Liquid Cooling Market for Data Centers to Grow 28.7% Annually
A new market report projects the data center liquid cooling market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 28.7%. The rapid expansion is attributed to rising thermal loads from AI-focused GPUs, corporate sustainability goals, and a broader industry shift toward liquid-first data center designs.
- The average power density of data center racks has nearly doubled, increasing from about 5 kW in 2017 to 8-10 kW in 2022, with projections reaching 15-20 kW per rack by 2025. Traditional air cooling is generally considered ineffective for racks exceeding 45 kW. - An NVIDIA H100 GPU, a common component in AI servers, has a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 700W, meaning it can generate 700 watts of heat that needs to be dissipated. A single server with eight of these GPUs can draw up to 10.2 kW of power, nearly the capacity of a conventional air-cooled rack. - The global electricity consumption of data centers is projected to more than double between 2024 and 2030, reaching 945 terawatt-hours, an amount comparable to the current electricity demand of Japan. AI is considered the most significant driver of this growth. - Direct-to-chip cooling, where liquid coolant flows through cold plates attached directly to processors, is a leading liquid cooling method. It is more easily integrated into existing data centers than some other liquid cooling methods. - Immersion cooling, where entire servers are submerged in a non-conductive dielectric fluid, is the fastest-growing segment of the liquid cooling market. This method offers uniform cooling and is particularly suited for ultra-high-density deployments like AI clusters. - Major tech companies have set ambitious sustainability goals that drive the adoption of more efficient cooling. Microsoft aims to be carbon negative by 2030, and Google is targeting zero carbon operations by the same year. - The liquid cooling market is comprised of various companies, including established players like Schneider Electric and Vertiv, and specialists such as CoolIT Systems, Green Revolution Cooling, and LiquidStack. - Retrofitting existing air-cooled data centers with liquid cooling is a practical approach to upgrading infrastructure. This can be achieved by integrating technologies like rear-door heat exchangers and coolant distribution units (CDUs) to support high-density workloads.
