cooling AI is the new gold mine

The gaming market is a cruel ecosystem, where many brands that once dominated the overclocking forums are today just a vague memory in the memory of more veterans. However, there are exceptions of companies that, far from sinking, knew how to read market signals and pivot in time. This is the case of CoolIT, a brand that manufactured liquid cooling for gaming and that today it is a key piece in the gear that moves artificial intelligence, one that is worth billions. 3,000 million. This is what CoolIT is worth today, or rather it is the value at which KKR is trying to sell it. The controversial investment fund bought the company in 2023 for 270 million dollars and now, just three years later, they aspire to multiply their initial investment tenfold, according to Financial Times. CoolIT is no longer in the business of cooling gaming PCs, its business is now focused on the data centers that power AI. The beginnings. The company was founded by two Canadian gaming enthusiasts in 2001, when the concept of gaming PCs was beginning to take shape. To better understand the moment, it was the time of Windows 98, the most cutting-edge graphics card was the NVIDIA GeForce 3, the processors were Pentium 4 and RAM was measured in megabytes. In this context, CoolIT launched itself into the manufacture of liquid cooling systems and, although it was not one of the top brands (it worked more as OEM for others like Corsair), had several important milestones. One of them was the launch of Domino ALC which was much lighter than other similar systems and hardly required maintenance. In 2009 they patented their SplitFlow cooling plate technologywhich represented an important leap in the sector. From PC to data centers. 2012 marked the turning point for the company. Its focus shifted to data centers, creating direct liquid cooling systems for servers. In 2015 they started a collaboration with Hewlett Packardproviding cooling to its HPE Cray supercomputers and HPE Apollo servers. They also put the cooling of the Dell servers since 2017. CoolIT in the age of AI. At the moment The construction of data centers is at an unstoppable pace and faces various problems. Energy is the most seriousbut refrigeration is not far behind and even has been the subject of controversy due to water consumption. Against this backdrop, CoolIT was in the perfect position to ride the AI ​​wave and currently has a catalog of high-end solutions, such as its distribution solutions (CDU) capable of supplying up to 2,000 kW of liquid cooling capacity for large AI and high-performance computing server farms. The future. At the moment the sale of CoolIT is in an early phase, but KKR would already have several possible buyers. According to the Financial Times, there are around 3,000 data centers under construction in the US alone, which for companies like CoolIT is a very important moment of growth. There have already been other billion-dollar transactions by companies dedicated to refrigeration, such as Boyd Thermal (9.5 billion) either PurgeRite (1 billion). The case of these companies does not remember that AI is not only about OpenAI, Anthropic or Google DeepMind, there is a whole ecosystem of companies making money with this. In Xataka | Jensen Huang has taken a look at the idea of ​​putting data centers in space and has come to one conclusion: let’s not freak out Image | Wikipedia, Microsoft

Google is going to build a mega data center in a state where the drought is atrocious. Your cooling plan: use air

The American state of Texas has been dealing with heat wavesdroughts and a increasing pressure on its aquiferswhich makes it on paper one of the worst places to set up a data center. Well, Wilbarger County in Texas is just the place chosen by Google to set up your next data center. But big tech hides an ace up its sleeve: it is not going to use water for cooling, but air. Context. Briefly, a data center is an industrial facility full of servers where information transmitted over the internet, such as AI responses or your Google photos, is stored and processed. And if your personal computer requires cooling when it has been working with a certain intensity for some time to dissipate heat, more of the same with servers, which operate 24/7. The usual thing in these plants is to use thermal dissipation systems with water, either with chillers, evaporation or direct cooling with immersion, thermally efficient solutions, but problematic if water is scarce. The problem? That Texas is an oven that is not for buns: its drought is pressing. But Texas is not a foreign place for Google: it has been in that state for more than 15 years, where it has operational centers in Midlothian and Red Oak and already plans to build two more campuses in Armstrong and Haskell Counties. It’s very serious. The project. The Wilbarger County data center will reduce water use so much that it will restrict its application to basic campus uses such as kitchens and services. As? Google has not provided details of the technology, only that it will be advanced air cooling. Cooling with air in such a hot scenario implies greater energy consumption, so the problem now becomes electricity. What Google proposes is a “Power first” model. In short: the data center goes hand in hand with its own renewable electricity generation plant. Google’s energy partner for this project is AESone of the largest producers of renewables in the US, with whom it has a 20-year energy purchase agreement at an agreed price. This is how both win: AES has stability to build the plants and Google has the guaranteed supply and price. Furthermore, according to Google, they already have the land and the interconnection signed, which saves bureaucracy and launches the project into the construction phase. Why is it important. Because according to EESI estimatesa medium-sized data center can consume 416 million liters per year for thermal dissipation alone, the equivalent of a thousand homes. And if there is a shortage of water, allocating it to meet the needs of a data center is hardly justifiable. Wilbarger’s project solves this with air cooling, removing the precious commodity of water from the equation, but also from the electrical grid itself: Google cooks it and Google eats it (with the help of AES). Given that the demand for computing continues to grow, a model that does not consume water or overload the network emerges as a solution to a resource management problem. In figures. For Google, Wilbarger County is not a pilot plant and its size demonstrates this: 0 liters of water for cooling. The project will provide 7,800 MW of power to the Texas grid. The agreement between the technology and energy companies is for 20 years. Google advertisement an investment item of 40 billion dollars for Texas in November 2025 and has provided a $30 million fund to boost energy initiatives in Texas from 2026 to 2028. It won’t be easy. Although Google has been cryptic when it comes to reporting what the technology, its capacity and needs will be, the reality is that when cooling with air in a hot climate, the pressure is transferred to the electrical grid. On the other hand, and although this specific project points the direction of a possible solution to this problem, we will have to see if and how it can be scaled, because there are more and more data centers and the climate is increasingly more extreme. In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands In Xataka | Data centers in space are the finger, Google’s purchase of an electrical company is the Moon Cover | Google Data Centers and Ganapathy Kumar

