Data Centers
Data Center Cooling & Electrical
Vertiv and Eaton: Quarterly Revenue
The bellwether gear makers. Vertiv is the closest thing to a pure play on data center power and cooling; Eaton is the diversified giant whose electrical Americas backlog is the cycle's early-warning gauge. Orders lead this revenue by several quarters.
Equipment Lead Times
Where the bottleneck actually is. Gas turbines and large transformers quote multi-year deliveries, which converts equipment vendors' backlogs into multi-year revenue visibility and makes delivery slots a currency.
Cooling Approaches by Rack Density
AI racks crossed the practical limit of air cooling around the 2024 platform generation. Direct-to-chip liquid is now the default for new AI capacity, and owning the liquid loop (cold plates, CDUs, manifolds) is the thermal segment's key share battle.
| Approach | Rack density |
|---|---|
| Air (CRAH/CRAC, aisle containment) | Up to roughly 20 kW per rack |
| Rear-door heat exchangers | Roughly 20 to 40 kW per rack |
| Direct-to-chip liquid (cold plates + CDUs) | Roughly 50 to 130+ kW per rack |
| Immersion (single and two-phase) | 100+ kW per rack potential |
Small-Cap Gear Makers: Trailing Revenue, Indexed
The torque trades. nVent, Powell, and Modine carry the most data center revenue leverage per dollar of market cap in the electrical and thermal cohort, and the most cyclicality if orders roll.
Data Center Builders: Quarterly Revenue
The contractors converting announced gigawatts into buildings, substations, and mechanical systems. All four report record backlogs; skilled labor, not demand, is their binding constraint.
Industry Average PUE
Uptime Institute's survey-weighted PUE fell from 2.50 in 2007 to 1.65 by 2014 and has barely moved since, sitting at 1.54 in 2025. New hyperscale halls are more efficient than the average; legacy rooms keep the headline stuck.
Eaton Electrical Americas Quarterly Sales
The US and Canadian electrical equipment franchise inside Eaton, the cleanest public line for data-center switchgear, UPS, and power distribution in a diversified industrial. Sales rose from $1.79B in 2020-Q1 to $3.95B in 2026-Q2.
Vertiv Year-End Order Backlog
The thermal and power equipment order book, distinct from quarterly sales. Backlog went from $3.2B at year-end 2021 to $7.2B at year-end 2024, then doubled to $15.0B at year-end 2025 as customers ordered ahead of delivery.
HVAC Names: Disclosed Data Center Exposure
What Trane has actually disclosed (applied equipment bookings up more than 160 percent in Q1 2026) versus Carrier and Johnson Controls, which cite data centers without a recurring isolated revenue line. Vertiv is the thermal pure play.
| Company | What they disclosed |
|---|---|
| Vertiv (VRT) | Year-end 2025 backlog $15.0B, up from $7.2B. The closest public pure play on data-center thermal and power equipment. Backlog is plotted on the Vertiv backlog chart; this row is the HVAC-tab pointer. |
| Trane Technologies (TT) | Q1 2026: Americas Commercial HVAC bookings ~+40%; applied equipment bookings >+160%; company backlog $10.7B. Applied equipment (large chillers, custom air handlers) is the data-center-relevant slice inside Americas Commercial HVAC. Bookings growth is the disclosure, not a DC revenue share. |
| Carrier (CARR) and Johnson Controls (JCI) | Qualitative: data centers cited as a growth end market. Both discuss applied HVAC and data-center cooling on earnings calls and at investor days. |
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