The dizzying speed of AI adoption and power/computing demands will set the pace for five trends, according to one industry player

As we had predicted for 2024, AI proliferation and the need to transition to more complex liquid- and air-cooling data center (DC) strategies are now a thing. Furthermore, activity on that front is expected to further accelerate and evolve in 2025.

With AI driving rack densities into three- and four-digit kWs, the need for advanced and scalable solutions to power and cool those racks, minimize their environmental footprint, and empower these emerging AI Factories has never been higher. 

As such, we anticipate significant progress on that front in 2025, including:

  1. Power and cooling infrastructure innovate to keep pace with computing densification:

    In 2025, the impact of compute-intense workloads will intensify, with the industry managing the sudden change in a variety of ways. Advanced computing will continue to shift from CPU to GPU use. This will further stress existing power and cooling systems and push data center operators towards cold-plate and immersion cooling solutions that remove heat at the rack level.

    Enterprise data centers will be impacted by this trend, as AI use expands beyond early cloud and colocation providers.

  • AI racks will require uninterruptible power supply systems, batteries, power distribution equipment, and switchgear with higher power densities to handle AI loads that can fluctuate from a 10% idle to a 150% overload in a flash.
  • Hybrid cooling systems, with liquid-to-liquid, liquid-to-air, and liquid-to-refrigerant configurations, will evolve in rackmount, perimeter, and row-based cabinet models that can be deployed in brown/greenfield applications.
  • Liquid cooling systems will increasingly be paired with their own dedicated, high-density UPS systems to provide continuous operation.
  • Servers will increasingly be integrated with the infrastructure needed to support them, including factory-integrated liquid cooling, ultimately making manufacturing and assembly more efficient, deployment faster, equipment footprint smaller, and increasing system energy efficiency.
  1. DCs will prioritize energy availability challenges:

    Overextended grids and skyrocketing power demands are changing how data centers consume power. AI is driving increases (3x to 4x) in consumption by 2030 . Expected increases may place demands on the grid that many utilities cannot handle, attracting regulatory attention from governments around the globe — including potential restrictions on data center builds and energy use — and spiking costs and carbon emissions that data center organizations are racing to control.

  2. More collaborations to drive AI Factory development:

    Predictions are that AI Factory racks of 500 to 1000kW or higher will represent an unprecedented disruption to the DC industry. As a result of the rapid changes, chip developers, customers, power and cooling infrastructure manufacturers, utilities, and other industry stakeholders will increasingly partner to develop and support transparent roadmaps to enable AI adoption.

  3. The AI wars continue:

    As cybercriminals continue to leverage AI to increase the frequency of attacks, cybersecurity experts, network administrators, and data center operators will keep pace by developing their own sophisticated AI security technologies.

  4. Government and industry regulators tackle AI applications and energy use:

    Governments and regulatory bodies around the world are racing to assess the implications of AI and develop governance for its use. Some form of guidance is inevitable, and restrictions are possible, if not likely.

Also, in 2025, governance control will continue to be local or regional rather than global, and the consistency and stringency of enforcement will widely vary.