Vertiv Acquires ThermoKey to Combat Escalating Heat in Artificial Intelligence Facilities
Amsterdam, Monday 30 March 2026
To manage the massive heat generated by artificial intelligence workloads, Vertiv has acquired Italian firm ThermoKey, strategically expanding its crucial cooling infrastructure for high-density European data centres.
Scaling Thermal Infrastructure for AI
On 30 March 2026, global digital infrastructure provider Vertiv finalised its agreement to acquire Italian heat dissipation specialist ThermoKey [1][2]. Founded in 1991, ThermoKey holds deep industry expertise in manufacturing dry coolers and microchannel-based heat exchangers [1]. This acquisition is explicitly tailored to address the unprecedented thermal loads generated by high-density artificial intelligence data centres [1].
Tackling the Data Movement Deficit
While managing physical heat is one half of the hardware equation, resolving data transfer bottlenecks represents the other critical frontier in AI scaling [GPT]. On 24 March 2026, Swiss-based Kandou AI secured approximately €259 million [alert! ‘Source text presents conflicting funding figures, citing both €259 million and $225 million for the recent round; €259 million is used here as the primary headline figure’] in a strategic funding round led by Maverick Silicon [3]. The round, which saw participation from SoftBank Group, Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Alchip Technologies, highlights the immense capital flowing into foundational interconnect hardware [3].
Engineering the Next Generation of Compute
This recent strategic capital injection brings Kandou’s total historical funding to over $500 million, representing a phenomenal 4900 per cent conceptual increase compared to its early $10 million funding round in 2012 [3]. The firm’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Srujan Linga, stated that their initial product line will target AI systems and high-speed rack-level connectivity exceeding 448G [3]. Ultimately, the company harbours ambitions to progressively cover the entire data infrastructure stack [3].