As AI deployments scale to higher densities and larger capacities, data centres need a faster, more reliable way to turn each generation of computing into real-world infrastructure.

Traditional, document-based processes and siloed handoffs across power, cooling, controls, and deployment teams can’t keep pace.

Vertiv SmartRun digital twin shifts planning to a model-based approach, allowing infrastructure to be designed, simulated, and validated as a single system before build-out.

By capturing system configurations and dependencies in a virtual environment, it helps reduce late-stage design changes and integration risk, improve confidence through simulation, and accelerate time from planning to operational readiness, while improving coordination across teams.

“AI infrastructure can no longer be planned one compute generation at a time,” said Scott Armul, chief product and technology officer at Vertiv. “To deliver more tokens per second per megawatt, customers need power, cooling, controls, and deployment workflows to be designed as one interdependent system. The Vertiv SmartRun digital twin helps encode Vertiv’s infrastructure expertise into configurable, simulation-ready building blocks that support faster, more confident AI factory planning. As we extend this approach to Vertiv OneCore Rubin DSX, Vertiv is helping customers translate future compute requirements into deployable physical infrastructure before those requirements reach full deployment scale.”

The Vertiv SmartRun digital twin is the first phase in Vertiv’s multi-phase AI factory digital twin roadmap. Digital twins are designed to help close the gap between accelerated compute innovation and physical infrastructure readiness, preserving engineering intent from early configuration and simulation through deployment, commissioning, lifecycle assurance, and future optimisation.

“AI factories require full-stack co-design across compute and physical infrastructure,” said Vladimir Troy, vice president of AI Infrastructure at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint helps the ecosystem build, simulate, and optimise gigawatt-scale AI factory digital twins using OpenUSD, SimReady assets, and power, thermal, and operational simulations. Bringing Vertiv SmartRun into this workflow can help customers evaluate infrastructure choices earlier and prepare for multiple generations of accelerated computing.”

At Computex Taipei 2026, Vertiv will demonstrate Vertiv SmartRun as both a physical infrastructure system and a configurable digital twin, allowing attendees to explore configuration scenarios and see how model-based design choices can support downstream infrastructure planning, coordination, and simulation workflows.

Created using Dassault Systèmes model-based systems engineering capabilities on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and connected to NVIDIA Omniverse DSX workflows, the demonstrator establishes a shared digital foundation for configuration, simulation, validation, and future optimisation across the AI factory infrastructure lifecycle.

“Digital twins allow complex infrastructure systems to be represented with the intelligence of their configuration rules, dependencies, and engineering intent,” said Stéphane Sireau, vice president of high tech industry at Dassault Systèmes. “At Computex, Vertiv, Dassault and NVIDIA demonstrate how Vertiv’s AI factory infrastructure is moving from document-based design workflows toward an industrialised, model-based systems engineering approach optimised for speed, quality, and system-level performance.”

See the video “Simulation-ready converged physical infrastructure for AI at scale” to learn more about leveraging digital twin for Vertiv’s solutions for AI infrastructure.

The acquisition extends Vertiv’s thermal-chain strategy by strengthening engineering capability at the interface between server-side liquid cooling and supporting infrastructure, an increasingly critical factor in high-density, liquid-cooled environments supporting AI and high-performance computing workloads.

 As compute requirements continue to intensify, the interaction between server-side liquid cooling and supporting infrastructure increasingly influences broader system performance, including flow, balance, controls behavior, serviceability, and lifecycle reliability.

Strategic Thermal Labs adds proven cold-plate design, server-side liquid cooling, and high-density thermal validation expertise that is expected to strengthen Vertiv’s ability to simulate and emulate real high-density compute conditions, optimise the interaction between the thermal chain and power train, and support customers across design, integration, commissioning, and lifecycle operations.

“As AI and high‑performance computing push power densities to unprecedented levels, understanding and solving heat challenges at the chip level becomes critical to system design, performance and reliability,” said Scott Armul, chief product and technology officer at Vertiv. “STL brings deep expertise and proven capability in addressing some of the industry’s most demanding chip-level density and thermal problems, strengthening Vertiv’s ability to emulate and validate system-level solutions and enabling customers to improve performance and lifecycle outcomes in liquid-cooled environments.”

