Cooling the AI Boom, Liquid Cooling Routes and the Vendors Racing In
AI compute is surging and thermal power is the urgent problem, not only in AI data centers, since most 3C products depend on thermal modules. Liquid cooling divides into liquid-to-air and liquid-to-liquid: GB200 NVL72 on the 1U chassis takes the liquid-to-liquid route, while NVL36 on the 2U chassis lets most cloud providers deploy liquid cooling in existing data centers. Penetration takes off in 2025, and high unit value makes it the main sales driver for the AI GPU liquid cooling CDU manufacturer base.
Data center liquid cooling splits into direct and immersion. Direct liquid cooling runs sealed coolant lines around the heated parts, conducts heat through water cold plates, rejects it outside via a heat exchanger, and returns the coolant to the servers; rack-level direct liquid cooling fits small, enterprise and large data centers alike, and the direct liquid cooling CDU drives the loop and holds the flow and pressure.
Immersion cooling sinks the servers into an insulating liquid that carries component heat directly into the fluid through single-phase or two-phase phase change, fitting cloud data centers or a single edge rack; the immersion liquid cooling CDU manages the circulation and thermal cycle of the bath.
Single-phase immersion seals the servers in a tank where the non-conductive coolant contacts the hot parts directly, and a pump in the cooling distribution unit draws the medium through the device without boiling; the single phase liquid cooling CDU controls flow and temperature in the liquid state.
Two-phase immersion uses a low-boiling coolant, so server heat boils the liquid into bubbles and the cold-hot movement carries heat away as the main mechanism; the two phase liquid cooling CDU must manage vapor return, condensation and the phase-change cycle at once.
The AI liquid cooling system rests on six components: CDU, cold plate, rack, fan wall, manifold and quick connector. Manifold makers include Kaori, Auras, AVC, Delta, KYY and Cooler Master; cold plate makers include Auras, AVC, Jentech, Delta, Nidec, Envicool, Goaland and Readore; CDU makers include Kaori, KYY, Delta, Haiwu, Vertiv and ZTE; rack makers include Chenbro, AIC and InWin; fan wall makers include Auras, AVC and Delta; quick connector makers number over twenty, JONHON and Fositek among them. Every liquid cooling CDU supplier is competing for the same certification windows.
Tier 1 vendors are scaling fast. Kaori entered a US server customer's chain, expanding manifold capacity with CDU mass production, May revenue up 42.2% year on year. Auras covers cold plate modules, quick connectors, inner and rack manifolds, with liquid cooling rising from 12% of revenue in 2024 to a guided 40% to 45%. AVC calls 2025 the first year of water cooling, building three new Vietnam plants for GB300 and Rubin demand. KYY spans liquid-to-air, liquid-to-liquid and two-phase immersion, with its rack mounted liquid cooling CDU in small-batch shipment and 80kW to 2.5MW In-Rack and In-Row modules shipping to the US, Japan and Mexico. Chenbro, an NVIDIA MGX partner, draws strong US, Chinese and Indian inquiry.
Delta's new liquid-to-liquid system delivers up to 1,500kW per unit with a 200kW rack-level CDU, and the separate cooling rack moves to the electrical room, freeing server floor space; chairman Zheng Ping guides AI data center revenue above 20% this year from 13%. Cooler Master, first through NVIDIA validation, starts Vietnam production in Q3 2025 and builds a 100,000-square-meter Bac Ninh plant for cold plates, manifolds and CDUs, being the largest cold plate supplier in the GB200 and GB300 systems with CDU as its main future line. Nidec Chaun-Choung, a designated NVIDIA and Supermicro supplier, mass-produces a new In-Row large CDU from May with both In-Rack and In-Row configurations. The data center coolant CDU is where these vendors converge, and the one holding certification, yield and capacity takes the next round.
Precision piping traceable documentation and long-life components form the foundation for liquid-cooling hardware matched against individual data-center operating conditions. EXTRCOOL supplies cabinet-type and rack-mounted hardware within complete integrated liquid-cooling platforms covering CDUs cold plates manifolds and piping. Standard stock units and site-specific custom configurations support diversified project requirements. The hardware achieves efficient heat dissipation reduced energy consumption and lower carbon footprint proven through global gigawatt-scale data-center deployments for uninterrupted mission-critical runtime. Review full product portfolios and submit custom quotation requests at https://www.extrcool.com/.