Now we know Russia’s trick to multiply his drones. It is called “cooling units” and comes direct from China

If the question is how far Beijing’s help comes to Moscow with the Ukraine War in the background, the answer is very wide. We knew through documents obtained By Bloomberg that the production of Russian drones was being favored by the use of intermediary companies with China as main actor bound. Now we know something else. The engineering of deception to overcome sanctions. Clandestine flow. I told it in Exclusive Reuters. Apparently, Russia has managed to maintain and expand the production of its drones Kamikaze Garpiya-A1despite the sanctions imposed by the West, thanks to a sophisticated undercover import scheme that involves Chinese companies. Customs documents, internal contracts and invoices reviewed by the medium reveal that the L550E engines manufactured by the Chinese company Xiamen Limbach Aviation Engine Co. continue to arrive at the Russian state company IEMZ KUPOLnow through a Signature called Beijing Xichao International Technology and Trade. To avoid detection, engines are tagged as “Industrial cooling units” in transport documents, which has allowed Your shipment From Beijing to Moscow (and from there to Izhevsk, headquarters of the Kupol plant) without alerting Chinese customs authorities or formally infringing the country’s export legislation. Mass expansion. An internal Kupol document confirms that the company has signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense to manufacture More than 6,000 Garpiya In 2025, tripling the production of the previous year. For April, more than 1,500 units had already been delivered. These drones, long -range and great precision, are regularly employed to Attack civil infrastructure and military deep in the Ukrainian territory. According to kyiv’s intelligence, Russia is using some 500 Garpiya per month. Based technologically on the Iranian Shahed, the Russian model has become a fundamental tool of Kremlin’s war effort, now enhanced by Chinese components that include not only the engine, but also Navigation and control systems. Ghost Companies Network. The path of engines to Russia is carefully disguised. After initial shipping from China, He had Reuters that engines are received by a Russian cover company called SMP-138owned by Abram Goldman, which in turn forwards them to another Russian company, Libss, final responsible for supplying Kupol. A contract between Libss and Kupol Reviewed by means Specifies specifically that the products should be identified as these “cooling equipment” to avoid suspicions. Chinese commercial companies Sichuan Airlines and China Southern Airlines have been used to transport these pieces Criticism of Russia since October 2023, despite the penalties in force. None of these airlines or the companies involved answered the Reuters questions. Ambiguous position. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, in response to the environment, He denied knowledge of these shipments and reiterated that the country strictly apply export controls of double -use goods, in addition to oppose sanctions Unilateral not endorsed by the UN. However, the reality of the continuous flow of military technology towards Russia calls into question that narrative. The Xiamen Limbach company was sanctioned in October of 2023, after an earlier Reuters report that already identified its role in the manufacture of the Garpiya, which caused new intermediaries such as Xichao They assumed the relief. In spite of these measures, or Xiamen or Xichao have given explanations, and the trail of responsibility is more than diffuse among layers of screen companies, documentary opacity and legally ambiguous trade routes. Diplomatic warnings. Plus: Revelation arrives at a time of Growing diplomatic tension Between the European Union and China. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will meet with Xi Jinping and Li Qiang at a summit marked by Chinese support suspicions to Russian military machinery. European diplomacy, headed by Kaja Kallas, He has warned Beijing that allowing this type of trade puts the security of the continent at risk. China, meanwhile, insists that He has not exported Lethal weapons and that, if Russia uses its civil products for war, the same could be said of Ukraine. However, according to three senior European security officials, the case of Garpiya demonstrates that the Chinese supply It is not accidental or marginalbut part of a functional network that actively supports Kremlin’s military effort. European deterrence and strategic game. Experts Like Meia Nouwensof the International Institute for Strategic Studies, point out that China’s priority interest is to keep the United States focused on Ukraine, thus avoiding a direct confrontation in the Indo-Pacific. The implicit strategy would be to prolong the European conflict to gain margin of maneuver in Asia. For Brussels, however, the immediate priority is Cut the flow of critical components. Although the EU does not require China to break economic relations with Russia, it does insist that it reinforces its customs and financial controls to avoid the transit of sensitive products. For now, the proliferation of undercover engines and fictional companies shows that, on the Ukrainian battlefield, the China’s technological shadow is increasingly difficult to ignore. Image | Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine In Xataka | Ukraine has opened Russia’s last drone and does not leave his astonishment: it is the first time that China does something like that In Xataka | Ukraine has found a solution to China’s veto in drones: it’s called Hell, it’s a “home” missile and bends the scope of the attack

