Nick Schweissguth, Director of Product and Commercial Enablement, LiquidStack, on what the coming year holds.
Unprecedented transparency around AI data center energy usage will boost heat re-use and sharpen sustainability regulations.
The EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive will mark the first time real-world data on the massive energy demands of AI data centers is made public, moving beyond the purely predictive models of the past to require concrete reporting on power usage and energy efficiency. This, along with other mandates such as California’s Climate Disclosure Laws, will have a profound impact on regulation activity in the second half of next year. The unprecedented transparency will drive community advocacy for stricter legislation regarding power efficiency and water usage, with a sharper focus on sustainability overall. From a technology standpoint, advancements in heat re-use will surge given the EU’s mandate regarding minimum heat recovery standards.
Two-phase liquid cooling will break into the mainstream.
This year, direct-to-chip paved the way for liquid cooling to become the accepted mode of cooling for data centers operating at AI scale. But future chips will significantly exceed today’s thermal performance needs and will thus require drastically stronger cooling capacities. As chip power densities continue to accelerate in 2025, two-phase liquid cooling will emerge as a key approach to enable data centers to stand up to the immense cooling demands of AI.
2025 will be a pivotal scale-up year for direct-to-chip liquid cooling, but CDU supply chain constraints will stall deployment.
The hybrid cooling strategies that hyperscalers and data center operators planned out in 2024 will finally become operational in 2025 – but the liquid cooling industry will be in entirely unknown territory in terms of production capacity strain. Demand for key direct-to-chip CDUs (coolant-distribution units) will surge, with supply chain constraints – which will be further complicated by the coming tariffs – emerging in the second half of the year. Companies vying to capture the direct-to-chip market will ultimately prevail based on their ability to produce at scale and build bulletproof relationships with suppliers.
AI will strain the power grid, spurring new data center builds in unexpected locations.
The power grid is bracing for an unprecedented challenge as AI data centers’ appetite for power threatens to overwhelm existing infrastructure. This energy crisis will spur action from both utility companies and data center operators. Utility companies will embark on massive infrastructure upgrades to meet surging demand, from advanced energy storage to smart grid solutions. Data center operators will adopt a ‘follow the power’ strategy, extending and diversifying new build locations far beyond traditional locales.
