Data center trends 2025: Innovation in powering and cooling AI racks, managing energy consumption

Vertiv anticipates increased innovation and integration for high-density computing, regulatory scrutiny around AI, focus on sustainability and cyber security efforts.

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AI continues to reshape the data center industry, a reality reflected in the projected 2025 data center trends from Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions.

Vertiv experts anticipate increased industry innovation and integration to support high-density computing, regulatory scrutiny around AI, as well as increasing focus on sustainability and cybersecurity efforts.

"Our experts correctly identified the proliferation of AI and the need to transition to more complex liquid- and air-cooling strategies as a trend for 2024, and activity on that front is expected to further accelerate and evolve in 2025," said Vertiv CEO Giordano (Gio) Albertazzi. "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. We anticipate significant progress on that front in 2025, and our customers demand it."

The 2025 trends most likely to emerge across the data center industry, according to Vertiv experts:

POWER AND COOLING INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATES 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 to leverage the latter's parallel computing power and the higher thermal design point of modern chips.

This will further stress existing power and cooling systems and push data center operators toward coldplate 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.