Key liquid-cooling news from overseas and Japan over the past two weeks, including SLB's acquisition of Kelvion, Singapore's introduction of a new standard, and cooling-design trends among major companies, outlining new developments in data center thermal design and capital trends.
In the latest development, oilfield services major SLB agreed to acquire German heat-exchanger leader Kelvion for $3.4 billion in cash, with transaction value including approximately $700 million in debt totaling approximately $4.1 billion. Kelvion expects data center-related revenue to reach $1.2–1.3 billion in 2026. Following the integration, SLB plans to grow its data center business to approximately $4.5–5.0 billion by 2028, with the aim of accelerating deployment.
Meanwhile, Singapore has introduced the national liquid-cooling standard SS 726:2026. It comprehensively covers the design, deployment, maintenance and risk management of systems for tropical regions, and assumes coolant temperatures above 40°C. This is expected to extend the energy-saving benefits of liquid cooling across the data center as a whole, with performance assessed alongside PUE improvement metrics.
Cooling designs at major companies are also becoming more sophisticated. Meta uses closed-loop liquid cooling in most of its latest AI data centers, and the coolant can be used for up to approximately 10 years. Schneider Electric has demonstrated an implementation delivering 227 kW per rack and forecasts that racks exceeding 1 MW will become realistic over the next 2–3 years.
Prime Data Centers has reported near-zero WUE through closed-loop cooling, emphasizing accountability from a water-resources perspective. NextDC reported that WUE and PUE had deteriorated for 3 consecutive years, suggesting that the adoption of liquid cooling alone does not necessarily reduce resource consumption.
In Taiwan, Ablecom Technology participated in Jochu Technology's private placement and is working to secure additional production capacity for AI server racks and liquid-cooling products, reflecting further vertical integration across the supply chain.