Ecolab agreed on March 20 to pay $4.75 billion for CoolIT Systems, 29 times the next twelve months’ adjusted EBITDA on about $550 million of CDU and cold-plate sales. Eight days earlier Eaton had closed its $9.5 billion purchase of Boyd Thermal, agreed in November at 22.5 times projected 2026 EBITDA, and nine days before that Trane closed LiquidStack for a price it will not say. Five majors have now bought their way into liquid cooling: Schneider, Vertiv, Eaton, Trane and Ecolab, for $16.3 billion of disclosed prices in seventeen months. This piece lists every deal with its multiple and date, works out what each buyer must now earn per dollar of sales, lines up the revenue each has promised investors, shows where the dollars sit inside a GB300 rack, and ends with the negotiating consequence for anyone buying CDUs in 2026 and 2027.
Source: Open Factory Datacenter MEP Cost Table (compiled from company releases and SEC filings; as of March 2026)
Nine acquisitions between October 17, 2024 and March 20, 2026, four with a disclosed multiple: a mid-single-digit multiple of revenue, 11.5x EBITDA, 10.0x EBITDA, 22.5x EBITDA and 29x EBITDA, in that order of announcement. CSV.
The Price List, October 2024 to March 2026
The multiple a major pays for a liquid cooling company went from about 5x revenue in October 2024 to 29x EBITDA in March 2026, and the buyers say so in their own releases. Schneider Electric opened the sequence on October 17, 2024 with $850 million in cash for a 75% controlling interest in Motivair, a Buffalo maker of CDUs, rear-door heat exchangers, cold plates and chillers with over 150 employees. The release says the price “values Motivair at a mid-single digit multiple of projected FY2025 revenue” and that Schneider “expects to acquire the remaining 25% of non-controlling interests in 2028.” Flex bought the cold-plate startup JetCool on November 14, 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
Vertiv did two deals. It paid $200 million for Great Lakes Data Racks in July 2025 at “approximately 11.5x expected 2026” EBITDA including synergies, then on November 3, 2025 announced about $1.0 billion for PurgeRite, a Houston loop-flushing contractor, at “approximately 10.0x expected 2026” EBITDA including cost synergies, plus “up to $250 million in cash based on achieving certain 2026 performance metrics.” That deal closed December 4, 2025. PurgeRite is a service business; Vertiv already sells the CDU and bought the crew that commissions the loop.
Eaton signed for Boyd Thermal on November 2, 2025. Its 8-K gives the price, $9.5 billion, a headcount of more than 5,000 and an expected close in the second quarter of 2026; the announcement release, as carried by Pulse 2.0 and MergerSight, puts Boyd Thermal’s 2026 sales at $1.7 billion, $1.5 billion of it liquid cooling, and the price at 22.5x projected 2026 adjusted EBITDA, accretive in the second year. Boyd closed on March 12, 2026, a quarter early. The day after Eaton signed, Daikin Applied bought Chilldyne, a negative-pressure direct-to-chip vendor, terms undisclosed.
Trane announced LiquidStack on February 10, 2026 and closed on March 3. LiquidStack sells immersion and direct-to-chip systems and a “GigaModular” CDU rated to 10 MW from Carrollton, Texas; its last round was a $20 million Series B in fall 2024. No price, no multiple, no revenue. Trane’s 10-K lists “data center liquid cooling solutions” among its products. The Open Factory OEM Disclosure Scorecard counts Trane, Daikin and Flex among the buyers that told the market nothing about what they paid.
Then Ecolab. KKR had bought CoolIT in May 2023, a price KKR’s release did not state and trade press put at about $270 million (Data Center Dynamics, May 2023; we could not open the page this session). KKR says the sale to Ecolab returned 15 times its equity. BetaKit traces CoolIT’s revenue from $60 million to $155 million in 2024, against the $550 million Ecolab now expects for the next twelve months. Ecolab expects to close in the third quarter. Outside the five, Samsung paid EUR 1.5 billion for FläktGroup, an air-handling group with more than EUR 700 million of revenue and 14 plants, closing November 6, 2025. That is the cheap end of the table, and it is cheap because FläktGroup moves air.
