Microsoft has signed a ten-year partnership with Belgian water technology company Shayp to support the launch of its corporate water efficiency platform, Shayp 4IMPACT.

The initiative is designed to deliver verifiable and auditable water savings and will commence with deployments across schools and public buildings in Brussels and Paris, targeting more than 600 sites.

According to Shayp, its approach differs from more traditional watershed programs in that it deploys IoT-enabled monitoring technology within community infrastructure, allowing corporate partners to claim verified volumetric savings against their water stewardship goals. The company’s devices create digital twins of water consumption, detecting leaks and anomalies in real time, with sensitivity down to a trickle.

“In order to become water positive by 2030, part of our strategy is to replenish water in watersheds where we operate,” said Eliza Roberts, Microsoft’s water lead. “Shayp 4IMPACT allows us to tackle these challenges head-on by working directly with schools and public buildings… using precision monitoring to deliver verified water savings where it’s needed most.”

The platform builds on Shayp’s record of eight billion liters saved annually across more than 9,000 monitored buildings. The company claims users can achieve a return on investment in under a year, with an average 21 percent reduction in water bills.

“Our 4IMPACT platform is the first of its kind water replenishment model that enables our corporate partners to achieve verified volumetric water benefits,” said Grégoire de Hemptinne, Shayp’s co-founder and managing director.

“Through continuous monitoring, we can measure and verify every liter saved, providing guaranteed water savings rather than relying on projections.”

Currently active in the Benelux region, France, Germany, and the UK, Shayp is expanding across Europe and exploring opportunities in water-stressed markets. Since its founding in 2017, the company said that it has saved an estimated 27 billion liters of water.

Water usage is a major concern amongst data center providers, due to the increasing demand for water associated with AI workloads. The company has undertaken several measures to reduce its water usage. At the end of last year, it announced plans to implement a zero-water evaporation design in its upcoming data centers.

The closed-loop system will first be piloted at its under-construction data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, in 2026.

Earlier this year, a Microsoft-commissioned study found that cold plates and two forms of immersion cooling can cut water usage by 31 to 52 percent over their entire life cycles when compared to traditional air cooling in data centers.

Shayp, headquartered in Belgium, was recently selected as one of 11 companies to participate in Amazon’s 2025 Sustainability Accelerator program. The program aims to support the product development of sustainable solutions