Vertiv emphasised that the acquisition does not change its commitment to an open ecosystem approach. The company will continue to support interoperable, server‑ and silicon‑agnostic infrastructure solutions, with the goal of improving system‑level performance and customer outcomes across diverse compute environments.

The addition of Strategic Thermal Labs supports Vertiv’s broader strategy of helping customers address increasing infrastructure complexity through integrated power, thermal, controls, and lifecycle services capabilities.

As AI data centre deployments accelerate, the infrastructure layer is under growing pressure to deliver faster and at scale.

This acquisition vertically integrates a critical structural fabrication specialisation into Vertiv’s Infrastructure Solutions business in North America, which is expected to strengthen supply capability, rapidly expand engineering and manufacturing capacity, and enhance Vertiv’s ability to deliver scalable manufactured, prefabricated, and converged infrastructure with greater speed, control, customisation, and executional discipline.

BMarko has demonstrated its differentiated structural fabrication capabilities, engineering depth, and ability to support highly customised infrastructure requirements, during prior, long-term project experience with Vertiv.

Bringing this capability in-house is expected to strengthen execution, improve material and process control, and enhance Vertiv’s ability to support customers as infrastructure requirements continue to evolve.

“AI is reshaping infrastructure requirements, with customers placing greater demands on time-to-capacity, flexibility, and efficiency across the infrastructure layer,” said Gio Albertazzi, CEO of Vertiv. “This acquisition strengthens Vertiv’s ability to help customers move faster, with better systems-level performance and control, as infrastructure demands continue to grow in complexity.”

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Williamston, South Carolina, BMarko specialises in high-quality, custom-engineered builds, including steel and wood frames that align well with AI factory and data centre requirements.

BMarko recently expanded its engineering and fabrication facility to approximately 560,000 square feet.

This facility is located in proximity to Vertiv’s Infrastructure Solutions manufacturing operations in the region.

The Vertiv Frontiers report, which draws on expertise from across the organisation, details the technology trends driving current and future innovation, from powering up for AI, to digital twins, to adaptive liquid cooling.

“The data centre industry is continuing to rapidly evolve how it designs, builds, operates and services data centres, in response to the density and speed of deployment demands of AI factories,” said Scott Armul, Vertiv chief product and technology officer. “We see cross-technology forces, including extreme densification, driving transformative trends such as higher voltage DC power architectures and advanced liquid cooling that are important to deliver the gigawatt scaling that is critical for AI innovation. On-site energy generation and digital twin technology are also expected to help to advance the scale and speed of AI adoption.”

The Vertiv Frontiers report builds on and expands Vertiv’s previous annual Data Centre Trends predictions.

The report identifies macro forces driving data centre innovation: extreme densification – accelerated by AI and HPC workloads; gigawatt scaling at speed – data centres are now being deployed rapidly and at unprecedented scale; data centre as a unit of compute – the AI era requires facilities to be built and operated as a single system; and silicon diversification – data centre infrastructure must adapt to an increasing range of chips and compute.

The report details how these macro forces have in turn shaped five key trends impacting specific areas of the data centre landscape.

1. Powering up for AI

Most current data centres still rely on hybrid AC/DC power distribution from the grid to the IT racks, which includes three to four conversion stages and some inefficiencies. This existing approach is under strain as power densities increase, largely driven by AI workloads.

The shift to higher voltage DC architectures enables significant reductions in current, size of conductors, and number of conversion stages while centralising power conversion at the room level.

Hybrid AC and DC systems are pervasive, but as full DC standards and equipment mature, higher voltage DC is likely to become more prevalent as rack densities increase. On-site generation, and microgrids, will also drive adoption of higher voltage DC.

2. Distributed AI

The billions of dollars invested into AI data centres to support large language models (LLMs) to date have been aimed at supporting widespread adoption of AI tools by consumers and businesses.

Vertiv believes AI is becoming increasingly critical to businesses but how, and from where, those inference services are delivered will depend on the specific requirements and conditions of the organisation.

