Data center liquid cooling market to surge, driven by AI
The market for data center liquid cooling is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28.7%. The rapid growth is driven by the escalating thermal loads of GPUs used for AI, increased sustainability mandates, and a broader industry shift toward liquid-first data center designs.
- Direct-to-chip (DTC) cooling, which targets CPUs and GPUs with cold plates, is currently the most widely adopted liquid cooling solution due to its compatibility with existing data center infrastructure. However, immersion cooling, where entire servers are submerged in a dielectric fluid, is the fastest-growing segment, offering superior thermal performance for high-density AI workloads. - Studies show that liquid cooling can reduce a data center's greenhouse gas emissions by 15-21%, energy demand by 15-20%, and water consumption by 31-52% compared to traditional air cooling over the facility's lifecycle. Cooling systems can account for up to 40% of a data center's total energy consumption, making such efficiencies a key factor in achieving sustainability goals. - The UK data center liquid cooling market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 19% between 2026 and 2035, driven by London's status as Europe's largest data center market and government initiatives supporting AI development. This aligns with a broader UK push for energy efficiency in data centers, which are significant energy consumers. - As programmatic ad spending in the US is expected to exceed $203 billion in 2026, the industry is shifting focus from volume to media quality and performance visibility. Advertisers are increasingly demanding real-time insights integrated into campaign workflows to allow for mid-flight optimization rather than relying on post-campaign analysis. - The end of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative in late 2025 means third-party cookies will remain in Chrome for the foreseeable future, halting a major shift in adtech. The project failed due to regulatory pressure, particularly from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over competition concerns, and weak adoption from advertisers and publishers who cited poor performance and revenue declines during testing. - Enterprise adoption of AI agents is rapidly moving from experimentation to production, with Gartner forecasting that 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific agents by 2026, a significant increase from under 5% in 2025. However, data integration remains a major hurdle, with the average enterprise managing 957 applications, only 27% of which are connected. - In 2025, UK tech startups raised $17.2 billion, positioning it as the third-largest startup ecosystem globally, with FinTech, AI, and B2B SaaS being top-funded sectors. A notable 2025 funding round was AI infrastructure firm Nscale's $1.1 billion Series B, the largest in European history, backed by NVIDIA and Dell, to expand its global data center and GPU farm footprint.
