Carrier launches CDU for liquid cooling

Cooling firm Carrier Global Corporation has launched a new range of cooling distribution units (CDUs) for liquid cooling in data centers.

The company announced the launch this week, expanding its range of purpose-built data center solutions under the QuantumLeap name.

The CDU product family includes multiple unit sizes in the range of 1.3-5MW.

Available in-row or in mechanical galleries, the CDUs features modular heat exchangers that can achieve approach temperatures down to 3.6°F (2°C), lower than the industry’s more common 7.2°F (4°C).

The company said the CDUs integrate with other Carrier QuantumLeap offerings, including Automated Logic building controls, Nlyte data center infrastructure management software, Carrier custom air handling systems, and Carrier’s range of chillers.

Carrier previously acquired DCIM provider Nlyte in 2021. Last year, it acquired the HVAC division Viessmann Climate Solutions from the Viessmann Group and divested its commercial refrigeration business and most of its fire and security businesses.

The company also invested in liquid cooling firm Strategic Thermal Labs last year, which provides components including cold plates and heat exchangers.

Flex and LG team up on modular cooling solutions

Power and cooling technology firm Flex is working with Korean electronics giant LG on a portfolio of liquid and air-cooled data center solutions.

The firms have signed a partnership that they say will bring together Flex's liquid cooling portfolio, proprietary power products, and IT infrastructure solutions with LG's high-performance air and liquid cooling products and thermal management solutions.

By working together, the companies aim to give data center operators “the agility to customize solutions and scale with demand" and meet the needs of the increasingly dense racks found in AI data centers.

The companies will co-develop solutions that will be made available on the Flex AI infrastructure platform, the vendor’s data center platform that integrates power, cooling, compute, and services into modular designs.

Formerly known as Flextronics, Texas-based Flex is one of the largest electronics manufacturing services companies in the world, behind Taiwan's Pegatron, with annual revenues of $26.4 billion.

It has ramped up its interest in cooling since acquiring liquid cooling specialist JetCool in November 2024. The company relies on what it calls microconvective direct liquid cooling to cool chips – essentially, instead of passing fluid over a surface, its cooling jets route fluid directly at the surface of a chip.

Last month, Flex and JetCool debuted a modular liquid cooling system, which it says can handle an IT load of up to 1.8MW.

LG has also been expanding its cooling repertoire recently, and in October announced a partnership with SK Enmove and GRC to develop immersion cooling solutions.

Daikin acquires liquid cooling firm Chilldyne

HVAC company Daikin has acquired liquid cooling firm Chilldyne.

Daikin Applied Americas today announced the acquisition of Chilldyne, a provider of direct-to-chip cooling systems. Terms of the deal were not shared.

Chilldyne's patented liquid cooling distribution unit (CDU) technology uses a negative pressure system that delivers chip-level cooling while mitigating the risk of leaks. Its CDUs offer up to 300kW of cooling capacity. The firm also offers cold plates, rack manifolds, and monitoring software.

Daikin said the acquisition of Chilldyne marked a “pivotal step” in its broader strategy to deliver a “comprehensive ecosystem of cooling solutions for hyperscale data centers.”

Daikin Applied, part of Daikin Industries, designs and manufactures advanced commercial and industrial HVAC systems. It offers air-cooled, water-cooled, or hybrid systems for data center customers.

CapM Advisors acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Chilldyne in this transaction.

Omnia, backed by Pátria, joins TikTok's $9bn data center project in Brazil

Omnia, the data center company owned by Brazilian investment fund Pátria, is to develop a data center in Brazil, with an estimated investment of 50 billion reais ($9.4bn), which will exclusively serve TikTok, reports Reuters.

The firm has reportedly signed a partnership with Casa dos Ventos, a Brazilian company specializing in renewable energy. The facility will be built in the Pecém port complex, in the state of Ceará.

The project is expected to consume an estimated 300MW of electricity, making it the largest data center dedicated to a single client ever built in Brazil, according to executives involved in the initiative. Construction work is expected to begin this year, with commissioning scheduled for 2027.

Patria Investimentos, a former owner of OData, recently launched Omnia, a hyperscale data center platform aimed at meeting the growing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure. Reports that Patria was involved in the TikTok data center surfaced over the summer.

Casa dos Ventos has announced that it will invest around 3.5 billion reais ($653m) in the construction of new wind farms. These ventures will be dedicated specifically to supplying electricity to the future data center under development at the Pecém port complex in the state of Ceará. According to Lucas Araripe, the company's executive director, the aim is to guarantee a clean, stable, and long-term source of energy for the facility's operation, in line with the project's sustainability goals.

Experts believe local supply chains are not fully equipped to support high-density AI workloads

More than three-quarters of data center industry experts believe local supply chains are not fully prepared to support the adoption of advanced cooling techniques for AI data centers, according to a Turner & Townsend report.

Some 48 percent of respondents also said power availability was the biggest obstacle to delivering projects on schedule, which was worsening due to increasing power-density requirements.

Turner & Townsend said action needed to be taken in reviewing procurement models and innovation would be required to “develop and deliver more energy efficient designs and mitigate the risks of power connection delays.”

The data center industry is expanding rapidly due to increased demand from AI workloads, with global demand for data center capacity on track to triple by 2030. Supply chain issues have grown in equal measure, as power infrastructure requirements, cooling demands, equipment procurement, and material costs have all had major impacts on the supply chain.

Political developments, such as recent tariffs and domestic manufacturing policies in the US, have resulted in difficulty and uncertainty across the supply chain. In Europe, concerns surround the vulnerability of the continent’s procurement lines of rare earth exports from China.

New Era plans 7GW AI data center in Lea County, New Mexico, powered by gas and nuclear

New Era Energy & Digital has signed a land option purchase agreement for around 3,500 acres in Lea County, New Mexico, with plans to develop an up to 7GW AI data center campus powered by natural gas and nuclear energy.

