Dive Brief:
- Trane Technologies said Tuesday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to buy LiquidStack, a rapidly growing provider of liquid cooling technology for data centers.
- The HVAC and building systems firm took a minority stake in LiquidStack in 2023, as the nascent artificial intelligence boom spurred demand for high-powered server racks and heat rejection infrastructure to match.
- The acquisition is the most recent deal between a major building systems OEM and a cutting-edge data center cooling technology provider, following moves last year by Schneider Electric and Johnson Controls. Trane said in December that it would also purchase data center thermal management assets from another company, Stellar Energy International.
Dive Insight:
Trane said the transaction would strengthen its portfolio of data center thermal management solutions and help LiquidStack scale its “pioneering technology” outside North America.
“LiquidStack’s direct‑to‑chip and immersion cooling capabilities and talent, combined with Trane’s systems expertise and global footprint, strengthen our ability to deliver end‑to‑end, future‑ready thermal management across the entire data center ecosystem,” Holly Paeper, Americas president for Trane’s commercial HVAC division, said in a statement.
LiquidStack sells and services direct-to-chip, single-phase immersion and two-phase immersion cooling infrastructure. Both are designed for high-performance computing facilities, AI data centers and other energy-intensive computing environments. Its two-phase equipment, in particular, is “future-proof” and “outperforms all other immersion cooling systems on the market,” LiquidStack says.
AI racks’ power and cooling demands are rising fast. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said last month that racks running the latest generation of his company’s chips would be entirely liquid-cooled, rendering traditional chillers — a type of equipment Trane has long specialized in — irrelevant for rack cooling in cutting-edge data centers.
Paeper suggested future-proofing was a key selling point for Trane.
“Rising chip‑level power and heat densities combined with increasingly variable workloads are redefining thermal management requirements inside modern data centers,” she said. “Customers need integrated cooling solutions that scale from the central plant to the chip and can adapt as performance demands continue to evolve.”
Joe Capes, LiquidStack’s cofounder and CEO, told Facilities Dive last month that more powerful chips would indeed increase demand for liquid cooling in new AI data centers — though chillers could still play a key role in maintaining temperatures in secondary water loops.
“Vera Rubin is a clear signal that the industry has crossed a threshold where liquid cooling is purposely integrated with the newest market-leading chips supporting AI deployments,” he said, referring to NVIDIA’s latest chip by its brand name.
Capes will continue to lead LiquidStack after the merger, which Trane said is expected to close early this year.
In a separate statement, Capes said the transaction would get LiquidStack’s cooling solutions into the market faster.
“Joining Trane Technologies enables us to accelerate that mission with the resources, scale and global reach needed to power next‑generation AI workloads in the most demanding compute environments,” he said.
Trane framed the LiquidStack acquisition as complementary both to its core business and to Stellar Energy International’s thermal management business. The assets Trane is acquiring in the Stellar Energy transaction include two Florida assembly plants where Stellar “designs and builds modular cooling plants, central utility plants and coolant distribution units for liquid-cooled data centers and other complex corporate enterprises,” Trane said.
