Infrastructure & Hardware

Proof-of-concept for immersion cooling data centres in Italy

Castrol, a British multinational lubricants company owned by BP, has supported the launch of a proof-of-concept for immersion-cooled data centres in Italy by MGH Systems and Dacta. The proof-of-concept project, involving Castrol’s immersion cooling fluids and thermal experience, has been launched in collaboration with Submer (the tank provider) and Compal (the server provider). It marks a step forward in efficient data centre operations and the growth of liquid cooling in Italy. It also aims to showcase how the data centre industry can future-proof itself and keep up with increased computing demand. Peter Huang, Global Vice President of Data Centre Thermal Management at Castrol, says, “The Italian data centre industry is booming: investments are expected to double to €10 billion between 2025-2026 compared with the previous two years. However, to make the most of this opportunity, the industry must innovate – so we’re pleased to help drive the adoption of immersion cooling in Italy. “Our recent industry research indicates that traditional air cooling systems struggle to handle increased computing demands from AI and edge computing applications, with 74% of data centre experts believing immersion cooling is now essential to meet current power requirements. By working closely with other industry experts on this project, we aim to showcase how immersion cooling can create more efficient, future-proof data centres that are reliable and scalable.” This project will be based in the heart of Italy’s data centre market in Vimercate, a Northern Italian town that sits just outside Milan. In recent years, the region has become a central hub for future growth in the sector, with Equinix, Vantage, Microsoft, Amazon-AWS, and others investing billions into the area. The deployment will use Castrol ON’s Immersion Cooling Fluid DC 20, a single-phase dielectric coolant with improved thermal management performance that is designed to enable stable and more efficient cooling of data centres. Marco Brivio, MGH Systems Founder, comments, "As our first deployment in Italy, this proof-of-concept puts the country firmly at the forefront of efficient data centre innovation, with collaboration between Castrol and Submer proving critical to bringing this vision to life. This early deployment demonstrates that MGH and Dacta are deeply committed to supporting the evolution of IT technologies towards High Performance Computing and AI. As designers and integrators of immersion cooling systems, MGH and Dacta are driving more efficient use of data centres, significantly improving both IT power density per square metre and overall energy consumption." Franco Caroli, Southern Europe & Africa Sales Director at Submer, adds, “This deployment is the outcome of a strategic collaboration that redefines how we approach efficiency, resilience, and sustainability in digital infrastructure. Working alongside MGH Systems, and in collaboration with Castrol and Compal, it showcases how we ensure that a deployment isn’t just technically sound, but also commercially scalable. It sets a precedent for what the future of data centres in southern Europe can look like.” For more from Castrol, click here.

Nebius launches in the UK

Nebius, an AI infrastructure company, today announced the expansion of its global AI infrastructure footprint with a deployment of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs in the UK. The deployment should enhance the UK’s national digital infrastructure and drive long-term economic growth by enabling British firms – from start-ups to enterprises – to build AI using one of the world’s most advanced compute. It should also support the UK’s world-leading academic and research communities and public services, including the NHS. Arkady Volozh, Founder and CEO of Nebius, says, “We’re pleased to be providing compute infrastructure that will support future innovation by British businesses, researchers, and the public sector. The UK is where AI is being built, tested, and deployed at scale across industries from fintech to life sciences. Being here puts us closer to the start-ups, researchers, and enterprise leaders shaping what’s next.” Nebius’ first investment in the UK is the latest milestone in its buildout of AI infrastructure to support AI innovation at scale. With the addition of the UK, Nebius will operate seven AI clusters in six countries across Europe, the US, and the Middle East, making the company one of the largest independent AI infrastructure builders globally. The deployment of thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs in the UK is expected to be operational during Q4 2025. Nebius AI Cloud leverages the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform, and the company is the first Reference Platform NVIDIA Cloud Partner headquartered in Europe. Dave Salvator, NVIDIA Director of Accelerated Computing Products, comments, “Local infrastructure gives enterprises and start-ups in every nation a foundation for building their own AI-enabled future. Nebius’ UK-based NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra infrastructure will support British innovators in developing and deploying advanced reasoning, agentic, and physical AI applications.” The GPU deployment supports a key objective laid out in the UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan to build up Britain’s domestic compute capacity. As well as benefiting British AI innovators and enterprises, the AI infrastructure being delivered by Nebius should contribute to supporting job creation and attracting additional investments into the UK’s AI economy. Nebius recently launched its first specialist offering with a team led out of the UK to support the healthcare, life sciences, and biotech sectors. Other British customers include companies in financial services and generative AI, as well as research institutes such as the London Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Nebius’ team in the UK also contributes to AI research, with in-house AI R&D also led out of London. For more from Nebius, click here.

