Data Center Chillers Market

The fast adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications represents one of the key factors driving the global data center chillers market, as they require more powerful chips that produce higher heat loads. In addition, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the electricity usage of AI-specific data centers grew by 50% in 2025, while the power density of AI servers increased around 11 times from 2020 to 2025 and will increase further by 4 times by 2027. Moreover, the increasing power density levels force traditional air cooling to operate at its performance limits, pushing operators to implement advanced thermal management solutions, such as the combination of liquid cooling, chillers, and chilled water. Hence, the growth in the development of AI infrastructure and high-density computing requires continuous, scalable, and reliable heat rejection systems, creating a growing demand for large-capacity centrifugal and screw chillers, air and water-cooled systems, free cooling systems, and combined cooling plant solutions. Thus, the further adoption of AI facilities and high-density computing will promote investments in data center cooling facilities and boost the data center chillers market growth.

The considerable cost of investment in chillers and their installations is one of the major restraints in the global data center chillers market. Chillers entail a considerable upfront investment in not only the chillers themselves but also cooling towers, pumps, piping, controls, electrical systems, water treatment systems, and their installation and commissioning, which gets even more costly when the system needs redundancy (N+1 or 2N). With the increase in the need for large capacity and complex cooling of facilities for artificial intelligence and HPC, which require increasingly complex thermal architecture, mechanical and cooling systems may make a considerable portion of the total data center construction costs, especially with high density. Moreover, the installation of the chillers in the existing facilities might require costly modification to piping, electrical distribution, structure systems, and controls infrastructure. For small and medium data centers and enterprise facilities, these considerable investments might cause delays in cooling system upgrades or the shift towards alternative technologies that would not require high upfront investments.

Chillers coupled with AI-ready liquid-cooling designs are among the key opportunities for the global data center chillers market, as the fast proliferation of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) systems increases rack power density and prompts the use of various liquid-cooling approaches, including direct-to-chip cooling. Liquid-cooling systems do not replace chillers but allow them to be used as an important heat rejection device at the facility level by delivering cold water to coolant distribution units (CDUs), heat exchangers, and technology cooling system loops. Contemporary AI-friendly data center designs often incorporate efficient chillers along with CDUs, fan coil walls, CRACs, and intelligent thermal management systems for both air- and liquid-cooled IT infrastructure. The application of warm-water liquid cooling opens up additional opportunities to use chillers operating on higher chilled-water temperature and thus improves overall cooling plant efficiency and reduces the number of chillers required. With growing rack power densities driven by AI workloads and transformation to hybrid air- and liquid-cooling designs, the need for high-capacity chillers, chilled water systems running on higher chilled water temperature, CDUs, heat exchangers, sophisticated control systems, and thermal management solutions is likely to grow.

The shift from traditional air cooling solutions to hybrid cooling systems is one of the biggest issues for the global data center chillers market due to the growing popularity of hybrid cooling systems that combine legacy air cooling technologies and direct-to-chip liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, and other liquid-cooling solutions to provide cooling for increased rack density. Hybrid cooling architectures offer more opportunities for chillers for heat rejection at the facility level; however, the implementation of such cooling architectures raises certain difficulties regarding cooling design as operators have to coordinate such components as chilled-water loops, CDUs, liquid-cooling loops, CRAH/CRACs, piping, controls, heat rejection equipment. According to ASHRAE, it is important to keep legacy air-cooling architecture in use for residual heat and implement direct-to-chip liquid cooling for high-density AI racks. The retrofitting of an existing facility for liquid cooling infrastructure is quite costly and difficult, and there may be such obstacles as lack of space, lack of mechanical design for piping capacity, and lack of standardized designs. In addition, different cooling requirements for legacy servers, networking equipment, and high-density AI racks create additional difficulties with chiller capacity and temperature settings for the entire facility. Thus, data center operators should be very careful with air and liquid cooling capacity, redundancy, efficiency, water usage, costs, and scalability of cooling solutions, which complicates the situation for the chiller manufacturer.