Eaton and Vertiv splash cash as HPC infrastructure and AI factories run hot
Liquid cooling tech is hot. It's only Tuesday and already infrastructure specialists have forked out more than $10 billion on companies proffering tech that promises to help ease energy bills of datacenter operators.
Power management biz Eaton has signed an agreement to acquire the Boyd Thermal business of Boyd Corporation from Goldman Sachs Asset Management for $9.5 billion, while digital infrastructure firm Vertiv is set to absorb PurgeRite Intermediate LLC, a company specializing in optimizing cooling systems, for approximately $1 billion in cash.
The operating expense of heat dissipation in bit barns can account for between 30 to 45 percent [PDF] of total energy costs, according to some estimates, and the density of compute in high-performance infrastructures means those running bit barns are looking for ways to cut bills.
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Eaton, perhaps best known for its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) kit, says that Boyd will bring on board its liquid cooling tech designed for increased power requirements.
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The $9.5 billion Eaton is paying for the subsidiary represents an eye-watering 22.5 times Boyd Thermal's estimated earnings for next year. It has forecast sales of $1.7 billion for 2026, of which $1.5 billion is in liquid cooling. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, subject to conditions and regulatory approval.
Vertiv's planned takeover of PurgeRite is slightly different, in that it is a provider of mechanical flushing, purging, and filtration services for liquid cooling systems, ensuring that they operate as efficiently as possible.
As HPC sites and the so-called "AI factories" install infrastructure with greater heat densities that depend on coolant technology, it is crucial to maintain clean fluid loops to maximize cooling performance, Vertiv says.
Effective fluid management, including high-velocity fluid loop flushing to remove debris, purging to remove air and gas, and filling with clean fluid, supports high-density operations, we're told.
"PurgeRite's specialized services... support high-density computing and AI applications where efficient thermal management is critical to performance and reliability," said Vertiv CEO Gio Albertazzi in a statement.
In this case, the roughly $1 billion purchase price, which represents approximately 10 times PurgeRite's expected 2026 earnings, may be topped up by an additional $250 million, based on the unit achieving certain unspecified 2026 performance metrics.
These two purchases follow a number of others, including Schneider Electric's move to take a controlling stake in cooling firm Motivair for an all-cash transaction of $850 million last year, with an expectation it would buy up the rest at a later stage.
Research published by McKinsey & Company earlier this year suggested that by 2030, datacenters will need an investment of $6.7 trillion worldwide to keep pace with the insatiable demand for compute power.
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Retro-fitting existing datacenters with liquid cooling is perhaps a prohibitively expensive affair for smaller facilities, though with datacenter construction going through the roof - estimated to be worth $456.5 billion in 2030 - and more being built with AI in mind, infrastructure specialists are placing their bets. ®