New Kao Data campaign highlights women

Kao Data, a developer and operator of high-performance data centres, announces the launch of 'Critical Careers: Celebrating Women in Digital Infrastructure,' a new campaign that highlights the stories, careers, and contributions of women across the digital infrastructure sector. With the sector evolving at unprecedented speed to support AI, cloud, and enterprise innovation, the project brings together interviews with women from all backgrounds, geographies, ages, and disciplines. From engineering to real estate, from marketing to HR, the women featured in Critical Careers represent a wide spectrum of roles and life experiences. Many are well-known industry leaders, while others may be less familiar by name. “Critical Careers aims to celebrate the remarkable women who are thriving in digital infrastructure. We wanted to take an in-depth look at the countless, impactful contributions women from all disciplines and at all stages of their careers are making to the industry,” says Kalay Moody, Chief People Officer at Kao Data. “What we discovered is that no two stories are the same, but together they reflect the importance of diverse experiences in driving progress and innovation in mission critical infrastructure.” “Women in the data centre industry bring a balance that is essential for holistic problem-solving and innovation. By integrating different perspectives and approaches, teams can achieve more balanced and effective solutions,” comments Cláudia Alves, Strategic Negotiator, Google. “Critical Careers is showcasing all the ways women are making a difference in the data centre industry and that there’s no one way to lead, contribute, or succeed.” For more from Kao Data, click here.

Conapto and Vertical Data announce partnership

Conapto, a Swedish sustainable data centre provider, and Vertical Data, a provider of enterprise AI business solutions, have jointly announced a strategic partnership aimed at delivering scalable, secure, and environmentally sustainable AI infrastructure. With digital transformation accelerating across industries, businesses are increasingly seeking partners who can provide robust IT infrastructure while maintaining a strong commitment to sustainability. This collaboration brings together Vertical Data’s experience in provision of GPU-based AI infrastructure with Conapto’s AI-ready, climate-friendly colocation services. “We’re excited to partner with Vertical Data to meet the rising demand for AI and data-driven infrastructure,” announces Stefan Nilsson, CCO of Conapto. “This collaboration allows us to extend our value to customers by providing turnkey, AI-optimised environments that are both sustainable and performance-driven.” Vertical Data will leverage Conapto’s Stockholm-based data centres to support its growing customer base in Sweden. These facilities are powered by 100% renewable energy and incorporate heat reuse for district heating, as well as grid support to the national grid. “This partnership allows us to extend our capabilities and offer our customers reliable, high-performance infrastructure with sustainability built-in,” says Hamid Djam, CTO at Vertical Data. “Conapto’s track record and vision make them the ideal partner as we continue to scale.” For more from Conapto, click here.

LFB launches Lennox-branded fan wall

Adding to its ApX Series range of cooling infrastructure for hyperscale and edge data centres, LFB Group, a European HVAC and refrigeration company, has launched its new Fan Wall Unit (FWU) - a modular cooling product built with the aim of meeting the demands of modern computing environments. LFB Group, following its transition from Lennox EMEA in April 2025, says its Lennox-branded FWU has a scalable cooling range from 100kW to 1000kW and comes with a compact footprint. It features electronically commutated (EC) fans, advanced coil designs, and customisable configurations, with a modular architecture allowing for capacity expansion. The company believes that, despite the rise in AI and both chip and rack densities, air cooling is still of importance. Matt Evans, CEO of the Data Centre Solutions business at LFB Group, says, "Cooling has always been one of the most pressing challenges facing data centre operators. But, with the rise in demand for data centres - as well as the rise in co-location data centres - we’re entering a new era where flexibility is being required more than ever before. "Our Fan Wall Unit is designed to deliver exactly that. It combines the performance figures, scalability, and adaptability that today’s environments require, without adding unnecessary complexity. The FWU showcases experience-led system design that integrates seamlessly into a variety of data centre footprints. "Our focus has always been on listening to operators, understanding their real-world constraints, and helping them solve the challenges that slow their growth. We see this as a collaborative journey - one that doesn’t end with installation, but continues as needs change, technology advances, and workloads evolve. The introduction of this tailored Fan Wall Unit represents a meaningful step forward, and we’re excited about the role it will play in shaping the next generation of digital infrastructure as part of a broader pipeline of innovations that are on the horizon.”

