Data Centre Liquid Cooling Market

A single NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 rack, as Supermicro specifies it, carries 132 kilowatts (kW) of power shelves, more than three times the 40 kW that our rack-density scorecard treats as the practical ceiling for air. Data centre liquid cooling covers the cold plates, coolant distribution units (CDUs), secondary loops, immersion tanks and liquid-fed rear doors that carry that heat out of the rack. Douglas Insights sizes the data centre liquid cooling market at USD 5.21 billion in 2025, rising to USD 25.73 billion in 2035 at a 17.33% revenue CAGR. Our receipt: 4,412 megawatts (MW) of IT load commissioned with liquid cooling in 2025 × USD 1,180 per kW of cooled load = USD 5.21 billion. Consolidation sets the tone: on 3 November 2025 Eaton agreed to buy Boyd Thermal for USD 9.5 billion, a business forecasting USD 1.5 billion of 2026 liquid cooling sales, according to Eaton’s announcement. The study belongs to our data centre infrastructure research and is built under the Douglas Insights research methodology.

What sits inside the coolant loop that this study sizes?

USD 5.21 billion of 2025 value sits inside the boundary, counted from the cold plate on the processor out to the CDU that hands heat to facility water. Chillers, cooling towers, servers and air handlers sit outside; secondary loops, manifolds and liquid-fed rear doors sit inside, at the price operators pay.

Four product families make up the scope. Direct to chip cold plate systems bolt copper plates onto graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processors and feed them through rack manifolds. Coolant distribution units and secondary loops pump treated coolant between those manifolds and the building’s water system. Immersion cooling systems submerge whole servers in dielectric fluid, in single-phase or two-phase tanks; Bitcoin miners, whose hardware and power are sized in our Cryptocurrency Mining Market report, were among the first large buyers of such tanks for their ASIC fleets. Rear door heat exchangers and hybrid systems put a water coil on the back of an air-cooled rack.

The buyer split runs across four hall types: hyperscale and AI campuses, colocation, enterprise and high performance computing. Deployment is split into new build and retrofit. Aisle containment, the air-side discipline that liquid partly replaces, is sized separately in our Modular Data Centre Containment Systems Market report.

Why are accelerator racks pulling liquid cooling into every new AI hall?

Liquid-cooled capacity grows 19.6% a year to 2035 because accelerator racks now run at 132 kW and are heading for 1 MW. Three forces add up to that volume leg: AI accelerator build-out, a rising liquid share inside accelerated racks, and conversions in other halls.

Accelerator spending is the first and largest force, worth 11.4 points of the 19.6-point volume leg. NVIDIA reported data center revenue of USD 193.7 billion for fiscal 2026, up 68%, in its 25 February 2026 results, with fourth-quarter data center revenue of USD 62.3 billion. Annualised, that quarter runs near USD 249 billion, about 29% above the full fiscal year, so the 2026 liquid cooling order book starts from a higher base. Compute sets the pace. Cooling follows within months, because a GB200 rack cannot be energised without its loop. Douglas Insights estimates that accelerated servers absorbed about 9.6 GW of new IT load worldwide in 2025, of which 41.5% was liquid cooled.

Rising heat per rack is the second force, worth 5.1 points. The GB200 NVL72 class moved the mainstream AI rack to 132 kW, and NVIDIA’s 800-volt power roadmap plans for 1 MW racks starting in 2027. Above roughly 80 kW, rear doors and fans stop working. The plate is mandatory. Our scorecard puts the liquid share of new accelerated capacity at 41.5% in 2025 and 78.4% by 2030, a shift that alone adds about 1.8 GW of annual liquid-cooled demand by the end of the decade.

Conversions outside the AI campus supply the last 3.1 points. Colocation operators re-plumb halls to win GPU tenants, enterprise sites add rear-door coils for 30 kW to 50 kW racks, and high performance computing centres, which used water cooling long before AI, refresh on five- to six-year cycles. Douglas Insights counts about 440 MW of 2025 liquid-cooled load not tied to accelerators, 10.0% of the 4,412 MW total.

Consolidation adds pull from the supply side. Eaton’s purchase of Boyd Thermal, priced at 22.5 times Boyd’s estimated 2026 adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), lets one vendor sell grid-to-chip power and cooling in one bid, a format hyperscale buyers have asked for. The economics of the whole AI build, from grid connection to chip, are traced in our Data Center as a Bottleneck Market report, where cooling is one constrained layer.

Which EU data centre rules and PFAS policies shape coolant choices?

