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KKR eyes multibillion-dollar sale of data center firm: report
KKR is working with advisers on a potential multibillion-dollar sale of CoolIT Systems, people familiar with the matter said.
CoolIT makes liquid cooling systems for data centers and has shifted from gaming to AI infrastructure.
People said KKR was hoping to fetch more than US$3.0 billion, up from about US$270 million when it bought a majority stake in 2023, and that Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investor Mubadala owned a minority stake.
The sale process is at an early stage and there are no guarantees it will produce a deal, the sources said.
Nearly 3,000 data centers in the US are under construction or planned, on top of about 4,000 existing sites, the American Edge Project said.
Deal activity has picked up across thermal and infrastructure suppliers, highlighted by Eaton’s US$9.5 billion purchase of Boyd’s thermal business and a US$33.0 billion take-private of AES by GIP and EQT.
🔗 Source: Financial Times
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
The physical limits of air cooling are creating a multibillion-dollar market
- CoolIT Systems’ potential valuation ties to a hard limit on physics. Air cooling struggles with the heat from dense computing 1.
- When rack power climbs past certain thresholds, air cooling stops making sense on cost or feasibility for dense servers 1.
- Some AI systems, including NVIDIA’s GB200 racks, need about 140 kW of liquid-cooling capacity. Typical air-cooled racks run around 7–10 kW 2.
- CoolIT builds direct-to-chip (D2C) liquid cooling. The approach supports denser AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads while keeping standard rack layouts and operating routines 1.
AI’s thirst for power is reshaping energy policy and the tech supply chain
- AI growth is driving knock-on effects across power markets. Data centers could use more than 8% of global electricity by 2030 1.
- Rising demand is pulling regulators in. Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act requires power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3 or lower by 2027, according to Global Market Insights 2.
- Mergers are tightening the cooling supply chain. Schneider Electric (an industrial energy-management and automation company) bought Motivair Corporation (a liquid-cooling provider for data centers) in 2023 to broaden liquid-cooling options for AI deployments 3.
- Chip makers such as NVIDIA and Intel can steer vendor choices. They certify certain cooling vendors for reference designs (template system designs partners can follow) 1.
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