The top 10 data center cooling equipment suppliers in the USA in 2026 are Vertiv, Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls, Trane Technologies, Modine, Carrier, Daikin Applied, nVent, STULZ and Munters. Vertiv leads on the strength of the broadest air and liquid cooling portfolio, a large US installed base and an expanding liquid cooling plant in Ohio.

Cooling has moved from the back of the building to the center of the AI data center. GPU racks now draw well over 100 kW each, liquid cooling has become a requirement for the newest NVIDIA systems, and cooling equipment lead times increasingly set the pace of US data center construction. 

This article mentions the ten suppliers best positioned in the US market and explains what each one makes, where it builds it, and how it is preparing for AI-scale heat loads.

Why Data Center Cooling Matters More Than Ever?

Every watt a server consumes ends up as heat, and removing it is one of the largest costs of running a data center. Johnson Controls estimates that cooling accounts for 30-40% of total data center energy use. AI has raised the stakes: NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 places 72 GPUs in a single rack drawing roughly 120-132 kW, far beyond what air alone can remove, and it is designed as a liquid-cooled system.

The result is a hybrid data center. Liquid now captures most of the heat at the chip, while chillers, air handlers and heat-rejection equipment still remove the rest and dump it outdoors. That is why demand is rising for both new liquid cooling products and traditional cooling plants.

Top 10 Data Center Cooling Equipment Suppliers at a Glance

Vertiv

Vertiv is a pure-play critical digital infrastructure company whose thermal business goes back more than 60 years to Liebert Corporation, a pioneer of data center precision cooling. That heritage gives it one of the largest installed bases of CRAC and CRAH units in US data centers, and it now pairs that air-side portfolio with chillers and a fast-growing liquid cooling line.

Its liquid cooling range includes CoolChip coolant distribution units of up to 2.3 MW, which became the first CDUs qualified as NVIDIA DSX Ready, and CoolLoop chilled-water rear-door heat exchangers rated up to 80 kW per rack. It has also launched a CoolCenter Immersion system in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, though US availability has not been confirmed.

Vertiv has spent 2025-2026 building out the whole "thermal chain" through acquisitions: PurgeRite for liquid cooling fluid management, Strategic Thermal Labs for cold-plate and server-side engineering, and ThermoKey for heat exchangers and dry coolers. At home, it is expanding its Ironton, Ohio, plant to lift liquid cooling and chilled water system capacity by about 45%, with the expansion due in the second quarter of 2027.

Schneider Electric (Motivair)

Schneider Electric combines its long-running Uniflair air cooling and chiller lines with the liquid cooling expertise of Motivair, the Buffalo, New York. Motivair has since opened a fourth production facility in Buffalo, and products ship from manufacturing hubs in North America, Europe and Asia.

The Motivair by Schneider Electric range now spans CDUs from 105 kW to 3.5 MW, ChilledDoor rear-door heat exchangers, dynamic cold plates, liquid-to-air heat dissipation units and technology cooling system loops. 

In January 2026 it launched the 2.5 MW MCDU-70, and in September 2026 the 3.5 MW WCDU, which combines a CDU with fan-wall air cooling in one unit so operators can rebalance air and liquid without redesigning a hall.

Johnson Controls

Johnson Controls brings three established data center brands under one roof: YORK chillers, Silent-Aire custom air handling and M&M Carnot thermal systems. Its YORK YVAM air-cooled magnetic-bearing chillers are engineered for hyperscale and AI data centers and use no on-site water, while its YORK absorption chillers can run on waste heat and cut chiller electricity use by more than 90%.

On the liquid side, its Silent-Aire CDU platform scales from 500 kW to more than 10 MW and is manufactured in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. In 2026 Johnson Controls agreed to acquire Alloy Enterprises, a maker of direct liquid cooling components, and has invested in two-phase direct-to-chip specialist Accelsius.

Trane Technologies

Trane Technologies is one of the largest US commercial chiller suppliers, and in 2026 it moved decisively to the chip. It completed the acquisition of Stellar Energy Americas, a provider of modular, turnkey data center cooling plants, in February 2026, and bought out LiquidStack, the Carrollton, Texas, liquid cooling company it first invested in in 2023.