What 29x Means Per Dollar of Sales
Source: Open Factory Datacenter MEP Cost Table
CoolIT at 8.6x forward sales, Boyd Thermal at 5.6x, Motivair at about 5x on Schneider’s words (grossed to 100%, the stake implies an enterprise value near $1.13 billion and 2025 revenue near $230 million), FläktGroup at 2.1x. The CSV and the implied EBITDA table carry the arithmetic.
A 30% EBITDA margin bought at 29x leaves no room for a price concession: every point of CDU price Ecolab gives away costs it about $160 million of the value it just paid. Divide $4.75 billion by 29 and CoolIT’s next-twelve-month adjusted EBITDA is about $164 million on $550 million of sales, a 29.8% margin. Divide by 24 and 2027 EBITDA is about $198 million, so the deal assumes 21% EBITDA growth in one year with the margin held. One point of price on $550 million of sales is $5.5 million of EBITDA; at 29x that is $160 million of enterprise value. Ecolab’s July 2 release confirms the plan: Global High-Tech is to reach $4 billion of sales by 2030 “with operating income margins of 25%.” A chemistry company did not pay 29x to sell CDUs at a discount. It paid to attach fluids, filtration and service contracts to the hardware, which is where the pressure will land.
Boyd’s arithmetic is different. $9.5 billion at 22.5x is about $422 million of 2026 EBITDA on $1.7 billion of sales, a 24.8% margin, which is exactly Eaton’s own record 2025 segment margin of 24.5%. Eaton cannot make Boyd accretive by squeezing a margin already at group level; it needs Boyd’s sales to grow, and its release says accretion arrives in year two. Eaton is a volume buyer. Vertiv paid 10.0x for PurgeRite and 11.5x for Great Lakes, both bolt-ons to a company that guides 22% to 23% adjusted operating margin for 2026 on $13.25 to $13.75 billion of sales. Vertiv bought the commissioning crew and the rack shop, and its $250 million PurgeRite earnout is written on 2026 metrics.
No public list price exists for a merchant CDU, and the Public Bid-Tab Price Book holds no CDU award yet, which is why the Open Factory Equipment Price Benchmark treats the CDU as a v1 cell built from contributed quotes. What the deals give us instead is the floor under the vendor’s price: the margin the acquirer has capitalised at 22x to 29x. Read a CDU quote against that floor in Quote Check, not against the vendor’s cost.
The Revenue Each Buyer Has Promised
Source: Open Factory Datacenter MEP Cost Table
Vertiv $13.5 billion at the 2026 midpoint, Ecolab’s Global High-Tech $4.0 billion by 2030 from about $1.5 billion annualized in mid-2026 and $150 million in 2021, Boyd Thermal $1.7 billion in 2026, Modine’s single-customer agreement at more than $4 billion over 2027 to 2029, Munters Data Center Technologies about SEK 6 billion in 2025, CoolIT $550 million, Motivair about $230 million implied. The CSV lists the date and status of each figure.
Ecolab needs Global High-Tech to compound at 28% a year from 2026 to 2030 in a liquid cooling market Dell’Oro sizes at $7 billion in 2029. Dell’Oro’s January 2026 forecast puts the market near $3 billion in 2025, names Vertiv the leader with CoolIT, nVent and Boyd behind it, and calls Aaon the fastest grower. Two of those four were bought inside five months. Vertiv’s numbers explain the hurry: backlog of $15.0 billion at December 31, 2025, up 109%, a fourth-quarter book-to-bill of about 2.9x, organic sales guided up 27% to 29% in 2026, and a 10-K that says most of that backlog ships within 12 to 18 months. The Open Factory Book-to-Bill League Table carries Vertiv’s 2.9x next to Trane’s applied book-to-bill of 200% from the same quarter; our estimate of Vertiv’s backlog after it stopped disclosing is the companion piece.
