Dive Brief:
- Daikin Applied said Aug. 5 it will acquire DDC Solutions, a California-based company that makes high-density server cabinets and cooling management software.
- The transaction will grow Daikin Applied’s portfolio of data center cooling solutions, which it says spans air-to-rack, liquid-to-rack, hydronic and hybrid liquid-and-air-to-rack systems for hyperscale, edge and intermediate data centers.
- “We’ve applied [our cooling] expertise to data centers in the form of HVAC technologies that span from large-tonnage chillers to in-room air handlers… Now we’re going further into the computer room to provide an even broader array of cooling solutions,” Daikin Applied Executive Vice President of Sales, Service and Solutions James Moe said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The transaction will add rack-level solutions for white space cooling inside computing rooms to Daikin Applied’s portfolio, moving it closer to offering a full suite of cooling options, the company said.
“The demand for high-performance data centers is accelerating and the equipment inside those data centers is evolving rapidly. This acquisition allows us to deliver a rack-level cooling platform that is resilient, flexible and scalable, and able to support current and next-generation chip sets,” Daikin Applied Chief Operating Officer Yu Nishiwaki said in a statement.
DDC Solutions’ self-contained hybrid cooling system integrates air and liquid cooling directly within the data center racks, Daikin Applied said in a Tuesday press release. Unlike traditional cabinet designs, the system builds heat removal capabilities into the racks themselves, improving operational efficiency without costly infrastructure modifications, it said. The cabinets also “provide excellent fire and water protection and significantly reduce the data center's acoustic signature,” addressing a common complaint of data center neighbors.
DDC’s S-series cabinets come in three configurations: a base model that supports server networking and legacy graphics processing units like the H100, B100 and B200; a “GPU model” that supports higher-power chips up to 85 kW; and a “field upgradeable Max model” that can support cutting-edge AI chips up to or beyond 100 kW.
The cabinets feature sensors placed throughout the equipment to measure and adjust temperatures, within a two-degree range from top to bottom, humidity levels and cubic feet per minute of air flow “to a surgical degree,” the company says. Reinforced sealing between the cabinets’ hot and cold decks minimizes heat transfer during operation. The modular cabinet design can support deployments of 1,000 cabinets or more in a data hall, DDC says.
DDC positions its “liquid-to-chip-ready” cabinets as future-proof — ready for a world of far more powerful AI chips. They’re capable of supporting power densities up to 400 kW after conversion. Though such densities are not typical today, next-generation NVIDIA chips are set to consume significantly more power than today’s top-of-the-line designs, and new AI data centers are increasingly designed for racks with direct-to-chip cooling capabilities.
DDC Solutions CEO Keith Markley said in a statement that the Daikin Applied acquisition would help the company scale faster “and at a greater level of excellence” than it could on its own.
“The global demand for data center solutions is expanding so quickly,” he said.
Daikin Applied expects the acquisition to close by the end of August, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
