Microsoft study finds liquid cooling can cut data center emissions by up to 21%

• Microsoft researchers have published a paper analyzing the energy use, water consumption, and emissions of four data center cooling technologies across their life cycles.

• The study, which took place over two years, studied four cooling technologies, namely air cooling, cold plates, one-phase immersion, and two-phase immersion for servers. It focused on cooling chips for general compute, or CPUs, not the specialized AI accelerator chips designed to handle AI workloads.

• The study found that cold plates and two forms of immersion cooling can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 to 21 percent, energy use by 15 to 20 percent, and water usage by 31 to 52 percent over their entire life cycles when compared to traditional air cooling in data centers.

• The study concluded that two-phase immersion cooling showed promise in reducing environmental impacts across all measured categories. However, the researchers noted that it currently relies on liquid polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, which are facing increasing regulatory pressure in both the European Union and the United States, conflicting with pollution-reduction efforts, which could result in future restrictions.

• In addition, while Microsoft has explored immersion cooling, it is not yet implementing these systems in its data center operations.

Cooling fluids firm Arteco moves into data centers, launches liquid cooling offering

• Industrial lubricants company Arteco is moving into the data center space and has launched a fluid for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

• The company recently announced its expansion into the data center and electronics market with its Zitrec EC brand. The company has traditionally been known for engine coolants and heat transfer fluids for applications such as heat pumps, air conditioning, refrigeration, and other industrial uses.

• Arteco said its Zitrec EC portfolio includes Mono Propylene Glycol (MPG)-based, water-based, and Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG)-based formulations with OAT (Organic Additive Technology), and descend to offer “exceptional” thermal performance and energy efficiency.

• MPG and PEG-based fluids are generally made from petroleum. OAT coolant contains only organic corrosion inhibitors such as carboxylates and triazole.

• Established In 1998 as a joint venture between Chevron and TotalEnergies, Arteco develops and manufactures quality antifreeze coolants and heat transfer fluids for automotive and industrial applications. The company produces engine coolants, heat transfer fluids, and corrosion inhibitors.

• The company is offering four fluids for electronics cooling: Zitrac 10, 20, 30, and 40.

• Zitrac EC 20 is based on recycled PG, partially derived from the recycling and purification of de-icing fluid. Zitrac EC 10 is a water-based fluid. The company said all its fluids in the range are biodegradable.

Chemours selects Navin Fluorine to make its two-phase immersion cooling fluid

• Chemicals firm Chemours has tapped an Indian fluorochemicals company to make its immersion cooling fluid.

• Chemours this week announced a strategic agreement with Navin Fluorine to manufacture its Opteon two-phase immersion cooling fluid.

• The company said the collaboration is part of Chemours‘ expanded Liquid Cooling Venture, established to address the cooling needs data centers and AI hardware. The partnership aims to help commercialize the company’s two-phase offering, beginning in 2026.

• Chemours Opteon line includes two-phase direct-to-chip and immersion cooling liquids. Its Opteon unit also offers refrigerants for chillers.

• Chemours first announced Opteon 2P50, a proprietary hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) dielectric fluid designed for two-phase immersion cooling systems, where the coolant is allowed to boil and recondense, back in August 2023. At the time, the company said it aimed to bring the fluid to market in 2025.

• Chemours announced a product trial of Opteon 2P50 alongside NTT Data and engineering firm Hibiya Engineering in March 2025. In its announcement, Chemours linked to NTT’s November announcement to establish a liquid cooling field trial facility outside Tokyo, Japan.

• Established in 1967, Navin Fluorine is part of the Padmanabh Mafatlal Group – one of India’s oldest industrial houses. The company has manufacturing locations at Surat and Dahej in Western India and Dewas in Central India.

Hyperscalers prepare for 1MW racks at OCP EMEA; Google announces new CDU

Representatives from Google, Meta, and Microsoft this week took to the stage at the 2025 OCP EMEA Summit in Dublin to discuss the previously announced Mount Diablo project; a new power rack side pod that the companies say will enable IT racks to reach densities of up to 1MW.

• Higher density racks see hyperscalers move to disaggregate power from IT

At the OCP event in Dublin this week, all three companies reiterated that racks with AI-focused IT hardware could reach more than 500kW each before 2030, and 1MW not long after. In such a scenario, space in such highly dense racks will be at a premium.

To accommodate this, the companies are turning to a much higher voltage DC power distribution solution, where power components and battery backup are outside of the IT rack.

• Google to release specs for Project Deschutes CDU

This week also saw Google promise to release the specs of its latest upcoming cooling distribution.

The company Iyengar said around half of Google’s global data center footprint has liquid cooling enabled and/or deployed. In total, the search giant has deployed around 1GW of liquid cooling capacity across some 2,000 TPU pods – with an uptime of 99.999 percent. The company announced its latest generation of TPU – known as Ironwood – last month.

• Meta develops liquid-cooled busbar

During a separate OCP talk this week, Meta detailed its plans for upcoming generations of high-powered rack (HPR) hardware specs it aims to release to the community.

The next version of the design, HPRv3, will support up to 300kW and utilize a disaggregated side power pod that will host the power supply unit (PSU) and battery backup (BBU) shelves. This design will include a new liquid-cooled busbar running vertically down the rack, as well as busbars connecting the power rack to the IT rack.

Nvidia GB200 NVL72 now available via Oracle Cloud

• Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 system is now available via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

• Revealed in a Nvidia blog post, Oracle has reportedly deployed thousands of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in its data centers, and is now offering access to them via its cloud platform offering.

• The Nvidia GB200 NVL72 is a system made up of 72 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and 36 Arm-based Nvidia Grace CPUs, connected via fifth-generation Nvidia NVLink. Each GB200 NVL72 offers more than one exaflops of training performance.

