GL Signals - AI Infrastructure Tracking: Cooling
All posts so far from our emerging AI infrastructure thesis-based series are here:
We’ve covered most sub-sectors in AI infrastructure, with a few more topics still in writing. Going into 2025, our newsletters will be focusing more on signals than basics. Landscape signal watching lets us see trends, competitions, and players. Taking the AI data center cooling tech sub-sector as an example, the second post linked above gave a broad and quick overview. In this post, we’ll focus on core scalable technologies and important news, prioritizing acquisitions, financing, and partnerships in the past year – though we track signals across many years. In future posts, we may curate signals from all sub-sectors and share them on a weekly cadence.
What public company’s stock price has risen more than Nvidia in the recent AI boom? Vertiv, a company best known for its cooling technologies for AI data centers. An analysis report by air-conditioning giant Carrier pointed out that the booming of AI data centers is expected to make the liquid cooling market reach a scale of$3-5 billion by 2028. Liquid cooling currently accounts for only about 2% of the overall data center cooling solution and is expected to increase to nearly 30% in 2028, reaching a scale of $3-5 billion. According to the Dell’Oro Group, the liquid cooling market revenue will approach $2B by 2027 with a 60% CAGR for the years 2020 to 2027. (Reference)
Liquid Cooling Options
A Rear Door Cooling System/Heat Exchanger (RDHx) replaces the rear door of an IT equipment rack with a heat exchanger containing coolant. RDHx still needs an air cooling system, which can be passive or active. The coolant will absorb and take away the heat energy generated by the servers. After the hot coolant is cooled by the external fan, it will be circulated and supplied to the back door for cooling again. Passive RDHx can increase the maximum load of each rack to 30KW, and active RDHx can increase the load to more than 100KW. Its PUE value is about 1.3~1.5.
Direct-to-Chip Cooling (D2C) is also known as Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC). D2C sends the coolant directly to the liquid-cooled metal plate (Cold Plate) built in the server above the GPU/CPU chip through the Cooling Distribution Units (CDU) and the Manifold, absorbing it and taking it away. D2C can eliminate about 70-75% of the heat generated by the server, and the remaining 25-30% is still eliminated through the air cooling system. Its PUE value is about 1.1~1.2.
Single-Phase or Two-Phase Immersion Cooling systems immerse servers and other components in the rack in non-conductive dielectric fluids that conduct heat. The PUE value of immersion cooling can be as low as 1.01~1.03 without the need for air cooling. It is currently the most energy-saving and highly anticipated liquid cooling method. The aforementioned RDHx and D2C only require some modifications to the servers and racks, but for the immersion cooling system, the servers need to be placed vertically to facilitate future maintenance, so the entire data center configuration needs to be redesigned.
Single Phase vs Two Phase
Both D2C and immersion cooling are divided into single-phase and two-phase. The difference is that the boiling point of the two-phase cooling liquid is low (about 50°C). The coolant absorbs heat and then evaporates into gas. Single-phase immersion cooling suppliers such as Iceotope, Submer, and GRC use liquids such as mineral oil that are less damaging to the environment. Major leaders in two-phase immersion cooling include Zutacore, LiquidStack, and Wiwynn. Most use 3M fluorinated fluids containing the "forever chemical" PFAS.
The European Data Centers Association (EUDCA) recently enacted a ban on fluorinated gases due to health concerns. This led to 3M announcing that it would stop producing and using PFAS by the end of 2025, and ZutaCore also committing to no longer using permanent chemicals in its products. Even if other countries and regions do not follow the EU's decision, the coolant of the two-phase cooling system must be re-developed.?
Chip Microfluidic Cooling
Chip microfluidic cooling technology, which is currently under development, brings the cooling liquid closer to the chip through numerous microchannels manufactured by semiconductor techniques. Compared with existing D2C, it can be smaller, lighter, and more efficient in heat dissipation. As part of the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy's (ARPA-E) COOLERCHIPS program, Nvidia and HP teamed up to develop Silicon Cold-Plate (SiCP) cooling technology. The three-year project will be accomplished by leveraging HP's 5th-generation inkjet microfluidics technology to couple microfluidics directly with the surface of NVIDIA's GPU dies.
