The Whole Chain Is Racing Into the CDU, the Heart of Liquid Cooling

Inspur Information disclosed a 2026 private placement of up to RMB 9 billion, with RMB 1.4 billion going to a liquid-cooled native computing infrastructure project, and on the same day Jiangsu Leili revealed its rack-mounted CDU liquid cooling canned pumps are in mass production in seven power specs. One is a server OEM, the other a precision parts maker, and both are pouring into the same link on the same day: the CDU, the race to become the next liquid distribution unit CDU supplier of scale.

The orders explain why. Per CCTV in September, liquid cooling lines in Jinan run at full load, a Qingdao CDU line has orders to end of December 2026, and a Foshan parts maker nearly doubled order value with delivery into 2027. Global CDU orders are booked to late 2026 and 2027, overseas high-power delivery cycles stretched from 8 to 12 weeks to 26 to 40 weeks, and some 1MW-plus capacity is locked into 2029. These are not one company's orders but the delivery level of the whole chain. Competition has switched from storytelling to proving delivery of an efficient liquid CDU cooling system at scale, and whoever can ship holds the voice.

The CDU is the heart of the loop: it delivers coolant to server cold plates and moves heat-laden liquid back to the primary side, built from pumps, plate exchangers, valves and controls. The demand side changed. NVIDIA's Rubin is the first 100% liquid-cooled, fanless AI platform, with single GPU TDP of 2300W, up 64% from GB300's 1400W, and racks near 200kW against an air-cooled limit of 30 to 50kW. Air cooling cannot hold this heat, so the data center liquid cooling system is now mandatory and the CDU is the bottleneck. Worse, Rubin's interfaces and cold plate specs are incompatible with the previous generation, so old capacity goes dead just as demand explodes, and everyone must re-certify.

The money follows. CDU prices run from tens of thousands to over a million yuan: small rack units at RMB 50,000 to 300,000, 1MW units at USD 200,000 to 240,000, 2MW units above RMB 1 million, with China Telecom's 2025 tender capping the CDU at RMB 300,000 per unit. Gross margins run 30% to 50% per third-party reports and 40% to 55% per industry consulting, higher for vendors with high-power products and head certification. The secondary side holds 70% to 75% of system value and the CDU about half of that; Soochow sees single-rack value rising from USD 100,000 on GB300 to USD 200,000 on Rubin, with CDU power climbing from 1.3MW to 2.3MW and redundancy from N+1 to 2N. The GPU cabinet air liquid CDU is the most valuable liquid cooling component in a rack, and the pricing anchor of the chain.

Who earns it? On the NVIDIA chain, Vertiv, CoolIT, Schneider, Nidec, Envicool, Delta, Carrier and Stulz hold about 88% to 94% together; the Google chain is Vertiv at 50% to 55% plus Envicool at 25% to 30%; and domestically Sugon Chuang, Envicool and Goaland lead. Yinlun's In-Row CDU plate exchanger passed a domestic audit with Q4 small-batch delivery ahead, and Envicool's hand orders reportedly exceed RMB 8.5 billion. The server rack liquid cooling CDU is where OEM, power, pump and heat exchanger makers are all squeezing in at once.

The chain jams where it is slowest, not most expensive. Cold plates hold about 32% of value, UQD quick connectors 28%, the CDU 25% (about half the secondary side), piping and manifolds 15%. The bottlenecks: UQD connectors have the highest reliability barrier and fewest suppliers; vacuum brazed plate exchangers have fewer than five qualified suppliers globally with a 12 to 18 month expansion cycle; canned pumps run one-plus-one redundancy at high cost share, with domestic makers such as Feilong, Dayuan and Jiangsu Leili deploying; and microchannel cold plates raise machining and yield barriers with value up over 20%. These are the gates a cold plate CDU manufacturer must clear together with its upstream.

Can new players enter? As an integrator in the giant chains, no: certification takes 12 to 16 months with at least three deployed cases, eight vendors lock about 90%, and every Rubin generation re-certifies. Three windows remain. The domestic ecosystem, with liquid cooling server penetration climbing from under 3% in 2021 to 20% in 2025 and over 50% expected by 2027. Operators and intelligent computing centers, whose 2025 procurement exceeded 20,000 racks at about RMB 8 billion with standardized bidding open to newcomers. And core component substitution, where single-point links such as the data center liquid cooling manifold and quick connectors carry higher margins than complete systems. Four criteria separate survivors: customer channel, technology genes, certification endurance and capacity elasticity. Meanwhile, sub-300kW CDUs already face oversupply and price wars, so entrants without technology or customers have little to do with this wave.

Three risks. Orders do not equal profit: Envicool grew revenue 26.03% in Q1 2026 while net profit fell 81.97%, because expansion, certification and payment terms burn cash, and the next watershed is profit, not delivery volume. Share calibers distort: "top five at 90%," "eight vendors at 88% to 94%" and "a vendor at 70%" use different denominators, so check the caliber first. And low-end oversupply is here while high-end carries rhythm risk: high-power capacity is scheduled into 2029, so if Rubin's ramp slips, it sits idle. Watch three things: Rubin's mass production pace, who eats the standard dividend, and whether the giant chains' second-supplier pattern loosens. From the cold plate to the cold plate liquid manifold, the whole chain is moving into the same link at once, and when an OEM and a parts maker add capacity on the same day, the signal is more direct than any research report.

Against this backdrop of capacity-cycle uncertainty, distorted market metrics and shifting supply-chain rules, operators need robust, full-stack liquid-cooling partners that can navigate market volatility. AI never pauses—so why should your cooling? EXTRCOOL's liquid-cooling platform brings CDUs, cold plates, manifolds, and piping together into one seamlessly integrated system. Pick from our ready-to-deploy stock, or partner with our engineers to build a design tailored to your specific site. Expect exceptional heat removal, reduced power costs, and a smaller environmental footprint—all supported by a proven record at gigawatt-scale data centres worldwide. For operations where every second of uptime matters, EXTRCOOL is the reliable partner you can trust. Browse our complete offering or request a personalised quote at: https://www.extrcool.com/