay Cold
U.S. data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2023 — roughly 4.4% of total U.S. electricity generation. According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS R48646, updated May 2026), that figure could double or triple by 2028 as AI workloads scale exponentially.
KEY STAT: 40% of a typical data center's total electric demand goes to the cooling system itself. Not computation. Not storage. Not networking. Cooling.
That means the United States is spending tens of billions of dollars annually — and burning fossil fuels at industrial scale — simply to remove heat from computers. As NVIDIA GB200 and GB300 rack densities push past 100 kW per rack, the thermal problem isn't just growing — it's becoming the primary constraint on AI infrastructure deployment.
The CRYOLOOP Solution: Liquid Nitrogen, Closed-Loop, Zero Waste
CRYOLOOP takes a fundamentally different approach to heat removal. Instead of compressor-heavy vapor-compression chillers, cooling towers, and thousands of gallons of evaporative water, CRYOLOOP uses liquid nitrogen at -196°C as its cold source — contained in a fully closed, recyclable loop.
The architecture is elegantly simple:
- ●Liquid nitrogen enters an innage chamber and boils into a cold nitrogen vapor cloud
- ●A heat exchanger sits in the vapor cloud, chilling a secondary transfer fluid without direct LN₂ contact
- ●The SYLTHERM XLT secondary circuit (a closed, skid-confined thermal-fluid loop targeting approximately −100°C) transfers cooling to the facility-water interface via plate heat exchangers
- ●Vaporized nitrogen is captured, re-cooled, and returned to liquid storage — reducing venting and refill dependency
BY THE NUMBERS: CRYOLOOP's closed nitrogen circuit and SYLTHERM XLT secondary loop are designed to deliver zero evaporative cooling-water use, zero HFC refrigerant charge, and to target a reduction in on-site cooling-plant electrical demand. Performance figures are under active measurement during prototype development.
Zero Water: A Data Center Game-Changer
The water consumption numbers for conventional data center cooling are staggering. A single large data center can consume 5 million gallons of water per day through evaporative cooling towers — equivalent to the daily water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Real-world examples paint an even starker picture:
- ●Equinix withdrew 1.4 billion gallons across its 2024 data center fleet
- ●Google's Council Bluffs, Iowa facility alone consumed 1.3 billion gallons of potable water in 2024 — roughly 3.6 million gallons per day from a single site
KEY STAT: CRYOLOOP uses neither cooling towers nor evaporative draw for heat rejection. Zero water consumption. By design.
In water-stressed geographies like Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Texas and California — where municipalities are increasingly scrutinizing data center water permits — this isn't just an environmental improvement. It's a site-enabling technology that removes water from the permitting equation entirely.
Zero HFC Refrigerants: Ahead of the Regulatory Cliff
Every conventional chiller plant in operation today runs on hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants — chemicals with global warming potentials hundreds to thousands of times greater than CO₂. The regulatory clock is ticking:
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and the U.S. AIM Act mandate an 85% reduction in HFC consumption by 2036. This isn't aspirational — it's law. Every chiller running HFC-134a, R-404A, or R-410A now faces a forced, multi-decade replacement cycle.
The global HFC refrigerant market is $9.5 billion today. It's being legislated out of existence.
KEY TAKEAWAY: CRYOLOOP's working fluid is nitrogen — which comprises 78% of the atmosphere. It's non-toxic, non-flammable, has zero global warming potential, is cheap to produce, exists in infinite supply, and CRYOLOOP recycles it in a closed loop. It's not consumed — just borrowed.
The Prodigy Connection: Why a Cannabis Equipment Company Built This
This technology didn't emerge from a university lab or a Silicon Valley startup with no hardware experience. It came from two decades of engineering systems that operate at extreme cryogenic temperatures — specifically, hydrocarbon cannabis extraction.
Prodigy Processing Solutions' flagship ProX extractor is PSI-certified to operate at an industry-record -184°C. The engineering challenges are identical to data center cooling at scale:
- ●Precise cryogenic temperature control across industrial-scale systems
- ●Closed-loop thermal fluid management
- ●ASME-code pressure vessel design and fabrication
- ●Scalable, repeatable manufacturing processes
The same thermal physics that produce the world's purest cannabinoid extracts can cool the infrastructure powering the AI revolution.
The co-inventors of CRYOLOOP are the same team behind Prodigy Processing Solutions:
Marc Beginin — CEO and co-inventor — previously founded Precision Extraction Solutions, scaling its hardware platform from prototype through acquisition by a publicly traded company in 2021, and brings 20+ years as a licensed attorney in intellectual property and business transactions.
Scott Mitchell — co-inventor and manufacturing lead — owns MITCO Fabrication & Welding, the same ASME-certified manufacturing partner that builds Prodigy's pharmaceutical-grade extraction equipment. MITCO holds ASME "U", "S", and "PP" Code Stamps, NBIC "R" repair authority, and ISO 9001:2015 certification.