ZTE urges industry to rethink energy efficiency

ZTE Corporation, a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company, showcased its AI-embedded solution for data centre infrastructure at Data Centre World Frankfurt 2025. As artificial intelligence becomes deeply integrated into every layer of enterprise and cloud computing, the foundation of digital infrastructure is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Speaking at the event, Hans Neff, Senior Director of the CTO Group at ZTE, delivered a keynote address that challenged traditional efficiency metrics and static data centre models. He emphasised that in an AI-driven future, conventional benchmarks such as Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) are "no longer sufficient" to measure the performance and adaptability of modern data centres. In his address, Hans highlighted the paradox facing today's data centres: at the very moment when sustainability has become a strategic priority, AI is driving up compute intensity and energy demand at an unprecedented scale. He believes traditional benchmarks, originally designed for static, legacy systems, are no longer capable of capturing the complexity and dynamism of AI-driven workloads. "AI workloads are fundamentally different," says Hans. "They're denser, hotter, and more variable. To stay ahead, we can’t keep optimising for a world that no longer exists." ZTE says its approach, drawn from global deployments and internal R&D, envisions energy efficiency not as a fixed target, but as an evolving system. The company states that it is engineering data centres that sense, predict, and respond to changing computational demands in real time. In his keynote address, Hans also called on the industry to adopt more holistic metrics that better reflect the realities of modern data environments. He proposed a new composite framework that evaluates energy use not only by its efficiency, but also by its effectiveness in supporting intelligent operations, resiliency, and sustainability. "PUE is no longer enough," argues Hans. "We need smarter metrics that account for how power is used — not just how much." For more from ZTE, click here.

Shell launches Direct Liquid Cooling fluid

Shell, a British-Dutch multinational oil and gas company, is turning down the heat and turning up the performance in data centres with the launch of Shell DLC Fluid S3 — a Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) fluid designed to meet the demands of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI). This propylene glycol-based fluid aims to complement Shell’s existing cooling fluid portfolio and involvement in the data centre liquid cooling market. As data centers grow more powerful, traditional air-cooling struggles to keep up with the increasing heat generated by high-performance computing and AI. DLC fluids tackle this heat by targeting high heat load components to ensure densely packed server racks can continue to operate at optimal temperatures. By directly cooling high-performance components like Central Processing Units (CPUs) and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), DLC fluids can improve Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) by up to 27% (in comparison with the PUE of air-cooling) and reduce the need for energy-consuming air conditioning. Shell DLC Fluid S3 also meets the Open Compute Project (OCP) PG25 coolant specifications, including standards for material compatibility. Some features of the Shell DLC Fluid S3 include: · Long-term corrosion protection for all DLC cooling systems, including aluminium, brass, cast iron, steel, solder, and copper. · Heat transfer performance: Particularly, according to Shell, for high-surface-area copper-based heat sinks. · Compatible with a range of materials including metals and metal alloys, elastomers, plastics, and other wetted materials as per OCP guidelines. Its 2-ethylhexyl acrylate-, borate- and silicate-free formulation intends to provide improved metal and rubber compatibilities over competitive formulations. · Extended fluid life: Expected life of 6+ years, potentially four better than conventional inorganic acid technology (IAT) based fluids. · Leak detection: Dyed fluorescent green to help identify in-service leakage. · Freeze protection: Used in servers and electronic components to provide freeze protection down to sub-zero temperatures (−10°C/14°F) and help prevent corrosion. “With Shell DLC Fluid S3, Shell now offers both direct-to-chip and full immersion cooling solutions, and we’re not just keeping data centres cool in the age of AI — we’re powering the future of digital infrastructure,” says Aysun Akik, VP New Business Development and Global Key Accounts, Shell Lubricants. “We are continuing our commitment to innovation that delivers on performance, sustainability, and reliability to support our customers’ goals.” Aysun continues, “Our growing range of advanced liquid cooling solutions is designed to meet the diverse needs of modern data centres both today and tomorrow – and are backed by the strength of Shell’s global footprint, supply chain, and five technology development hubs around the globe.” For more from Shell, click here.

Aligned debuts its Advanced Cooling Lab

Aligned Data Centers, a technology infrastructure company, has announced the launch of its new Advanced Cooling Lab. The lab is dedicated to testing and developing Aligned’s air and liquid cooling solutions for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and emerging AI accelerators. Aligned's Phoenix-based Advanced Cooling Lab has been designed to promote hybrid cooling environments and advance data centre infrastructure. The company's Delta Cube air-cooled system and DeltaFlow liquid-cooled system aim to ensure customers have the capacity and performance needed for AI and HPC workloads. “Aligned has been innovating data centre cooling for more than a decade,” says Michael Welch, Chief Technology Officer at Aligned Data Centers. “The Advanced Cooling Lab is a testament to our commitment to delivering cutting-edge data centre solutions and our passion for innovation. By investing in research and development, we can continue to provide our customers with the most flexible and advanced infrastructure available, capable of handling the dynamic demands of AI workloads.” For more from Aligned, click here.

