Samsung today announced it will acquire all shares of FläktGroup, a leading global HVAC solutions provider, for €1.5 billion from European investment firm Triton. The transaction should close before the end of 2025. This follows Samsung's previous expansion in May 2024, when the company formed a joint venture with Lennox International Inc.
The broader industry faces surging infrastructure demands. A July report from the US Department of Energy highlighted AI data centers as “a key driver of electricity demand growth”.
Power consumption remains the top challenge for these facilities. For AI servers heavily reliant on GPUs, power draw can easily reach up to 10 kW.
Major tech players are aggressively scaling. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are spending massive amounts of money to drive that growth. According to BloombergNEF, four giants—Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta and Microsoft—now control 42% of US data center capacity.
The Business of Heat Management
Market research forecasts project the applied HVAC market will grow from $61 billion in 2024 to $99 billion by 2030, marking an 8% annual growth rate. Over that same timeframe, the data center cooling market is expected to expand much faster at an 18% annual clip.
FläktGroup brings significant market penetration to Samsung's portfolio. Beyond data centers, the firm has secured more than 60 large customers across pharmaceutical, biotech, food and beverage, and gigafactory sectors.
“Now, with Samsung Electronics’ global business foundation and investment, we expect to further accelerate our growth,” said FläktGroup's Trevor Young.
Internal Innovation and Efficiency
Samsung is already optimizing its internal operations. The company recently introduced its High Performance Computing (HPC) Center in Hwaseong, South Korea. With 114 MW of electric capacity and 116,000 servers, it stands as the largest data center in the country.
The Hwaseong facility relies on advanced cooling technology and Open Rack Version 2 (ORV2) OCP-compliant servers for highly efficient operations. Engineers customized the ORV2 systems by expanding the power shelves from one to two, which pushes total power capacity up to 66 kW.
The ORV2’s busbar was divided into two zones to boost thermal efficiency and lower overheating risks. The setup incorporates an integrated power shelf with DC 48V, capturing roughly 5% power savings when idle and 2% at full load.
These changes reduced the servers' energy usage by 9% in an HPC environment drawing over 1K watts per server. Ultimately, the Hwaseong facility is targeting a Power Usage Effectiveness score of 1.15.