Shell launches its first DLC cooling fluid

• Oil and gas giant Shell has launched its first cooling fluid for direct liquid cooled (DLC) hardware. The company says its Shell DLC Fluid S3 has been designed to meet the needs of AI and high-performance computing data centers.

• Based on propylene glycol, the fluid will complement Shell’s existing cooling liquid portfolio, which is aimed at immersion-cooled installations.

• According to Shell, the S3 fluid has been formulated to ensure long-term corrosion protection for DLC systems.

• The fluid meets Open Compute Project PG25 coolant specifications, including standards for material compatibility, and offers antifreeze protection down to temperatures of -10°C (14°F).

• Shell has offered immersion cooling fluids to help cool high-density compute hardware for several years, and last year showcased immersion tanks filled with its coolant at a data center in Houston, Texas.

• Other oil companies including Shell, Castrol, ExxonMobil, ENEOS, and SK Enmove have launched data center coolant fluids. US food giant Cargill and chemical firm Chemours are also active in the space.

LiquidStack launches modular CDU able to offer 10MW of cooling capacity

• Liquid cooling firm LiquidStack has launched a new Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) for liquid-cooled data center environments. The company this week unveiled the GigaModular CDU. Described as the industry’s first modular, scalable CDU, the system offers up to 10MW cooling capacity.

• The system supports single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling heat loads from 2.5MW to 10MW.

• The CDU is serviceable from the front of the unit, with no rear or end access required, allowing the system to be placed against the wall. The skid-mounted system can come with rail and overhead piping pre-installed or shipped as separate cabinets for on-site assembly.

• LiquidStack said quoting for the new CDU will begin by September 2025, with production in LiquidStack’s manufacturing facilities in Carrollton, Texas.

• Founded as Allied Control in 2013, LiquidStack offers both single and two-phase liquid cooling solutions. It also offers prefabricated modular cooling solutions for Edge applications.

• The company launched a 1MW CDU for direct-to-chip liquid cooling last year.

Vertiv unveils trio of liquid cooling CDUs for AI data centers

• Vertiv has launched three new coolant distribution units (CDUs) for liquid cooled data centers. The power and cooling technology vendor is expanding its CoolChip CDU range with the addition of the CoolChip CDU 70, CoolChip CDU 100, CoolChip CDU 600 models.

• It says the direct-to-chip solutions are designed to meet the needs of AI and high-performance computing workloads.

• The trio of CDUs offers different cooling capacities, with the 70 range effective up to 70kW, the 100 up to 100kW, and the 600 operating at up to 600kW for the most advanced workloads.

• The 100 model is an in-rack solution, designed for data centers that want to switch to liquid cooling one cabinet at a time, while the 70 and 600 are designed to chill rows of racks.

• Vertiv says the CDUs can be installed in retrofit or new data center environments.

Castrol launches fluid management service for data center liquid cooling

• Lubricant specialist Castrol has launched a fluid management service for data center liquid cooling. It says the new service will help bridge the knowledge gap that exists in the industry as data centers transition from air cooling systems to liquid-based set-ups, which are increasingly being required to chill high-density racks.

• Castrol, which is owned by BP, says the service model covers all four phases of the data center operation lifecycle; system start-up, ongoing maintenance, break-fix support, and fluid disposal. This approach “is designed to help remove operational barriers in the adoption of liquid cooling in data centres,” the company said.

• Castrol says it will work with its partner network to deliver the service via third-party providers.

• Castrol already makes a range of liquid cooling fluids, which it has been marketing to customers for several years. Last year, it installed a modular data center at its R&D center in Oxfordshire, UK, to test and demonstrate the efficacy of its products.

Trump administration renegotiates CHIPS Act grants

• The Trump administration is renegotiating some of the CHIPS Act grants agreed by former President Joe Biden during his time in office. Lutnick did not provide any further information about which grants have been renegotiated, but did tell lawmakers: “All the deals are getting better, and the only deals that are not getting done are deals that should have never been done in the first place,” implying that some funding agreements could be scrapped altogether.

• President Trump has been critical of the CHIPS Act, instead arguing that the government should levy tariffs on the semiconductor industry instead of handing out grants and loans to chip companies.

• In January 2025, Trump pledged to “return production” of semiconductors to the United States by imposing a “100 percent tax” on their overseas production, claiming that tariffs would incentivize companies to manufacture chips in the US instead of Taiwan.

• Trump has yet to impose any tariffs on semiconductors; however, some companies have already announced plans to invest in US-based chip manufacturing efforts.

• In March, TSMC announced that it would invest $100 billion into the US after President Trump criticized Taiwan for 'stealing' America's chip business, said that the CHIPS Act was a failure, and threatened tariffs.

• Additionally, this week GlobalFoundries announced it is investing an additional $3 billion to boost semiconductor manufacturing at its facilities in New York and Vermont, bringing its total investment in the US to $16bn.

Endeavour to offer sodium batteries to data centers, deploys in Edged’s facilities

• Endeavour, the owner of data center firm Edged and cooling firm ThermalWorks, is to offer sodium batteries to data centers. The company this week announced a strategic partnership with battery maker Tiamat to deliver sodium-based energy storage for AI data centers and grid applications.

• Endeavour said Tiamat’s sodium-based battery technology can fully charge and discharge at rates exceeding 60 times in one hour (60 C-rate) – surpassing typical lithium-ion batteries (1-3 C-rate).

• The company said this responsiveness, coupled with a long life and high energy density, makes these batteries suited to manage volatile AI compute loads – while avoiding thermal runway.