Castrol launches new fluid management service

Castrol, a British multinational lubricants company owned by BP, known for its presence in the automotive industry, has launched a new fluid management service for data centre liquid cooling, addressing a critical gap as the industry transitions away from traditional air-cooling systems. Announced at the Datacloud Global Congress 2025 in Cannes, France, Castrol’s new service model aims to cover all four phases of the data centre operation lifecycle: system start-up, ongoing maintenance, break-fix support, and fluid disposal. The approach is designed to help remove operational barriers in the adoption of liquid cooling in data centres. "Data centre operators recognise the benefits of liquid cooling but need assurance around long-term fluid management," states Peter Huang, Global Vice President of Data Centre Thermal Management at Castrol. "Castrol has delivered fluid services for the automotive industry for decades – we're now bringing this proven expertise to data centres with a service model that supports optimal performance throughout the entire lifecycle.” The four-phase service includes:1. System start-up support with fluid installation, filtration, system flushing, and certificates of analysis.2. Ongoing maintenance, such as laboratory testing, dynamic monitoring, predictive maintenance, and smart dosing capabilities.3. ‘Break-fix’ service, including telephone assistance, virtual engineering support, on-site response, and spare fluid availability.4. Support with fluid collection and disposal. Castrol’s service launch comes at a time when the data centre industry faces mounting pressure to improve cooling efficiency. Recent industry research indicates that traditional air-cooling systems struggle to handle increased computing demands from AI and edge computing applications, with 74% of data centre experts believing immersion cooling is now essential to meet current power requirements. "Our aim with this new service model is to remove the operational and technical uncertainties that have slowed liquid cooling adoption," says Andrea Zunino, Global Offer Development Manager at Castrol. "Within liquid cooling systems, the fluid represents a single point of failure – degraded conditions can reduce cooling capacity and lead to equipment failure. We're going beyond just fluid supply to deliver structured support at every stage, giving data centre operators the confidence they need to embrace liquid cooling.” The new service model will be deployed globally through Castrol's partner network. All services will be delivered with third-party suppliers. The availability and rollout of certain services may vary by location and may be introduced at different times depending on regional factors. For more from Castrol, click here.

Yondr's first milestone at Johor data centre

Yondr Group, a global developer, owner, and operator of hyperscale data centres, has handed over the first 25MW IT of the company’s Johor data centre to its client six months ahead of schedule. The 98MW IT data centre is part of the largest hyperscale data centre campus in Southeast Asia. Located in Johor’s Sedenak Tech Park, the data centre is situated on Yondr’s 300MW IT campus, set on a 72.5-acre site. The asset is Yondr’s first facility to enter into live operation in the APAC region, marking a milestone in the company’s global expansion as it also continues to deliver developments across Europe and North America. Yondr’s Johor data centre has been designed and delivered as an AI/ML facility to enable the latest GPU technology as demand for AI systems grows. The company additionally continues to work towards completion on several live projects around the world, with assets across three continents now in their operational phase. Mark Avery, Senior Vice President of Design & Construction APAC at Yondr Group, says, “The first ready-for-service (RFS) milestone at our data centre is a momentous occasion for Yondr, for our 300MW+ IT campus, and for the APAC data centre market. “As the data race continues to escalate thanks to the growth in AI, we are delivering on our blueprint for direct-to-chip cooled, cost-efficient, secure, and scalable data centres around the world, supporting our clients to provide the urgent capacity they require in strategic locations, with resilience and sustainability designed into every asset.” Aksel Vansten, Development Director, APAC, adds, “Yondr entered the Malaysian data centre market just three years ago and became one of Johor’s pioneers, joined by some of the largest data centre developer-operators and cloud AI/ML end users in the globe. “We are proud to be delivering our initial RFS milestone here so far ahead of schedule with a project that brought online the largest scale and highest quality asset in the region with an unyielding commitment to health and safety. We are thankful to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), and Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), as well as International Finance Corporation (IFC) and all our lenders and vendors for their invaluable support.” Achieving the data centre’s first completion milestone follows Yondr securing more than $900 million in project financing for the development last December. The financing was provided by a consortium of lenders, including DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Global Infrastructure Partners (a part of Blackrock), HSBC, International Finance Corporation (IFC), ING, and Natixis CIB. Working with the syndicate lenders, Yondr secured the financing as a green loan. Hisham Muhammad, Yondr’s Client Solutions Engineering Director, APAC, comments, “Liquid-to-chip and heat rejection will be central to achieving industry-leading PUE standards at our facility in Johor, delivering on Yondr’s green loan obligations, our sustainability aims, and the client’s vision for long-term environmental performance. “We are delighted not only to celebrate our first completion milestone, but also to be announcing it six months ahead of schedule. We’d like to thank our client for working in close collaboration with us – an approach that Yondr aspires to on every project.” Paul Dillon, Chief Development Officer, concludes, “What has been achieved on this landmark project is a testament to our people’s strategic foresight and commitment to forging deep local partnerships. It positions Malaysia as a regional hub for digital innovation and ensures our clients are ready for the data-driven future. I would like to personally thank our internal Yondr teams and valued partners, without whom this wouldn’t be possible.” For more from Yondr, click here.