A land option purchase agreement is a legally binding contract where a buyer pays a fee for the exclusive right, but not the obligation, to purchase a property within a specific timeframe.

If realized, the site is expected to support more than 2GW of natural gas generation alongside a planned 5GW plus nuclear installation. Initial power delivery at the site is targeted for 2028.

According to New Era, the Lea County location was selected due to its proximity to major gas transmission lines, existing power infrastructure, water resources, skilled labor, and high-speed fiber connectivity. Engineering work is set to begin within 30 days, covering site evaluation, master planning, and full engineering design.

The company said gas supply has been confirmed for the natural gas facilities and that it is finalizing the technology selection for the nuclear component. It is unclear whether the company will seek to deploy small modular reactors or traditional nuclear reactors at the site.

Alongside powering its own operations, the company plans to offer powered shell buildings and powered land lease options for AI customers through an integrated development model.

This project will be New Era’s first wholly owned development, separate from its Texas Critical Data Centers (TCDC) joint venture. TCDC is a JV with Sharon AI that is developing an offgrid AI data center in Ector County, Texas.

The data center is expected to have an initial capacity of 250MW, with the potential to scale beyond 1GW. According to the partners, it will integrate advanced energy, cooling, and the potential for carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

KKR & Singtel look to acquire controlling stake in STT GDC

Investment giant KKR and Singaporean telco Singtel are reportedly looking to acquire ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC).

Citing people with direct knowledge of the plans, Reuters reports the two companies are “in advanced talks” to buy more than 80 percent of STT GDC – which would give them full ownership – for more than S$5 billion ($3.9 billion)

KKR currently owns about 14 percent of the firm while, Singtel owns more than four percent. Temasek-owned ST Telemedia owns the majority of STT GDC.

News that KKR was interested in acquiring more of STT GDC surfaced over the summer.

KKR and Singtel invested a combined S$1.75bn (US$1.3bn) in STT GDC last year.

Headquartered in Singapore, STT GDC is a data center provider with more than 95 data centers across 11 geographies and points of presence in over 20 major business markets. The company currently has a total combined capacity of 1.7GW of IT load.

KKR owns data center operator CyrusOne alongside BlackRock-owned GIP, and is backing European operator GTR. It acquired a 20 percent stake in Singtel’s data center business for $800 million in 2023. That year, it acquired liquid cooling company CoolIT alongside Mubadala.

At one point, STT was a major investor in US colo giant Equinix. ST Telemedia launched i-STT in 2000, which was later merged into Equinix in the US. ST Telemedia became the largest strategic shareholder in Equinix, though it has since divested its interest in the company.

Jabil acquires energy management firm Hanley in $725m deal

US manufacturing firm Jabil has agreed to acquire Hanley Energy Group, a provider of energy management and critical power solutions for the data center market.

The deal was an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $725 million, with an additional $58 million tied to future revenue performance.

The companies have said that they expect the deal to close in Q1 2026. Jabil claims that the acquisition will expand its portfolio of data center power management technologies, including low- and medium-voltage switchgear, PDUs, and UPS systems.

Hanley is headquartered in Virginia and specializes in critical power systems, energy optimization, and grid-to-rack power management. It offers a diverse product portfolio, including its Powerlink monitoring software, UPS, switchgear, transformers, and remote power panels.

Jabil has made several significant acquisitions to bolster its data center-focused portfolio. Last October, the firm acquired Mikros Technologies, a liquid-cooling firm. Mikros Technologies specializes in liquid-cooling solutions and thermal management.

Jabil’s portfolio includes data center lifecycle solutions, semiconductor test equipment solutions, and energy and transportation solutions.

Vantage plans 192MW data center campus in Stafford County, Virginia

Vantage Data Centers is expanding its footprint in Virginia with a new campus around Fredericksburg.

The company this week announced plans for a $2 billion, 192MW campus near Fredericksburg in Stafford County.

VA4 will house liquid-cooled three data centers on 82 acres totaling approximately 929,000 square feet.

Ground has been broken, and the first building is scheduled to open in late 2027.

The campus will be Vantage’s fourth in Virginia and brings the company’s statewide capacity to 782MW with a combined investment of approximately $8bn.

Stafford County lies to the south of Prince William County and southeast of Fauquier County, on the Potomac River. It is not a county known for its data center developments, though in recent years, it has lowered taxes for data center equipment. The likes of Stack, Amazon, and Peterson Companies are developing data center campuses in the county.

Du and NextGenAI partner for 13MW Nvidia B300 deployment in UAE

Dubai-based telco Du and NextGenAI have partnered for the deployment of an advanced AI supercluster.

Unveiled last month at the GITEX Global event, the cluster is housed at Du’s DSO data center in Dubai and builds on the company’s previous 5MW deployment from 2024.

Comprising an unknown number of direct-to-chip liquid cooled Nvidia B300 GPUs, the expansion brings the cluster’s total capacity to more than 13MW.

In a statement, Du said the deployment represents a “fundamental reimagining of how AI workloads can be processed at scale,” with customers already able to access the computational resources offered by the cluster, which the telco said is of a capacity “previously unavailable in the Middle East market.”

Du currently operates five data centers across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In April 2025, the company signed a $544.54 million deal with Microsoft to develop a new hyperscale data center in the UAE. Few details about the facility have been made public, but Microsoft will be the main tenant of the data center.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it had become the first company to be granted an export license by the Trump administration, allowing the company to ship Nvidia GPUs to the UAE. Despite the governments of the US and UAE striking a deal in May of this year for the export of several hundred thousand Nvidia chips to the Middle East, companies had faced delays receiving the necessary export licenses.