LiquidStack adds direct-to-chip CDUs and both single- and two-phase immersion cooling; its two-phase immersion has been adopted by NTT and Standard Power. Together with Trane's chillers, heat rejection and controls, the deal lets Trane supply the full thermal chain from the central plant to the rack.

Modine (Airedale by Modine)

Modine has transformed itself into a data center cooling company. Its data center sales rose 73% to more than USD 1.1 billion in the fiscal year to March 2026, then jumped 95% to USD 439.7 million in the quarter to September 2026, driven mainly by North American hyperscalers. In October 2026 it spun off its vehicle-focused Performance Technologies business to concentrate on climate solutions.

Sold under the Airedale by Modine brand, its portfolio covers chillers (including a new 3 MW TurboChill model), dry coolers, CRAC and CRAH units, fan walls, rear-door heat exchangers, CDUs, immersion solutions and modular data centers. Modine has signed a multi-year capacity agreement to supply more than USD 4 billion of cooling products to a key strategic customer and is investing USD 100 million to expand US manufacturing, though rapid growth and supplier constraints have pressured margins.

Carrier Global

Carrier packages its data center offer under the QuantumLeap brand, which brings together chillers (including magnetic-bearing models), custom air handling, coolant distribution units, Automated Logic building controls and Nlyte data center management software, deployed in more than 300 data centers. Its CDU family covers 1.3 MW to 5 MW for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

The business is growing quickly: Carrier says its data center sales roughly doubled to about USD 1 billion in 2025, it entered 2026 with more than USD 1 billion of backlog. It is also deepening its liquid cooling capabilities through investments in ZutaCore, a two-phase, waterless direct-to-chip specialist, which it expanded in April 2026.

Daikin Applied

Daikin Applied Americas has assembled a data center portfolio through three US acquisitions. Alliance Air Products (2023) added custom air handling, DDC Solutions (August 2025) added ultra-high-density cooling cabinets, and Chilldyne (November 2025) added negative-pressure direct-to-chip CDUs designed to prevent coolant leaks from damaging GPU servers. Chilldyne has been deploying liquid-cooled GPU clusters since 2014.

These sit alongside Daikin's air-cooled, water-cooled and hybrid chillers. The company has created a dedicated global data center business unit and is investing USD 163 million in a 71,000-square-foot data center cooling design and test facility in Minnesota, due to open in 2027.

nVent

nVent supplies row-level CDUs rated at 800 kW and above, in-rack CDUs, liquid-to-air "sidecar" units that bring liquid cooling to halls without facility water, RDHX PRO rear-door heat exchangers and rack manifolds. It has deployed more than 2 GW of liquid cooling globally.

Its partnerships reach the heart of the AI ecosystem: it collaborates with NVIDIA on AI-ready liquid cooling, with AMD on rack-level cooling for the Helios platform, and with Siemens on a joint reference architecture for NVIDIA AI data centers. 

In July 2026 it leased a second 160,000-square-foot plant in Blaine, Minnesota, its third liquid cooling capacity expansion in three years. nVent does not make chillers or CRAH units.

STULZ

STULZ is a family-owned precision cooling specialist that has served North American data centers for more than 45 years. STULZ USA is headquartered in Frederick, Maryland, with manufacturing and support facilities in Dayton, Tennessee, and Denton, Texas.

Its range covers CRAC and CRAH perimeter units (the largest rated at over 1 MW), CyberWall fan walls, CyberCool free-cooling chillers, CyberCool CDUs, CyberRack active rear doors and an integrated modular system that cools up to 100 kW per rack using 80% liquid and 20% air. Immersion cooling is offered with partner Asperitas.

Munters

Munters' Data Center Technologies business has been one of the biggest winners of US orders in the past year. In late 2025 it booked a USD 82 million chiller order for a US AI colocation facility, a SEK 840 million chiller order from another US colocation customer, and a record SEK 2.1 billion order for CRAHs, CDUs and chillers from a US colocation company, with deliveries running into 2028.