While this will impact businesses of all types, highly regulated industries, such as finance, defence, and healthcare, may need to maintain private or hybrid AI environments via on-premise data centres, due to data residency, security, or latency requirements.

Flexible, scalable high-density power and liquid cooling systems could enable capacity through new builds or retrofitting of existing facilities.

3. Energy autonomy accelerates

Short-term on-site energy generation capacity has been essential for most standalone data centres for decades, to support resiliency. However, widespread power availability challenges are creating conditions to adopt extended energy autonomy, especially for AI data centres.

Investment in on-site power generation, via natural gas turbines and other technologies, does have several intrinsic benefits but is primarily driven by power availability challenges. Technology strategies such as Bring Your Own Power (and Cooling) are likely to be part of ongoing energy autonomy plans.

4. Digital twin-driven design and operations

With increasingly dense AI workloads and more powerful GPUs also come a demand to deploy these complex AI factories with speed.

Using AI-based tools, data centres can be mapped and specified virtually, via digital twins, and the IT and critical digital infrastructure can be integrated, often as prefabricated modular designs, and deployed as units of compute, reducing time-to-token by up to 50%.

This approach will be important to efficiently achieving the gigawatt-scale buildouts required for future AI advancements.

5. Adaptive, resilient liquid cooling

AI workloads and infrastructure have accelerated the adoption of liquid cooling. But conversely, AI can also be used to further refine and optimise liquid cooling solutions.

Liquid cooling has become mission-critical for a growing number of operators but AI could provide ways to further enhance its capabilities.

AI, in conjunction with additional monitoring and control systems, has the potential to make liquid cooling systems smarter and even more robust by predicting potential failures and effectively managing fluid and components.

This trend should lead to increasing reliability and uptime for high value hardware and associated data/workloads.

Vertiv does business in more than 130 countries, delivering critical digital infrastructure solutions to data centres, communication networks, and commercial and industrial facilities worldwide.

The company’s comprehensive portfolio spans power management, thermal management, and IT infrastructure solutions and services – from the cloud to the network edge.

This integrated approach enables continuous operations, optimal performance, and scalable growth for customers navigating an increasingly complex digital landscape.

Vertiv Frontiers report is available here.

The high-level session brought together senior executives, regulators, and investors from 15 countries across and beyond Africa.

During the Data Center Panel themed “Data Center and Cloud in Africa: The Journey to 2,500 MW,” industry experts, including Guy Zibi, Managing Partner at Xalam Analytics; Johnson Agogbua, Chief Executive Officer of Kasi Cloud Data Centers; Roger Shutte, General Manager, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering at MTN Nigeria; Snehar Shah, Chief Executive Officer of IX Africa Data Centres; and Karim Amer, Head of IP Business for North, West, and Central Africa at Nokia, shared insights on Africa’s evolving data infrastructure landscape.

Amer from Nokia said North Africa is leading a new wave of investment. “By 2030, Egypt will account for about 25 percent of Africa’s total data center capacity, Morocco 15 percent, and Nigeria around 9 percent,” he said. “The balance of growth will depend on energy reliability, cross-border regulation, and policy openness.”

Zibi of Xalam Analytics, said the global AI race has redefined Africa’s opportunity map.

“If Africa captures even half a percent of global data-center power demand by 2030, that’s at least one gigawatt of new capacity,” he said. “The question is: who will finance, regulate, and staff it?”

Shah of IX Africa Data Centres, said regional frameworks will be key.

“We need East African data-sharing frameworks so neighbouring countries can use Kenya’s infrastructure,” he said. “Otherwise, capacity will remain isolated while demand elsewhere grows.”

Panelists agreed that AI, cloud, and fintech workloads are accelerating faster than infrastructure can keep up.  “The learning journey has shortened dramatically since November 2022 – what used to take 18 months to build as a minimum viable product now takes me an evening” said Roger Shutte, General Manager, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering at MTN Nigeria. “The real challenge now is deployment — the infrastructure must be ready to keep up with that speed.”

