SLB Acquires Data Center Cooling Specialist Kelvion for $3.4 Billion

SLB (formerly Schlumberger) has agreed to acquire Kelvion, a century-old global provider of thermal management and heat exchange technologies, in a deal aimed squarely at the data center industry’s growing cooling needs. The companies signed the agreement on August 31, with SLB paying roughly $3.4 billion in cash and assuming about $0.7 billion of Kelvion’s debt.

SLB chief executive Olivier Le Peuch said AI is driving the most significant infrastructure investment cycle in a generation, and that the deal accelerates SLB’s ambition to become an industrial technology partner to the data center industry. He added that Kelvion moves SLB toward more integrated data center infrastructure solutions, expands its addressable market, and more than doubles its revenue opportunity per gigawatt of delivered capacity.

Founded more than a century ago, Kelvion supplies thermal management and heat exchange technology across data center, energy and industrial markets. The company sits at the intersection of two long-term growth trends — AI infrastructure buildout and the broader energy system transition. Kelvion is expected to generate 2026 revenue of roughly $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion and adjusted EBITDA of about $350 million to $400 million, with data centers already its largest and fastest-growing segment at $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in projected 2026 revenue. Beyond data centers, the company holds established positions in heat pumps, renewables and carbon capture, where thermal management plays an increasingly critical role.

SLB’s own Data Center Solutions business has grown rapidly, with revenue on track for a compound annual growth rate above 90% between 2024 and 2026 and cumulative delivered capacity expected to top 2 gigawatts by year-end. The business combines modular manufacturing, offsite construction, engineering and digital capabilities to deliver infrastructure from design through system integration — an approach SLB says can cut onsite construction complexity and speed time to operation by up to 40%.

Gavin Rennick, president of SLB’s New Energy and Industrial business, said data centers are becoming more sophisticated and energy-intensive, pushing customers to look for partners who can optimize how critical systems work together and bring new capacity online faster. He said thermal management sits at the center of that challenge, and the acquisition lets SLB deliver more integrated cooling solutions, sharpen thermal efficiency, and embed thermal management directly into its modular infrastructure offering.

SLB is buying Kelvion from Apollo-managed funds, the company’s majority owner, and funds advised by Triton, which hold a minority stake. The total transaction value represents roughly 11 times Kelvion’s estimated 2026 EBITDA before synergies, or about 8.5 times including expected annual run-rate synergies.

SLB expects the deal to be accretive to both earnings per share and free cash flow per share within the first 12 months after closing, with around $120 million in annual EBITDA synergies anticipated within three years from cost efficiencies and incremental revenue. On a combined basis, SLB and Kelvion are projected to generate more than $2 billion in data center revenue and roughly $300 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2026. Building on that base, SLB is targeting $4.5 billion to $5 billion in revenue and $700 million to $800 million in adjusted EBITDA for its combined data center solutions business by 2028. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

SLB said it will maintain a strong investment-grade balance sheet after the deal, keeping net debt-to-EBITDA within its through-cycle target of up to 1.5 times. The company also reaffirmed plans to return more than $4 billion to shareholders in 2026 through dividends and buybacks, with total 2027 returns expected to be at least in line with 2026 levels once formal targets are set.

Industrial giants are racing to buy their way into liquid cooling

SLB’s Kelvion deal fits a broader pattern of established infrastructure companies acquiring thermal management specialists to meet AI-driven data center demand. Vertiv, a leading data center infrastructure vendor, acquired Strategic Thermal Labs in 2026, following its 2023 purchase of CoolTera, as it builds out its own liquid-cooling technology stack. Schneider Electric bought a 75% stake in direct-to-chip cooling firm Motivair for $850 million in 2024, and HVAC giant Trane Technologies completed its acquisition of liquid-cooling company LiquidStack in March 2026. Established precision-cooling players including Munters, STULZ and nVent are also expanding their data center product lines, putting Kelvion’s new parent squarely in their path.

Chip-level cooling has its own funding race. Frore Systems, which builds both direct liquid cooling for data centers and solid-state air cooling for edge devices, closed a $143 million Series D in March 2026 that pushed its valuation to $1.64 billion and made it a unicorn. Swiss EPFL spinout Corintis, which etches cooling microchannels directly into the chip and has run joint tests with Microsoft, raised a $24 million Series A led by BlueYard Capital in September 2025 and added $25 million more led by Applied Digital that December, taking its total to $58 million.

Venture capital continues to flow into direct-to-chip and two-phase cooling startups more broadly. ZutaCore closed a Series C round of more than $100 million in June 2026 with Mitsubishi Electric, Carrier Ventures and Samsung Electronics participating, backing its waterless two-phase cooling approach that boils a dielectric fluid directly at the chip to cut cooling energy use nearly in half. Accelsius raised a $65 million Series B in January 2026 led by Johnson Controls with Legrand joining, bringing its total funding to $169 million. Earlier, direct-to-chip cooling startup JetCool was acquired by electronics manufacturer Flex in November 2024, ending its run as an independent company. The pattern is now years in the making — cooling specialists building differentiated technology, then getting absorbed by larger industrial players — and SLB’s purchase of Kelvion is the latest, and largest, example.