Review of AI Data Center Cooling Tech News
Acquisition News
Flex acquired JETCOOL Technologies for an undisclosed amount (November 14, 2024)
Schneider Electric acquired Motivair for $850,000,000 (October 17, 2024)
Jabil acquired Mikros Technologies for an undisclosed amount (October 1, 2024; another write-up by Fierce Network)
Brookfield to buy nVent’s thermal management biz in $1.7bn deal (August 1, 2024)
Munters acquired Geoclima for an undisclosed amount (July 17, 2024)
nVent acquired Trachte for $695,000,000 (June 6, 2024)
Vertiv acquired CoolTera for an undisclosed amount (December 4, 2023)
Financing News
etalytics raised €8,000,000 / Series A from Alstin Capital and BM H Beteiligungs-Managementgesellschaft Hessen (November 26, 2024)
Arieca raised $500,000 / Debt Financing (November 18, 2024)
Accelsius raised $24,000,000 / Series A from Innventure (November 13, 2024)
Boston Materials raised $13,500,000 / Series A from Accelr8 and 5 other investors
Submer raised €50,000,000 / Series C from Alma Mundi Ventures and 3 other investors (October 3, 2024)
Advanced Cooling Technologies raised $1,100,000 / Grant from US Department of Energy (September 30, 2024)
LiquidStack raised $20,000,000 / Series B from Tiger Global Management (September 19, 2024)
ZutaCore raised an undisclosed amount / Corporate Round from Wiwynn (June 3, 2024)
领英推荐
Advanced Cooling Technologies raised $1,149,998 / Grant from US Department of Energy (February 20, 2024)
Advanced Cooling Technologies raised $199,999 / Grant from US Department of Energy (January 9, 2024)
Advanced Cooling Technologies raised $5,500,000 / Grant from US Department of Energy (October 13, 2023)
JETCOOL Technologies raised $17,000,000 / Series A from Bosch Ventures and 3 other investors (October 11, 2023)
Skycool Systems raised $5,000,000 / Seed from D3 Jubilee and Nadel and Gussman Ventures (August 9, 2023)
MAGNOTHERM raised €300,000 / Grant from Hessenagentur (July 4, 2023)
Business Partnerships News
Accelsius and iM Data Centers Partner to Bring Sustainable, High-Performance Cooling Solutions to Miami Data Center (Tuesday, November 19, 2024)
ZutaCore and Munters Join Forces to Deliver a Waterless Data Center Architecture for AI Factories (September 17, 2024)
Asperitas Announces South Korea Immersion Cooling Partnership with Kiturami Bumyang - High-Performance … (May 26, 2024)
UNICOM Engineering and ZutaCore Form Strategic OEM Agreement to Deliver Warrantied HyperCooled AI Servers … (May 14, 2024)
Accelsius Forms Strategic Partnership with Equus Compute Solutions (ECS) to Meet Growing Demand for Data … (March 20, 2024)
Accelsius Partners with Texas Advanced Computing Center to Enable Advanced Artificial Intelligence Computing (March 15, 2024)
Liquid Cooling Coalition was launched by founding members: ?Ada Infrastructure, ENEOS, Intel, Submer, Shell, Supermicro, Wyoming Hyperscale White Box, and Vertiv. (March 5, 2024)
LiquidStack Opens Manufacturing Facility and Global HQ in Texas (March 5, 2024)
SK Telecom, Iceotope and SK Enmove Partner for Energy Efficient AI Data Centers (February 29, 2024)
Valeo and ZutaCore Collaborate to Develop Advanced Cooling Solutions for Data Centers (January 19, 2024)
Modine buys TMGcore for immersion cooling assets (January 3, 2024)
Startups to Watch
These are the signals and variables that we review and prioritize in our analyses when evaluating startups:
Some companies intend to keep stealth, while some intend to create media mentions as possible, depending on their strategies and stages. So, we look into what they do to dive deeper beyond news. Even just one important partnership, with the media covers it or not, is enough to draw our attention! On the other hand, the majority of “pick-and-shovel” players, such as key component and material suppliers, don’t get much spotlight in the media, but their profit and potential should not be ignored (see more to explore in our list).
Excluding those already scooped up by big players, here are some startups to watch:
We are tracking hundreds of AI infrastructure companies and sharing our full lists with those signed up (sign up here if you haven’t done so). A deeper dive into the list can help you find treasures before they are chased by other investors. Let us know what companies interest you, and we might invite them to update us or meet with us to explore potential collaborations. Feel free to suggest any companies not on our radar too. We connect startups with business partners, including many in our Taiwan network. Taiwan produces more than 90% of AI servers of the world.
Global League’s methodology emphasizes both top-down landscape study and bottom-up networked collaboration. Nowadays, deals are everywhere, but there are a lot of defects in usual deal memos. One of the biggest issues is the lack of overviews and tracking of the industry landscape. We’re working out a better way for startup investing and venturing to make deals.
To startups in our focused thesis, you're welcome to share your updates with us.