Water treatment solutions company Ecolab will acquire CoolIT Systems in an all-cash deal worth about $4.75 billion to target surging demand for liquid cooling at AI data centres, Reuters reported on March 20 local time.
CoolIT Systems is owned by a fund managed by private equity firm KKR.
As tech companies increase investment in AI infrastructure, data centres are seeing changes in cooling methods. As chip density and power consumption rise, the shift from air cooling to liquid cooling is accelerating. CoolIT Systems has developed liquid cooling systems used by major cloud providers and colocation operators. Chipmakers including Nvidia and AMD are key customers.
Ecolab aims to become an integrated provider in cooling and fluid management by combining CoolIT Systems' hardware and thermal management technology with its own capabilities in water treatment, chemicals and digital monitoring.
Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)
delight@d-today.co.kr