AI computing power fuels new tracks; liquid cooling industry ushers in explosive growth

Since this year, AI computing power demand has shown explosive growth, opening up room for incremental expansion across related industry supply chains. The stronger the computing requirements, the higher the cooling capacity needed to manage the heat generated by the large number of chips in data centers. This has made the liquid cooling industry a “hot track” that many companies are rushing to invest in.

In a smart computing (AI) data center machine room of a coolant production company in Quzhou, Zhejiang, there are banks of immersion liquid cooling equipment placed—each one looks like a white cooling cabinet. After opening the cabinet doors, rows of servers are seamlessly immersed in the liquid.

Immersion liquid cooling refers to completely immersing heat-generating electronic components such as servers in an insulating coolant contained inside a sealed enclosure, using direct contact with the liquid to achieve heat transfer and accomplish the purpose of cooling. Would immersing electronic components in liquid for a long time cause short circuits or crash the system? In this company’s showroom, several laptops and mobile phones have already been immersed in the coolant for more than five years. When staff members call the mobile phone that is submerged in the coolant, the screen lights up instantly; when they operate the computer with the moving mouse, the computer responds very quickly and smoothly.

The secret behind efficient heat dissipation lies in the coolant. It does not conduct electricity or corrode. At the same time, the servers are completely isolated from the coolant, effectively avoiding interference from external environmental factors such as high temperatures, high humidity, and dust, while also slowing down the aging of electronic components and significantly extending the service life of high-value smart computing servers. In another liquid cooling production company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the person in charge told a reporter that compared with traditional air cooling and heat dissipation methods, the advantages of immersion liquid cooling are also reflected in saving space.

During the visits, the reporter learned that in the chip liquid cooling track, another mainstream heat dissipation method is to use liquid cooling plates—essentially giving chips and other components a direct “ice pack.”

This technology route requires relatively small changes to existing server architecture and is relatively easy to deploy, making it one of the solutions currently widely adopted in industrialized applications. Industry experts said that currently, the two major mainstream technology routes in the liquid cooling industry—immersion and cold-plate—are suitable for diverse scenarios such as AI servers, smart computing (AI) data centers, and energy storage. Since this year, many listed companies have been stepping up investment in the liquid cooling track through mergers and acquisitions or additional share issuances for funding (targeted placements), concentrating efforts on building liquid cooling capacity, technical R&D, and computing power temperature control. Several additional-share issuance projects have already passed review.