Dive Brief:
- Infrastructure solutions provider Vertiv acquired Strategic Thermal Labs to add expertise in data center liquid cooling, the companies said Monday.
- Vertiv gains an engineering bench skilled in cold plate design and high-density thermal validation, according to the announcement. The capabilities will help support high-density AI workloads amid a global infrastructure building boom.
- “STL brings deep expertise and proven capability in addressing some of the industry’s most demanding chip-level density and thermal problems, strengthening Vertiv’s ability to emulate and validate system-level solutions and enabling customers to improve performance and lifecycle outcomes in liquid-cooled environments,” Vertiv Chief Product and Technology Officer Scott Armul said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
Vertiv has already benefited from the data center spending spree. Its stock rose from about $15 three years ago to $322 today, and it remains in an elite group of infrastructure-focused firms cashing in on the capex explosion.
Channel resellers, brokers, integrators and service providers are now trying to earn a larger piece of the data center pie.
Liquid cooling is a hot commodity. Last month, water treatment giant Ecolab paid $4.75 billion for CoolIT Systems. Vertiv purchased PurgeRite in December to upgrade its mechanical flushing, purging and filtration capabilities.
As partners work their way into broader data center deployment deals, making money on liquid cooling will likely become a reality, Ben Caddy, senior analyst, sustainable ecosystems, at Channel Dive sister company Omdia told Channel Dive in a message.
“Our take is that it's not yet becoming a clear monetization opportunity for the channel today, but it will in time,” Caddy said. “The first to get on this opportunity at scale will be the channel titan who manages to win those major AI DC contracts. It's early days for this technology's penetration into the IT channel, but something that will be on our radar over the next few years.”
Vertiv said in its announcement that it is still operating in an open ecosystem.
“The company will continue to support interoperable, server‑ and silicon‑agnostic infrastructure solutions, with the goal of improving system‑level performance and customer outcomes across diverse compute environments,” Vertiv said.