• Tiamat was founded in 2017 in Amiens, France. Its batteries will be used by Endeavour, including in its Edged data centers, and will be made available exclusively through Endeavour to other innovators and hyperscalers.

• Endeavour’s ThermalWorks waterless cooling system can reportedly support rack densities of up to 70kW with air cooling and 200kW with liquid cooling.

Aligned launches cooling technology lab in Phoenix, Arizona

• Aligned Data Centers has set up a lab to test new cooling systems for AI infrastructure. The data center developer has set up the Advanced Cooling Lab in Phoenix, Arizona, and says it will be “dedicated to testing and innovating Aligned’s flexible design and patented and patent-pending air and liquid cooling solutions to continue to master the thermal demands of the densest GPUs and emerging AI accelerators.”

• The lab features both the company’s Delta Cube air cooling system and its DeltaFlows liquid cooling counterpart, creating what the company describes as “a true hybrid cooling environment.” The systems can be tested alongside Aligned’s modular data center design system, AMI.

• Aligned operates a 55-acre campus in Phoenix, at 2500 W Union Hills Drive, which first opened in 2017 and is now home to three data centers.

• The company counts Macquarie Asset Management, CenterSquare, Mubadala, and Patrizia among its investors.

Immersion cooling firm GRC secures investment from Samsung Ventures

• GRC, a provider of single-phase immersion cooling for data centers, has secured investment from Samsung. The company this week announced it has secured investment from Samsung Ventures to support its growth. Terms of the funding round weren’t shared.

• Ventures joins GRC's major shareholders, including HTS, SK Enmove, and ENEOS in the latest financing, while Samsung’s C&T construction unit has entered into a strategic partnership with the company.

• With some $2.5 billion in assets under management, Samsung Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Samsung Group. It has previously invested in AI chip startup EnCharge AI, AI firm Anthropic, cloud company ZConverter, RISC-V startup SiFive, and storage firm Pure Storage.

• Samsung Construction and Trading E&C Group and GRC have also signed a business collaboration agreement.

• GRC was founded as Green Revolution Cooling in 2009 and provides single-phase immersion cooling technologies. It services both GPU and cryptomining applications, and claims deployments in 22 countries globally.

• According to CrunchBase data, GRC has raised $35.4 million across five previous funding rounds. SK took a stake in the company in 2022.

Data4 develops first liquid cooled deployment at Marcoussis campus

• European data center firm Data4 is deploying its first liquid cooled data halls outside Paris, France. The company is deploying a direct liquid cooling (DLC) proof of concept (POC) project to its DC01 facility at its Marcoussis campus.

• The commissioning is part of a “major retrofit” alongside Schneider and Danfoss. Data4 and Danfoss jointly designed a new optimized prototype cooling distribution unit (CDU) for the project.

• Rentaload has also contributed the first hybrid load banks Liquid+Air, capable of diffusing heat both through air and through the DLC water network.

• Data4 said this new equipment offers infrastructure testing capability, simulating racks of up to 140kW Liquid + 60kW Air Smart Load Bank.

• Following this first deployment, Data4 said it had 250MW of DLC design projects currently in progress across all of its data centers.

Northern Data launches data center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Northern Data has launched a new data center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The firm is also being courted by potential buyers.

• 01. Northern Data launches in Pittsburgh

The company this week announced the opening of its new North American AI and HPC data center, acquired in early 2024.

The facility will be operated by Ardent Data Centers, Northern Data’s wholly-owned HPC data center provider subsidiary.

The facility will provide 20MW of capacity, expected through a phased development approach. Set to house GPUs and large-scale compute infrastructure and support 135kW+ rack densities, the site will utilize rear door heat exchangers (RDHx) and direct-to-chip (D2C) liquid cooling, and operate with a target PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) as low as 1.15.

• 02. Interested parties circle Northern Data?

Northern Data Group was initially founded as Northern Bitcoin AG in Germany in 2009 and branded itself as a 'green' Bitcoin mining company.

In 2020, Northern Bitcoin was officially renamed Northern Data Group and moved its focus to HPC. And in the summer of 2023, Northern split its business into three brands: Taiga Cloud, Ardent Data Centers, and Peak Mining.

Late last month, Northern Data announced it had received expressions of interest from unnamed "US-listed companies" to enter into discussions focused on merging or acquiring its Taiga Cloud and Ardent divisions.

Amazon to expand number of data centers using recycled water to 120

• Amazon is expanding the number of locations that will use treated wastewater for data center cooling from 20 to 120. The company this week announced it will expand its use of water recycling to more than 120 locations in states and counties where the cloud giant has data center operations by 2030.

• Though data centers typically reuse water by recirculating the same water through their cooling systems multiple times, it is often drawn from potable (drinkable) sources. As the water can collect bacteria and limescale, it is treated with chemicals, leaving it unsuitable for people to drink once it leaves the facility.

• Today, Amazon uses recycled water instead of potable or drinkable water across 20 locations; 16 in Virginia and four in Santa Clara in California, and said it is now expanding those efforts to more places in Virginia, as well as in Georgia and Mississippi.

• In 2020, Amazon said it had become the first data center operator approved to use reclaimed water with direct evaporative cooling technology in a project with Loudoun Water.

• The reclaimed wastewater (i.e, sewage) used by Amazon undergoes a three-step treatment process that removes 99 percent of impurities. After the recycled water runs through the cooling system, it returns to the wastewater facility for another round of treatment so it can be used again.