EU data centres already report energy and water indicators under a 2024 regulation, and a rating scheme proposed in September 2026 for sites above 500 kW will issue its first labels in 2027. Liquid cooling scores well on those measures, while chemical rules on fluorinated fluids narrow two-phase immersion options.

Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 of 14 March 2024 set up the first phase of the EU rating scheme, with operators reporting key indicators by 15 September 2024 and every 15 May afterwards. On 21 September 2026 the Commission proposed a common rating scheme for data centres above 500 kW, with the first sustainability labels expected in 2027 and a consultation on minimum performance standards closing on 14 December 2026. The same release puts EU data centre electricity at about 68 TWh in 2024, rising to 114 TWh by 2030. A rated hall with warm-water liquid cooling can post a lower power usage effectiveness (PUE) and log reusable heat, both of which the label will make visible.

Chemistry cuts the other way. Two-phase immersion relies on engineered fluorinated fluids, and 3M, a major maker of such fluids, is leaving the business, as the next section shows. Single-phase immersion and direct to chip cold plate systems, which run on water-glycol or hydrocarbon fluids, carry no such exposure, which is one reason the model keeps two-phase immersion below 2% of 2025 liquid cooling value.

What bottlenecks in CDU supply and retrofit plumbing slow liquid cooling?

Three constraints trim the liquid cooling volume leg from an unconstrained 23.1% to 19.6% a year: CDU and cold plate supply, retrofit plumbing in older halls, and fluorinated-fluid uncertainty in two-phase immersion. Together they remove 3.5 points of annual growth, or about USD 8.60 billion of 2035 value.

Manufacturing capacity is the tightest bottleneck, removing 1.4 points. Suppliers are still adding floor space: nVent announced on 31 July 2026 a 160,000 square-foot plant in Blaine, Minnesota, its third liquid cooling expansion in three years, adding more than 400,000 square feet in total, with production starting in the first half of 2027. Lead times, not orders, set the pace.

Retrofit plumbing removes 1.2 points. Old halls resist. An air-cooled colocation or enterprise hall built for 8 kW to 15 kW racks needs facility water, leak detection and floor loading checks before a single cold plate goes in. Douglas Insights estimates retrofit at only 23.7% of 2025 liquid-cooled megawatts, against 76.3% in new build, because conversion costs per kW run 35% to 60% above a new hall.

Fluid risk removes 0.9 points. 3M announced on 20 December 2022 that it would exit all per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) manufacturing by the end of 2025, a business with about USD 1.3 billion of annual net sales. Operators who had trialled two-phase immersion now have to requalify fluids, and several have moved those budgets to single-phase tanks or cold plates instead.

What does liquid cooling cost per kilowatt of rack load?

USD 1,180 per kW of cooled IT load is the 2025 blended average, covering rack-side hardware, CDUs, secondary loop piping and commissioning. That figure falls 1.9% a year to about USD 974 per kW in 2035 as CDU sizes grow and cold plates standardise.

Our model’s price bands differ sharply by liquid cooling category. Direct to chip cold plate systems, with manifolds and quick disconnects, realise USD 430 to USD 680 per kW at rack level. CDUs and secondary loops add USD 260 to USD 420 per kW, and the per-kW figure falls as unit size rises: a CoolIT CHx2000 delivers over 2 MW of cooling, enough for up to 12 GB300 NVL72 racks, against the 250 kW in-rack CDU Supermicro lists. Immersion cooling systems, sold as complete tanks with fluid, realise USD 1,350 to USD 2,250 per kW. Rear-door coils sit at USD 380 to USD 720 per kW because they serve lower-density racks, so the cost is spread over fewer kilowatts.

Now the per-rack arithmetic. At the USD 1,180 average, a 132 kW AI rack carries about USD 156,000 of liquid cooling content, and a 1 MW rack at the 2035 average of USD 974 per kW would carry about USD 974,000. Douglas Insights expects the price leg to stay negative at minus 1.9% a year, not steeper, because each new accelerator generation raises heat flux per plate and adds copper and pump capacity per kW.

Which regions install the most liquid-cooled megawatts?

North America installs the most, with USD 2.69 billion or 51.7% of 2025 liquid cooling value, growing 16.2% a year to USD 12.08 billion in 2035. The Middle East and Africa grows fastest at 22.1%, from USD 213.5 million, because Gulf AI campuses are built new.

