The Air Handlers & Evaporative Cooling — The Bridge Solutions
Not every datacenter is going full liquid-cooled overnight. Specialty air-handler vendors play the transition.
A meaningful fraction of installed datacenter capacity is still cooled by very large air handlers and evaporative cooling — and even the new liquid-cooled facilities still have major air-side systems for the rest of the room. Munters (Sweden) is the specialty leader in datacenter evaporative cooling and air handlers. AAON in the US has executed an explicit pivot toward datacenter-specific air handlers.
Smaller and less of a chokepoint than CDUs and chillers, but a real and growing exposure during the multi-year transition.
2 names on the watchlist
Datacenter cooling air handlers + evaporative cooling. Specialty Sweden-listed pure-play.
Swedish specialty leader in datacenter cooling air handlers and evaporative cooling systems . Smaller, less liquid for US investors, but a clean pure-play on datacenter air-side cooling.
Specialty US air handler — executed an explicit pivot toward datacenter products.
US specialty HVAC maker that has explicitly pivoted toward datacenter air handlers . Smaller-cap, higher-multiple way to play datacenter air-side cooling. Less diversified than the big HVAC primes.
- GMInsights, Dell'Oro · 2024–2026