The prototype wasn't outsourced. It was engineered and fabricated at MITCO's 90,000 sq ft facility in Hartville, Ohio — the same shop that is already actively manufacturing pressure-vessel and process-piping systems for data center cooling at facility scale.
Patent Position: 19 Claims, All Novel, Six Countries
CRYOLOOP's intellectual property position is robust:
- ●PCT International Patent (PCT/US2024/056970) filed November 2024 with U.S. provisional priority from November 2023
- ●International Search Report issued January 2025 by USPTO (acting as ISA): all 19 claims found novel, inventive, and industrially applicable
- ●No X or Y category prior art identified — only A-category background references
- ●CRYOLOOP™ trademark approved for registration (USPTO Notice of Allowance, January 2026)
- ●National phase filings entered May 2026 across six jurisdictions: United States, Canada, China, European Patent Office, United Kingdom, and India
Combined coverage spans markets representing the majority of global cooling and refrigeration spend.
The Market Opportunity
BY THE NUMBERS: $40–45 billion projected data center cooling market by 2030. U.S. data center electricity share growing from 4.4% to 12% by 2028. 175% projected power growth from 2023 to 2030. 85% mandated HFC phasedown by 2036.
CRYOLOOP's primary beachhead is data center cooling, but the technology extends to quantum computing, semiconductor manufacturing, defense and edge compute, industrial process cooling, and any facility where evaporative water creates permitting friction.
What This Means for Prodigy Processing Solutions
For our cannabis and pharmaceutical customers, nothing changes. Prodigy Processing Solutions continues to design, manufacture, and deliver the industry's most advanced GMP-compliant extraction and post-processing equipment.
But CRYOLOOP demonstrates something important about who we are: Prodigy is not just a cannabis equipment company. We are a cryogenic engineering company — and the same thermal physics that produce the world's purest cannabinoid extracts can cool the infrastructure powering the AI revolution.
The future is cold. We've been building it for years.
Learn More About CRYOLOOP
Ready to see how cryogenic engineering is reshaping data center infrastructure? Visit cryoloop.com to explore the technology, review the patent-pending architecture, and connect with the team building the future of sustainable cooling.
CRYOLOOP™ is a trademark of Prodigy USA LLC. Patent pending (PCT/US2024/056970). Learn more at cryoloop.com.
Sources: U.S. Congressional Research Service R48646 (May 2026); Environmental and Energy Study Institute (June 2025); McKinsey; Goldman Sachs; U.S. EPA / UNEP Kigali Amendment.
Frequently Asked Questions: The Prodigy–CRYOLOOP Connection
How did a cannabis extraction company invent data center cooling technology?
It's more logical than it sounds. Prodigy Processing Solutions manufactures pharmaceutical-grade extraction equipment that operates at temperatures as low as -80°C — temperatures that push conventional cooling systems to their breaking point. At those depths, you need a "chiller for the chiller" or an evaporative cooling tower consuming thousands of gallons of water per hour. We needed a better way to generate extreme cold without the water waste, without the cascading compressors, and without the HFC refrigerants that regulators are phasing out. CRYOLOOP was the solution we built for ourselves — then realized it solves the same fundamental problem at data center scale.
Is CRYOLOOP a separate company from Prodigy?
CRYOLOOP is a trademark of Prodigy USA LLC. Prodigy Thermal Solutions is the technology development and commercialization division focused exclusively on CRYOLOOP and advanced thermal management systems. Same founders, same engineering team, same manufacturing partner (MITCO Fabrication & Welding). The technology emerged directly from Prodigy's cryogenic process engineering. Think of it as the same core competency — mastery of extreme cold — applied to the world's biggest thermal infrastructure challenge.
Where is CRYOLOOP manufactured?
CRYOLOOP systems are manufactured by MITCO Fabrication & Welding in Ohio — the same ASME-certified, NBIC-compliant fabrication partner that builds Prodigy's pharmaceutical-grade extraction equipment. Every weld, every vessel, every system is built to the same standards that satisfy FDA cGMP, ASME BPE, and ICH Q7 compliance frameworks.
What's the connection between cannabis extraction at -80°C and cooling AI servers?
The physics are identical. Both problems require removing enormous amounts of heat from a process that operates far below ambient temperature. Both traditionally rely on cascading vapor-compression systems (chillers) that consume massive electricity and water. CRYOLOOP's closed-loop liquid nitrogen phase-change system solves both — whether the "process" is a botanical extraction vessel or an NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack generating 120 kW of waste heat.
For a detailed technical comparison of CRYOLOOP vs. immersion cooling, direct-to-chip, and conventional chillers, read our full analysis: CRYOLOOP vs. Competing Cooling Technologies
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