North America leads because the largest hyperscale AI campuses are being commissioned in Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Arizona, where rack-scale AI systems are installed first. Asia Pacific holds USD 1.45 billion, 27.9%, and grows 18.6% a year to USD 8.00 billion, led by cloud builds in China, Japan, India, Malaysia and South Korea. Europe holds USD 760.1 million, 14.6%, growing 17.0% to USD 3.65 billion; EU labelling and heat-reuse rules favour warm-water loops. The Middle East and Africa holds USD 213.5 million, 4.1%, and is the fastest-growing region at 22.1% a year, reaching USD 1.57 billion, because Gulf AI campuses are built new at high rack density with no installed air-cooled base to protect. Latin America holds USD 88.5 million, 1.7%, and grows 17.15% to USD 430.8 million.

The wildcard is Southeast Asia’s power-constrained hubs. Singapore and Johor both restrict new grid connections, which pushes operators toward the densest racks per megawatt and therefore toward liquid; our model treats the Asia Pacific rate as the most likely to be revised upward, with country tables in the Excel model.

Which cooling category makes the money: cold plates, CDUs or immersion?

Direct to chip cold plate systems make the most money, with 44.6% of 2025 liquid cooling value, USD 2.32 billion, and also grow fastest at 19.2% a year. Every NVL72-class AI rack ships with cold plates fitted, so this category tracks accelerator volumes most closely.

Direct to chip cold plate systems, at USD 2.32 billion, lead because the plate, manifold and quick disconnects are specified by the server maker and ship inside the rack. Coolant distribution units and secondary loops, at USD 1.42 billion or 27.3%, follow every cold plate deployment, though larger in-row units lower the content per kW, holding growth to 17.3%. Rear door heat exchangers and hybrid systems, at USD 952.7 million or 18.3%, serve 30 kW to 60 kW racks in colocation and enterprise halls and grow slowest at 12.1%, since new AI racks bypass them. Immersion cooling systems, at USD 510.2 million or 9.8%, grow 15.7% a year, mostly in single-phase tanks for edge and high-density sites.

How do hyperscale, colocation and enterprise halls differ in liquid cooling uptake?

Hyperscale and AI campuses take 71.8% of 2025 liquid-cooled megawatts, colocation 17.6%, high performance computing 6.1% and enterprise 4.5%. The split follows rack density: the denser the average rack, the earlier the hall adopts liquid. Colocation is the swing buyer, converting suites for GPU tenants.

Hyperscale and AI buyers order by the hundreds of megawatts. Colocation providers are the swing buyer: Douglas Insights puts their liquid-cooled load at about 776 MW in 2025, much of it in suites pre-plumbed for GPU tenants. High performance computing centres, at about 269 MW, are the oldest liquid users and buy the warmest-water designs. Enterprise halls, at about 199 MW, lean on rear-door coils and small CDUs. Heat captured from warm-water loops can feed district networks through the large machines sized in our Industrial Heat Pump Systems Market report.

Which suppliers own the cold plate and CDU business after the 2025–2026 deals?

Douglas Insights estimates that Boyd Thermal, now part of Eaton, leads with a 21.6% share of 2025 liquid cooling value, and that the top three suppliers hold 46.8%. A run of 2025–2026 acquisitions has folded most specialists into electrical and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) groups.

Eaton completed the Boyd Thermal purchase on 12 March 2026, adding more than 6,000 employees, according to the completion release. Boyd’s USD 1.5 billion of forecast 2026 liquid cooling sales anchors the share estimate. Schneider Electric completed its 75% controlling stake in Motivair on 28 February 2025 and expects to acquire the remaining 25% in 2028. Trane Technologies agreed on 10 February 2026 to acquire LiquidStack, maker of DataTank immersion systems and direct-to-chip CDUs, and closed the deal on 3 March 2026, per Trane’s release. Vertiv bought cold plate specialist Strategic Thermal Labs on 27 April 2026, and Ecolab closed its acquisition of CoolIT Systems by 2 July 2026.

Vertiv guides 2026 sales to USD 13.25 billion to USD 13.75 billion. Submer and GRC remain independent immersion specialists, while Supermicro builds 250 kW in-rack CDUs into its own GB200 racks.

Can waste heat from warm-water liquid cooling loops feed district heating?

Yes at suitable sites: the European Commission reckons reusing about half of European data centre waste heat would meet the heating demand of 4 million households. Liquid cooling makes that feasible because cold-plate return water leaves the rack far warmer than exhaust air.

Warm return water from direct to chip loops can be lifted by a heat pump to district-network temperatures. Douglas Insights models heat reuse as a selection factor for European sites rather than a separate revenue line, and treats it as one reason Europe’s 17.0% growth rate sits above North America’s 16.2%.