Eaton’s Q4 release reports Electrical Americas orders up 16% “driven by data center momentum”, Electrical backlog up 29%, and 2026 organic growth of 7% to 9% on $27.4 billion of 2025 sales. Schneider’s Motivair release put Data Center & Networks at 21% of FY2023 group orders. Trane and Daikin have published no data center revenue figure at all. nVent, the one Dell’Oro top-four vendor nobody has bought, reported 2025 sales of $3.9 billion, up 30%, guided 2026 reported growth of 15% to 18%, and set three-year targets of 10% to 13% organic growth and about 22% adjusted operating margin at its March 18 investor day.
Where the Dollars Sit in the Rack
Source: Morgan Stanley, as reported by Tom's Hardware, November 2025
$49,860 per GB300 NVL72 rack: 18 compute trays at $2,260 each, $40,680, plus 9 NVSwitch trays at $1,020 each, $9,180. Vera Rubin NVL144 rises to $55,710, with compute trays at $2,660 and switch trays down to $870. The CSV holds the rows.
The $49,860 Morgan Stanley counts is the ODM’s bill, not the developer’s: at roughly $420 per kW it is about an eighth of the mechanical dollars in a liquid-cooled hall, and the other seven-eighths is the CDU, the piping and the plant. Tom’s Hardware reported the Morgan Stanley figures on November 5, 2025: cold plates at $300 per CPU or GPU and $200 per NVSwitch ASIC on GB300, $400 on Vera Rubin, and a 17% step from GB300 to Rubin after a 20% step from GB200. Eighteen compute trays at 6.6 kW is about 119 kW, so the in-rack content is about $420 per kW. Turner & Townsend’s 2025 index puts mechanical at 33% of a liquid-cooled US build against 22% air-cooled; at Phoenix’s $9.8 per watt that is about $3,230 per kW of mechanical, so the rack-internal content is about 13% of it. The rest is what the five majors bought: the CDUs Motivair, CoolIT, LiquidStack and Boyd sell, the loop PurgeRite flushes, the chillers and dry coolers that reject the heat. Our chiller piece covers the plant side; the Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor carries the CDU at 30 to 50 weeks (Origin Partners, May 2026).
The in-rack part has its own consolidation, in Taiwan rather than Ohio. AVC holds an estimated 40% to 50% of GB200 and GB300 cold plates, plans to lift cold plate capacity from 200,000 units at the end of 2025 to one million by the end of 2026, and was named one of four preferred Vera Rubin cold plate suppliers at GTC 2026. SemiAnalysis lists the gold-plated cold plate field for Rubin as AVC, Delta, Boyd, CoolIT and Auras. Two of those five are now Eaton and Ecolab; the other three sell to the server ODM, not the developer, which is why the developer’s cooling money runs through the CDU. The 800 VDC piece covers what Rubin does to the rack power side of the same frame agreement.
What to Do Monday
The CDU order is the one line in the mechanical package that five acquirers now need to justify $16.3 billion, and the buyer’s response is procedural. Put the CDU on the long-lead list with the chillers: at 30 to 50 weeks it belongs in the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule before the mechanical subcontract is let, per the OFCI argument. Price it per kW of rated capacity at your approach temperature, not per unit. Split the RFQ into hardware, fluids and commissioning services so that a 25% margin service tail cannot hide inside a hardware price; the RFQ template has the split. Attach liquidated damages to the delivery date, because a company that just paid 29x will protect price before it protects your schedule. Run the Taiwan alternates through the Tariff Exposure Calculator before assuming they land cheaper.
Behind the paywall: which of the five acquirers needs volume and which needs margin, deal by deal, the two earnout dates that keep Motivair’s and PurgeRite’s sales teams hungry through 2028, and the nine vendors still outside the majors, in the Open Factory Datacenter MEP Cost Table.