- Cooling shift: Nvidia says its Vera Rubin platform may not need chilled water, signalling a move towards higher-temperature liquid cooling.
- Market impact: Traditional HVAC and chiller suppliers have seen share price volatility, but heat-rejection components will still be needed for reliability and extreme conditions.
What happened
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that its upcoming Vera Rubin supercomputing platform can be cooled using water at around 45 °C (113 °F) — a temperature at which traditional water chillers would no longer be necessary to keep systems within safe operating limits. Huang’s comments triggered a sell-off in shares of data-centre HVAC and chiller manufacturers, including Johnson Controls, Trane Technologies and Carrier Global.
Analysts noted that data centres account for a meaningful portion of sales for some of these companies, and Nvidia’s statements were interpreted by markets as signalling a shift away from chiller-centric cooling designs. This reflects a broader industry trend: as AI and high-performance computing hardware generates denser thermal loads, many operators are adopting direct liquid cooling systems and exploring free-cooling techniques that use ambient conditions to reject heat, reducing mechanical cooling requirements.
However, experts caution that the notion of “no chillers” does not equate to “no heat rejection infrastructure”. Even when operating at higher water temperatures, data centres must still reject heat to the outside environment — whether via dry coolers, economiser-assisted air systems, or hybrid configurations — to maintain reliability, especially during heat waves or peak loads.
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Why it’s important
Cooling and heat-rejection systems remain fundamental to data-centre performance as AI workloads push racks toward ever-higher power densities. According to market analyses, the data-centre cooling market — including heat-rejection equipment like chillers, cooling towers and dry coolers — is poised for significant growth through the end of the decade as infrastructure modernises to meet thermal demands.
While Nvidia’s announcement highlights efficiency gains from higher-temperature liquid cooling, legacy heat-rejection technologies are not being rendered obsolete overnight. Mechanical chillers and advanced heat-rejection architectures provide resilience, especially in climates where ambient conditions alone cannot dissipate heat safely. Moreover, the shift elevates the importance of flexible cooling strategies — combining liquid cooling at the rack level with adaptable heat-rejection systems — to ensure uptime and energy efficiency.
As data centres evolve into integrated thermal and energy systems rather than simple server warehouses, the broader ecosystem — from fluid distribution units to dry coolers and economised heat rejection — will shape operators’ ability to balance performance, sustainability and cost.
