Eaton acquires Boyd Thermal, bringing a portfolio for liquid cooling for data centers in-house.
Eaton acquires the Boyd Thermal division of Boyd Corporation from Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The electrical systems specialist pays 9.5 billion dollars for the acquisition. Boyd Thermal has an expected revenue of 1.7 billion dollars for fiscal 2026, of which 1.5 billion dollars comes from the company’s core activity: liquid cooling for data centers.
From Air to Liquid
Expertise in direct liquid cooling is rapidly gaining importance. Driven by Nvidia and the AI hype, manufacturers are packing more components into a single server. This increased density results in racks with ever higher consumption. 40 kW per rack is no longer an exception today, 145 kW racks with Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs are planned for the near future, and by 2028, the first 1 MW racks are expected to roll off the line.
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This high consumption is accompanied by significant heat development, against which traditional air cooling in a data center is not equipped. Cooling servers with such power can only be done with liquid cooling. Data center operators must make existing and new data centers compatible with liquid cooling, which requires a lot of expertise.
Combined Portfolio
Boyd Thermal has that expertise. Eaton, for its part, is already present in the world of data centers with its UPS systems and power distribution units. On the power supply side, Eaton can already play an important role in enabling the installation of HPC/AI racks. By bringing Boyd Thermal in-house, Eaton can offer a total solution with power and cooling.
That is also the goal: “By combining Boyd Thermal’s liquid cooling technology and service model with Eaton’s existing products and scale, we can offer our customers more value,” says Paulo Ruiz, CEO of Eaton. “Especially in data centers, our combined expertise in power supply and liquid cooling, from the chip to the power grid, will enable customers to manage the increasing power demand more effectively.”
Following Schneider
Eaton’s vision is not revolutionary. Competitor Schneider Electric completed the acquisition of cooling specialist Motivair earlier this year, also with an eye on an end-to-end portfolio around power delivery and cooling.
That Eaton is putting 22,5 times Boyd Thermal’s EBITDA on the table illustrates a belief in the growth of demand for direct liquid cooling in the data center market. Boyd Thermal is headquartered in the US and employs over 5,000 people. The company also has sites in Europe and Asia. Eaton also has a strong American presence but is headquartered in Dublin. The acquisition is expected to be completed this year.