Ecolab buys CoolIT for $4.75 billion to tap the AI data centre cooling boom

The company is buying CoolIT Systems from KKR for about $4.75 billion in cash, a deal aimed squarely at the fast-growing liquid-cooling side of AI data centres. CoolIT supplies liquid cooling systems to hyperscale and colocation operators and counts Nvidia and AMD among its customers. Ecolab expects CoolIT to generate about $550 million in sales over the next 12 months, with the deal expected to close in Q3 2026.

Why this matters

This is bigger than just one acquisition. The market has already been rewarding anything tied to AI infrastructure, but this deal pushes another message into the tape: cooling is becoming one of the key bottlenecks in the AI buildout. The industry is shifting from traditional air cooling toward liquid-based systems ...