The cooling bases for laptops were for an omnipresent time. Today they have disappeared without realizing

The Digital photo framesYoplait yogurts, the Aquarius Cola. There are objects that disappear without warning, and in that list they may be entering the Refrigeration bases for laptopsthose armathes with fans that populated the desks a few years ago. And that now they seem to have vanished from stores without anyone saying goodbye to anyone. In the magic 2000, when Pentium 4 They turned any laptop into a reactor turbine, seemed almost mandatory, especially with the arrival of summer. Today they seem as anachronistic as the coves for disks. What happened? There are several theories that seem feasible together. One of them is the fifteen years of silent engineering. Manufacturers have refined the thermal design, optimized architectures and perfected the manufacturing process until heat a residual problem. Apple Silicon It marked a turning point, but even Intel and AMD chips have won in efficiency … although they continue to heat up with demanding tasks. But in everyday use they do not seem to need that external cooling. On the other hand, it is Our way of using computers. The majority of heavy software that required local resources has migrated to the cloud, especially consumer focused. We live in browsers, We consume Saaswe delegate in remote services. The laptops are no longer so much work stations to process as internet windows that do not require too much effort. Not the one before. Meanwhile, The mobile has absorbed a lot of screen timerelegating the laptop to specific tasks, but not to do so much and for so many hours as it is. The cooling bases are thus bind to the same accessory cemetery where the remains of Ninety liquid crystal screen protectorsthe organizing boxes of CDS, the silicone keyboard protectors, the box with lock and everything to save disks. Tempus fugit. Are The testimony of problems that technology has been solvingreminding us that real progress does not always arrive with fanfarrias. Sometimes we simply stop needing what it seemed essential. Even in full heat wave. In Xataka | The web has become a horrendous place for many people. So they are rebuilding their version 1.0 as a refuge Outstanding image | AmazonUnspash

clothing that instead of preventing you from cooling, heats up

Few things are comparable to sunbathing to warm up. Solar energy is directly or indirectly, the source of all the energy we use on Earth but, perhaps above all, it is a source of heat. Now a team of researchers has developed a fabric capable of taking advantage of solar energy in a different way but with a very conventional purpose: to warm up. Up to 30º. It is an “intelligent fabric” capable of heating up to 30º Celsius. For this, it is only necessary to let this material exposed to sunlight for about 10 minutes. Its developers point out that the new invention could serve to create ideal clothes to resist very low temperatures. Clothing, 2.0. Conventional clothes, as we can intuit, do not heat. At least not in the sense of emanating heat that our body absorbs. What he does is rather help us not lose heat that, naturally, emanates our body. It could be said that it keeps us hot instead of warming us. In 2025 there are clothes that are able to warm us: gloves, coatsblankets and to accessories. However, these types of designs require energy sources such as batteries or plugs, which limits their “autonomy.” Resistant and flexible. The new system allows to avoid the fattening and risks associated with this type of garments by heating ourselves with surprising efficacy. But in addition to this ability to warm us, the developers of this material highlights its durability and elasticity. As they explain, the new material is able to stretch up to 500% and support 25 washing cycles without losing its heat property or its appearance. Nanoparticles The “magic” behind this material “(is in nanoparticles that) are activated by sunlight, allowing the fabric to absorb heat and transform it into warmth,” Explain in a press release Yuning Li, one of the developers of the new material. The new fiber, their creators point out, is created through a wet spinning process, combining polypamine and polyianylin nanoparticles. This facilitates the absorption of light and improves photothermal conversion. The team responsible for ingenuity presented the new material With an article In the magazine Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials in which he offered some details about this. Is it loaded? Another unique characteristic of this fabric is that it changes color depending on its state, that is, when it is “loaded” of energy acquires a different color. This is also due to the nanoparticles responsible for storing and releasing energy in the fabric. A feature that is also useful as an indicator of the “load status” of the garment in question. Of course, the question of when and how we can see this finding implemented in our locker room is one that remains to be answered. In Xataka | Given the risk of extreme saturation and weather, Spanish tourism already knows where to grow: winter Image | University of Waterloo

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.