The Hyperscalers Convergence Africa was convened by Africa Hyperscalers and supported by Nokia, Open Access Data Centres (OADC), IHS Towers, Vertiv, Equinix, and the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

The Roadshow, scheduled to take place in Victoria Island, Lagos, is part of a global series of events designed to educate and equip customers and consultants with essential expertise for deploying high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

Vertiv experts will introduce the key infrastructure imperatives to enable AI, sharing insights on latest challenges and opportunities and providing participants with a deep understanding of the latest innovations supporting HPC infrastructure, as well as the impact on data centre power and cooling systems.

Wojtek Piorko, MD, Africa at Vertiv, said:

“This event series marks our dedication to actively support the data centre and AI market across Africa. With the incremental influence of AI and HPC on our industry, we understand the critical need to support our customers and partners with insights and technology that drive their success.”

The Vertiv AI Solutions Innovation Roadshow in Lagos will explore opportunities in Africa’s AI data centre landscape and discuss the latest power and cooling innovations for the AI era.

The event will examine how West African enterprises are preparing for AI’s infrastructure demands, addressing necessary policy shifts and strategies to future-proof digital infrastructure across industries.

This roadshow highlights key requirements for implementing AI-compatible infrastructure and services to maintain operational excellence.

Vertiv speakers for the Lagos event include Piorko; as well as Jon Abbott, technologies director, colocation and hyperscale for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA); Luther Ogbaji, sales engineer, high density and liquid cooling specialist; Sofiat Ojurongbe, regional account manager, and Okechi Osuagwu, key account sales manager.

The event will also comprise a panel discussion on ‘Building for Tomorrow: Preparing West Africa’s Infrastructure for AI at Scale’, which will feature panelists including Wole Abu, managing director for West Africa, at Equinix, and Gerald Madondo, country director at Turner & Townsend.

The collaboration will enable Vertiv to offer Tecogen’s advanced natural gas-powered chiller technology to data centres worldwide, addressing power constraints and facilitating the deployment of AI at scale.

The Tecogen solution will expand Vertiv’s industry-leading portfolio of cooling solutions.

As the power required for Artificial Intelligence computing and its supporting critical digital infrastructure increases, the strain on the power grid is showing, with increased demand exceeding supply in some regions.

Tecogen’s solutions, proven over 40 years in demanding 24/7 applications such as healthcare and process cooling, help to reduce grid strain through natural gas-powered chiller technology.

Vertiv has more than 60 years of experience in providing cooling, power and IT management for data centres of every size.

This global partnership underscores Vertiv and Tecogen’s commitment to delivering cost-effective and resilient infrastructure solution options that leverage alternative energy resources.

“We are excited to partner with Tecogen to bring innovative cooling solutions to our customers,” said George Hannah, senior director of chilled water systems at Vertiv. “Integrating Tecogen’s technology into our portfolio allows data centre operators to overcome power constraints, optimise energy usage, and confidently expand their AI capabilities.”

“This relationship is advantageous for both parties,” said Abinand Rangesh, Chief Executive Officer at Tecogen. “For Tecogen, having a world-renowned partner like Vertiv enables us to scale rapidly in the data centre market. By combining Vertiv’s expertise in end-to-end data centre thermal systems with Tecogen’s proven natural gas-powered chiller technology, the collaboration offers a compelling value proposition for data centres aiming to enhance performance while managing energy consumption effectively.”

Nigeria’s information and communications technology (ICT) sector is experiencing robust expansion, fuelled by the financial services, oil and gas and fintech industries.

This brings with it new investment prospects for data centres, to service advances in cloud computing infrastructure and the rollout of 5G technology.

According to a 2023 research report, the size of the Nigerian data centre market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 20 percent (17.9 percent) during the period 2021-2027.

Critical aspects of Nigeria’s data centre ecosystem include the need to deploy next-generation data infrastructure for agility and sustainability, and the ability to scale up as required.

The strategic use of prefabricated modular data centres can help to address these challenges.

Adding data centre capacity 

The complexity of new technologies – including machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) – as well as the spreading of the network edge, is driving the need for enterprise data centres to add capacity.

There is a growing need to upgrade data centre facilities to support the required advanced computing and higher-density architectures, including an increased complexity in power and cooling needs.