What happens to the 2035 liquid cooling forecast if AI capex cools?

A slower AI capex cycle cuts the 2035 liquid cooling value to USD 14.57 billion, against USD 25.73 billion in the base case and USD 42.63 billion if densification runs faster. Volume, not price, separates them: megawatt growth of 13.8%, 19.6% or 24.9% a year.

The base case runs liquid-cooled megawatts up 19.6% a year and value per kW down 1.9% a year, a 17.33% revenue CAGR to USD 25.73 billion, with 2026 at USD 6.11 billion. The slower case sets megawatt growth at 13.8% and price at minus 2.6%, a 10.84% CAGR, reflecting a pause in hyperscale accelerator orders and harder price competition among CDU makers. The faster case sets megawatt growth at 24.9% and price at minus 1.2%, a 23.40% CAGR, if 1 MW racks arrive on NVIDIA’s 2027 schedule and colocation halls convert faster.

A single point of annual megawatt growth is worth between USD 2.07 billion and USD 2.23 billion of 2035 value. Supplier consolidation leans toward the base case or above: Eaton’s 3 November 2025 agreement priced Boyd at 22.5 times estimated 2026 adjusted EBITDA, a valuation that assumes a long run of volume. Outside forecasts we read put annual growth between about 17.8% and 51.9%; our 17.33% sits just below that band because it nets out a falling price per kW.

Douglas Exclusive: the rack-density scorecard

The rack-density scorecard is a Douglas Insights model built from 52 inputs: 31 published rack and system specifications from server and cooling vendors, plus 21 regional assumptions on deployment mix. It sorts each rack family into four density bands and assigns the cooling method each band requires.

The finding: 75.9% of 2025 liquid-cooled megawatts came from racks above 80 kW, where air is not an option at all. By 2030 the scorecard moves the above-150 kW band to 54.3% of new liquid-cooled capacity, which is why CDU size per unit, not unit count, drives the CDU value line.

Methodology: how were 4,412 liquid-cooled megawatts counted and valued?

The data centre liquid cooling model counts 4,412 MW of 2025 liquid-cooled IT load across 38 countries and 214 data points, then multiplies by USD 1,180 per kW to reach USD 5.21 billion. Each of three cross-checks lands within 9% of the model or explains the gap.

Volume starts from NVIDIA’s USD 193.7 billion of fiscal 2026 data center revenue, of which 83% is treated as compute, divided by about USD 21,500 of NVIDIA content per kW of rack load, giving about 7.48 GW; other accelerators add 28%, for about 9.6 GW. A 41.5% liquid share yields about 3.97 GW, and liquid-cooled load not tied to accelerators adds about 0.44 GW, for 4,412 MW. Price comes from the per-kW bands above, weighted by the category shares: 4,412 MW × USD 1,180 per kW = USD 5.21 billion.

Cross-check one: Boyd’s USD 1.5 billion of forecast 2026 liquid sales equals 24.6% of our USD 6.11 billion 2026 value, consistent with a 21.6% share in 2025. Cross-check two: nVent’s more than 2 GW of cumulative deployments equals about 18% of the 11,185 MW liquid-cooled base our model builds for 2023 to 2025. Cross-check three: our 2025 value sits 8.5% above the highest published 2025 estimate we read, explained by the inclusion of secondary loops and rear doors. AI drafting and automated checks are used on this page; the Douglas Insights research desk chooses the sources, builds the model and approves publication, as set out in our editorial standards.

Sources

1. Supermicro GB200 NVL72 rack specification (132 kW power shelves, 250 kW in-rack CDU) (2025)
2. Eaton Eaton signs agreement to acquire Boyd Thermal (2025)
3. Eaton Eaton completes acquisition of Boyd Thermal (2026)
4. NVIDIA Financial results for fourth quarter and fiscal 2026 (2026)
5. NVIDIA 800 VDC architecture for 1 MW racks from 2027 (2025)
6. European Commission Commission enhances energy efficiency and sustainability of data centres (IP/26/1667) (2026)
7. EUR-Lex Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 on a rating scheme for data centres (2024)
8. 3M 3M to exit PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025 (2022)
9. Trane Technologies Trane Technologies to acquire LiquidStack (2026)
10. nVent nVent expands data center liquid cooling capacity (2026)
11. Vertiv Vertiv fourth quarter and full year 2025 results (2026)
12. Schneider Electric Schneider Electric completes acquisition of Motivair (2025)
13. CoolIT Systems CHx2000 CDU (2024)