Schneider Electric has expanded its role in shaping the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence by unveiling what it describes as the industry’s most comprehensive end-to-end portfolio of liquid cooling solutions for hyperscale, colocation, and high-density data centers.
The launch, announced globally, marks the company’s first full presentation of its integrated cooling capabilities since acquiring a controlling stake in Motivair earlier this year, and positions the firm to supply the “AI Factories of the Future.”
The new portfolio, branded Motivair by Schneider Electric, is engineered to handle the surging heat and power demands of next-generation AI and high-performance computing environments. With data center rack densities climbing past 140 kilowatts and designs already underway for capacities exceeding one megawatt per rack, air-based systems can no longer manage the thermal load. The company argues that liquid cooling has shifted from optional performance optimization to a core requirement for keeping infrastructure reliable, efficient, and scalable in the AI era.
Schneider Electric is rolling out a wide array of hardware, software, and services, ranging from Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs) and ChilledDoor rear door heat exchangers to dynamic cold plates, heat dissipation units, chillers, and closed-loop systems. Supporting these are its EcoStruxure software suite, which provides real-time management of cooling and energy efficiency, and a global services network of trained technicians. The company highlights that direct liquid cooling is up to 3,000 times more effective at removing heat than air, enabling tighter power budgets, lower energy use, and higher rack densities without wholesale retrofits of data center infrastructure.
Richard Whitmore, CEO of Motivair by Schneider Electric, noted that the solutions are co-developed with GPU and chip manufacturers including NVIDIA, enabling tight integration at the silicon level. “Our portfolio not only compresses time-to-market but increases ROI for customers worldwide,” he said, underscoring that Motivair technology already supports six of the world’s ten fastest supercomputers and is certified for NVIDIA’s latest hardware.
Among the specific technologies is the CDU family, which scales from 105 kilowatts to 2.5 megawatts, giving operators capacity well beyond current market requirements. The ChilledDoor rear door heat exchanger cools rack densities up to 75 kilowatts, while the HDU system offers 100 kilowatts of heat rejection in compact environments where water is not readily available. Closed-loop chillers, meanwhile, promise both performance improvements and water conservation, saving millions of gallons annually per megawatt of cooling capacity.
Motivair Expanding Its Global Manufacturing Footprint
Schneider Electric is also emphasizing sustainability and operational resilience. With cooling often consuming up to 40 percent of a data center’s power budget, efficiency gains translate directly into lower operating costs and improved environmental metrics. Motivair’s chillers are designed to use less water and to outperform comparable market solutions by up to 20 percent. The company says its portfolio is structured to align with the increasing demands for AI-ready and climate-conscious digital infrastructure.
To support global deployment, Motivair has recently expanded its manufacturing footprint, adding a fourth production facility in Buffalo, New York, and extending capacity in Italy and India. The expansion will triple production output and reduce lead times, helping hyperscale providers and colocation operators deploy liquid cooling infrastructure more quickly in response to AI-driven demand. Schneider Electric also places emphasis on rigorous testing and validation, with all models undergoing performance trials against real-world heat loads before shipping. Each unit is flushed for cleanliness to reduce installation issues on site.
Industry observers see the acquisition of Motivair as strengthening Schneider Electric’s position in the market. Olga Yashkova, Research Manager for Enterprise Workloads and Data Center Infrastructure at IDC, called liquid cooling a “fundamental element” of modern computing environments. She said Schneider Electric’s ability to deliver integrated power and cooling as a single vendor could simplify deployment and reduce operational complexity for AI-driven data centers.
Andrew Bradner, Senior Vice President of Schneider Electric’s Cooling Business, said the portfolio reflects a recognition that AI is no longer a distant trend but a transformative force requiring new approaches to infrastructure. “By combining our multi-domain expertise with Motivair, we are charting a new frontier for accelerated computing,” he said, highlighting the company’s scale, production reach, and commitment to rigorous validation.
With workloads shifting rapidly toward accelerated computing, the timing of the announcement is significant. Enterprises and cloud providers are competing to build infrastructure capable of handling AI training and inference at scale, and cooling remains a major bottleneck in both cost and engineering. Schneider Electric is betting that its end-to-end liquid cooling platform – built to integrate with chips, servers, and data center infrastructure – will help its customers move more quickly while keeping long-term operating costs manageable.
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