As a result, many local organisations will need to plan to add capacity due to increasing growth and reliance on digital applications, and the realisation that in-house options aren’t sufficient.

The requirement is to be able to add capacity quickly and easily, without compromising on network security or the bottom line.

Prefabricated modular data centre offerings provide sophisticated, customisable and scalable solutions to modern capacity challenges, offering factory-built reliability, rapid deployment, flexibility and efficiency.

While prefabricated modular data centres are not new, the technology has been refined since its introduction around 15 years ago, and at the same time, the building practices involved have also been improved.

These sophisticated, fully integrated IT solutions can be configured to meet specific needs, as well as for quick deployment wherever computing is required.

Benefits of prefabricated modular data centres

In addition to being an easy-to-implement, affordable alternative to building traditional data centres, prefabricated modular data centres offer the following benefits:

Factory engineered reliability: Prefabricated solutions are engineered, assembled and tested in the factory, resulting in offerings that are rugged, reliable and repeatable. This reliability can pay dividends over the system’s lifespan, reducing the overall need for repairs and service calls.

Speed of deployment: Integrated modular solutions can be built while on-site activities continue. In addition, because they are fully integrated and virtually plug-and-play, these solutions can be commissioned and operational much faster than traditional data centres –  up to 30 percent more quickly, in fact.

Customisable: Modern modules are custom-built to customer specs, then the configuration and build can be repeated quickly and efficiently as demand increases. This simplifies operation and service.

Flexible: Integrated modular solutions can be built and configured to support various architectures, including high-density computing and liquid cooling. In addition, a modular solution is portable and can be relocated as network demands change, for example to better support a low-latency application.

Reduced waste: Because these are integrated, closed systems, they can be engineered to eliminate waste and be more sustainable than a traditional design.

Cost certainty and scalability: The total cost of ownership is typically lower for integrated modular solutions, which also allow an organisation to add capacity when and where it is required

Meeting market growth requirements 

As outlined, the data centre industry in Nigeria is predicted to see significant growth in the next few years, being projected to reach USD 646 million by 2030, after its 2023 valuation of USD 250 million – an anticipated doubling and more, in just over five years.

This growth comes on the back of the increasing demand for data storage and processing through the rise of the digital economy and the growth of internet usage in Nigeria[4].

In support of this growth, enterprise data centres looking to add compute, power or cooling in smaller increments can be enabled by these aims through modular solutions from Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions.

Vertiv remains committed to addressing critical data centre challenges across the continent, supporting the advancement of ICT enablement and digitalisation throughout the Central African region.

The organisation established its office in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2003, manned by highly trained local sales, service and project delivery teams. During this time, Vertiv has built a strong, loyal local customer base, gaining recognition for delivering reliable prefabricated solutions tailored to regional needs.

Held at Eko Hotel, the Zenith Tech Fair 4.0 brought together industry leaders, tech enthusiasts, startups, and stakeholders to explore cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of business and lifestyle.

Highlights of Zenith Bank Tech Fair 4.0

Dr. Jim Ovia, the founder and chairman of Zenith Bank, inspired thousands of people who gathered at the event, emphasizing the importance of the annual tech fair.

Dr. Ovia also spoke about future plans to properly integrate technology in Zenith Bank for better and more efficient services.

Dame (Dr.) Adaora Umeoji, the group managing director of Zenith Bank Plc, in her welcome address, appreciated the chairman, Dr. Jim Ovia, for birthing the idea that led to the establishment of the tech fair initiative five years ago.

She thanked him for his vision in utilising technology to revolutionise the world of business and banking.

Dame Umeoji also stressed the importance of innovation and embedded finance in ensuring strong and enduring institutions.

According to her,

“It is paramount that we adapt and adopt technology to stay ahead of the curve. We have seen various cases of companies that failed because of their lack of innovation. It is quite obvious that when companies fail to innovate, they can easily be displaced. So, this is not the time to be orthodox; innovation should be a top priority for us.”

The GMD said Zenith Bank remains committed to providing digital solutions that empower businesses and individuals.

In his goodwill message, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor of Lagos State, called for a global approach to doing business in the country.