• Previous reports suggest this could be as many as 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, and it was planned to launch in the first half of 2025. That would give the system 2.4 zettaflops of peak performance, Oracle said, although it was referring to FP4 format, rather than FP64 or even FP8.

• The company also has an OCI Supercluster with 65,536 Nvidia H200 GPUs that offers up to 260 exaflops of peak FP8 performance, which went live in November 2024. The OCI H100 Supercluster can scale to 16,384 GPUs.

• Other cloud providers to have made the GB200 NVL72 system available include Google and CoreWeave. Lambda has also deployed at least two NVL72 racks. Microsoft offers the GB200 GPUs, though they are not deployed as an NVL72 machine.

Colovore buys leased San Jose data center

• Liquid cooled data center operator Colovore has acquired a data center in San Jose, California, that it was previously leasing.

• First reported by SiliconValley.com and citing Santa Clara County property records, an affiliate of Colovore recently acquired 3060 Raymond Street from Ellis Partners for $37.2 million.

• Launched in 2013, Colovore carved out an early niche for liquid-cooled racks capable of up to 35kW. The company opened its original single-story, 24,000 sq ft (2,230 sqm) facility in San Jose in 2014, with the last 2MW expansion announced in February 2022.

• First announced in November 2022, SJC02 officially opened in March this year. The 3060 Raymond facility is located adjacent to Colovore’s original data center at 1101 Space Park Drive. The new site can support densities up to 250kW per cabinet through a combination of rear door and direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

• At the time of the acquisition, the company noted plans to expand and has since detailed plans for facilities in Reno, Nevada, and Chicago, Illinois. Ground has reportedly been broken on the Reno site.

RackBank breaks ground on data center campus in central India

• Indian data center firm RackBank has broken ground on a campus in Nava Raipur.

• The city is located east of Raipur, the capital city of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

• RackBank stated that the facility will be built in four phases. The first will offer 80MW of capacity, and will be capable of running 100,000 GPUs. It will offer 160MW of capacity at full build-out. The facility will use liquid immersion cooling solutions provided by RackBank itself.

• According to the Times of India, the facility will be located in a newly built, 2.7 hectare Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for AI-based services. SEZs provide incentives and exemptions to encourage investment.

• The company provides data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI services. They currently operate a colocation facility in Indore and a hyperscale facility in Chennai, and facilities in Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Noida are currently in development.

Telehouse completes 3MW expansion at Paris campus

• Colocation firm Telehouse has completed a new data center at its campus in Paris, France.

• The company recently announced the completion of a new phase of its Magny 2 data center, located at its TH3 Paris Magny campus. The expansion adds 3MW of liquid-cooled capacity across 2,000 sqm (21,525 sq ft).

• First announced in October 2022 and launched a year later, the Magny 2 development will consist of five data halls at full build-out, offering 18MW across 12,000 sqm of IT space. The campus is a former EADS military site.

• Established in 1988 and owned by Japanese telco KDDI, Telehouse has operations in 15 cities globally, including in the US, UK, France, Germany, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan.

Edged breaks ground on data center in Des Moines, Iowa

• Edged has broken ground on a data center in Des Moines, Iowa.

• The company this week announced the groundbreaking of its newest data center in Ankeny, located just north of Des Moines.

• The 13.2MW, 105,000-square-foot (9,755 sqm) facility, built for high-density artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, will be equipped with a closed-loop waterless cooling system.

• Edged Des Moines is expected to be complete in 24 months. The site’s waterless cooling system – from Edged’s sister company ThermalWorks – will support rack densities of up to 70kW with air cooling and 200kW with liquid cooling.

• Reports that Edged was looking to develop a campus in the area surfaced last year, with plans for a two-building campus. The company officially announced plans for the campus, located on 17.5 acres at 2701 Southeast 90th Street, in March.

Lambda Cloud to take capacity at Aligned’s DFW-04 Dallas-Fort Worth data center

• AI cloud provider Lambda plans to occupy Aligned Data Center’s latest Dallas-Fort Worth facility in Texas.

• The DFW-04 data center is currently under construction in Plano, Texas. State filings from last year disclosed that the $161 million facility is set to span 425,500 sq ft (39,500 sqm), with construction planned to run from October 2025 to October 2026.

• The facility will use the company's own DeltaFlow liquid cooling system, which the company says can cool densities up to 300kW per rack.

• Lambda, which raised $480m this February from Nvidia and others, operates out of colocation data centers in San Francisco, California, and Allen, Texas.

• Aligned, meanwhile, currently operates campuses in Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; Hillsboro, Oregon; and Northern Virginia. It has planned projects in Maryland and Ohio.

• Outside of the US, Aligned acquired LATAM-based OData in May 2023 and has a footprint in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. It has also invested in Canadian firm QScale.

Portus to build 5.5MW data center in Munich, Germany

• European operator Portus Data Centers is developing an additional facility in Munich, Germany.

• The company this week announced an expansion of its Munich colocation campus with the construction of an additional 5.5MW facility - Portus Data Centers Munich 2 (MUC2).

• The new data center will add 2,200 sqm (23,680 sq ft) of white space and increase the site’s total IT load capacity available to 7MW.

• Construction of the new Tier III-quality carrier-neutral data center has already started, with initial capacity set to be delivered in late 2026.

• Portus noted the new facility will be fully EnEfG (German Energy Efficiency law) compliant and will cater to workloads ranging from normal power densities to liquid-cooled AI hardware.

• Adriaan Oosthoek, chairman of Portus Data Centers, added: “Our new development at Portus Data Centers Munich marks an important milestone and aligns with our buy and build growth strategy for the DACH region. It is therefore only a first step, we will continue to add capacity as necessary across the region to meet the strong demand for sustainable high-performance, low-latency IT infrastructure.”