Its portfolio combines custom chilled-water CRAHs, SyCool systems, CDUs and Geoclima Circlemiser chillers from the Italian chiller maker it acquired in 2024. To serve US demand and avoid tariffs, Munters has been ramping chiller production at its data center plant in Virginia.

Other Data Center Cooling Suppliers to Watch

• Eaton (Boyd Thermal): Eaton completed its USD 9.55 billion acquisition of Boyd Thermal in March 2026, adding liquid cooling components and systems to its power portfolio. It is not ranked because it has no verified chiller, CRAH or heat-rejection range.

• Ecolab (CoolIT Systems): Ecolab completed its roughly USD 4.75 billion purchase of CoolIT, a leading CDU and cold-plate maker, in July 2026. CoolIT's manufacturing is in Canada, China and Vietnam.

• Delta Electronics: shipped about USD 1.6 billion of liquid-to-air cooling products in 2025 and now ships a 3 MW CDU, mainly through server and rack supply chains.

• Baltimore Aircoil Company (BAC): a Maryland-based heat-rejection leader in cooling towers and dry and adiabatic coolers, with a COBALT immersion cooling system.

• Rittal and Submer: active in racks, in-row cooling and immersion, with a smaller verified US data center cooling footprint.

Types of Data Center Cooling Equipment

Trends Shaping US Data Center Cooling in 2026

1. Liquid cooling becomes the default for AI racks

AI GPUs generate 20 to 50 times more heat than traditional CPUs, according to Motivair by Schneider Electric, and rack densities have passed 140 kW, with projections moving toward 1 MW per rack. Single-phase direct-to-chip cooling with a CDU is now the standard design for GPU racks, and NVIDIA has begun qualifying CDUs for its DSX AI factory program.

2. The HVAC majors buy their way in

In little more than a year, nearly every independent liquid cooling leader was acquired: Motivair by Schneider Electric, LiquidStack by Trane, Chilldyne by Daikin Applied, Boyd Thermal by Eaton and CoolIT by Ecolab.

3. CDUs scale to megawatts

CDU capacities have grown from hundreds of kilowatts to multi-megawatt units in two years. Carrier now offers up to 5 MW, Schneider 3.5 MW, Delta 3 MW and Vertiv 2.3 MW, while Johnson Controls' platform scales past 10 MW.

4. Air cooling is not going away

Even fully liquid-cooled AI halls still need air systems to remove the remaining heat, and chillers to feed the liquid loops. That is why hybrid products such as Schneider's WCDU are emerging, and why chiller and CRAH orders, such as Munters' record US contracts and Modine's 3 MW chiller, are still rising.

5. Water and energy efficiency

With cooling consuming 30-40% of data center energy, suppliers are pushing warmer water loops, free cooling and dry or adiabatic heat rejection. Johnson Controls' YVAM chillers use no on-site water, BAC promotes no- and low-water coolers, and waste-heat-driven absorption chillers can cut chiller electricity use by more than 90%.

6. Cooling supply is now a construction bottleneck

Cooling equipment increasingly gates US data center schedules. Modine has signed a multi-year deal to supply more than USD 4 billion of cooling products to a single customer, and Vertiv, nVent, Munters, Modine and Daikin are all expanding US capacity. Supply strains are already visible: Modine has cited supplier constraints and the costs of rapid expansion as pressures on its data center margins.

Conclusion

Vertiv, Schneider Electric and Johnson Controls lead the US data center cooling market in 2026, but the field is changing fast. HVAC majors such as Trane, Carrier and Daikin Applied have bought or built liquid cooling to reach the chip, while specialists such as Modine, nVent, STULZ and Munters are scaling US production to meet hyperscale demand. As AI racks head toward megawatt densities, the winners will be the suppliers that can deliver the whole thermal chain, from chiller to chip, on time and in volume.

Track US data center projects and cooling infrastructure demand with Blackridge Research.

 Explore project developments, investment activity, and construction pipelines through Blackridge's Data Center Projects Database, tracking projects from announcement to operation. Contact Blackridge Research to access project intelligence.