“What we need to do is to be able to enhance our product and services in order to compete in the world. We can’t continue to act local, we need to think global. Anything that we’re doing now, we need to be able to know that we are not just serving a local market, we actually want to serve the global market, and I’m glad that consistently, for the past four years, I have kept up with the Zenith Tech Fair.

Inspiring Keynote presentation

Robin Speculand, an expert digital implementation specialist graced the event all the way from Singapore.

He took the audience through series of trivia and quizzes to help them understand the evolving digital transformation landscape.

Speculand stated that for business to grow and evolve its technology there has to be a digital mindset. He expatiated on digital mindset thus;

“Empowerment: every business must carry the mindset that their services must empower people

“Platforms: the digital mindset allows businesses make use of multiple platforms that can be accessible by anyone

“Experimentation: a business must be ready to try out new things and take risks.

“Asking the right questions: a digitally minded person must know the right questions to ask

“Customer centric: the business must focus on what the customers want and tailor the products or services to suit their needs.

“Stakeholders: the business must have powerful stakeholders that are also very knowledgeable and experienced in the tech space

“Agility: a digitally minded business must be active and quick

He also mentioned that, digital transformation fails sometimes because some companies want to change the entire culture of the people or because they are transforming their entire business thereby losing the policy that the customers have come to trust.

“Digital transformation is not about having a digital strategy it is about having strategies in a digital world. Also, at the heart of digital transformation always comes the customer”, he said.

Danilo McGary,  a renowned expert in digital transformation and AI, also enlightened the audience about the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI).

“AI has been in existence for over 60 years but was not really developed until now. There are three kinds of AI; Narrow AI; Traditional AI which is the regular AI that helps in answering questions just like ChatGPT or Gemini, and Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI) is an AI system that can do anything a human or a group of humans can do and do it even better”.

“The Generative AI has advanced so much that it can learn things on its own without any prompt or instruction”, he said.

Dr. Jania Okwechime, the partner and AI | data leader for Deloitte, Africa, added that generative AI helps to increase efficiency and transform businesses.

“Gen AI can be used for fraud detection to prevent cybercrimes. It can also be used for document search and synthesis”, she said.

Panel Discussions | Technology in Business and Governance

The Zenith Tech Fair 4.0 also featured panel session with Wole Olutoye, Ada Jabaru, Funke Opeke, Guy Kuti, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Engr. Bisoye Coker-Odusote, Dr. Anuwal Adam Sa’ad, speaking.

They unanimously agreed on the need to cautiously improve application of technology to every sector of the economy, especially the health sector to promote efficiency, accuracy and effectiveness, securing of documents to avoid impersonation and theft, amongst other discussions.

Innovative Product Launches and Exhibitions

The tech fair served as a platform for unveiling groundbreaking solutions. Leading exhibitors, including Ethnos, ZOHO, Zone, Vertiv, ZamZamPay, Dataflex, Zenith Insurance, etc, showcased products ranging from AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, data centre tools to cutting-edge fintech innovations.

Zecathon

Meanwhile, 10 contestants in the hackathon session at the fourth edition of the Zenith Tech Fair (#ZenithBankTechfair2024) received a total of N77.5m in prize money.

The winners emerged at the tech fair themed ‘Future Forward 4.0: Embedded Finance, Cybersecurity & Growth Imperatives – The Impact of AI,’ held on Thursday in Lagos.

The prize money was shared among 10 finalists who emerged from the over 1,700 contestants took part in the hackathon [READ MORE HERE].

Zenith Bank’s Digital Innovation

The bank demonstrated its pioneering digital banking services, reinforcing its role as a leader in Nigeria’s financial technology space. Attendees experienced live demonstrations of the bank’s seamless payment solutions, mobile apps, and innovative tools designed to enhance user experience.

Driving Nigeria’s Tech Ecosystem Forward

Zenith Bank Tech Fair 4.0 emphasized collaboration as the key to accelerating Nigeria’s tech ecosystem. By connecting innovators, investors, and businesses, the event underscored Zenith Bank’s leadership in promoting technology as a driver of sustainable development.

Social Media Buzz

The event trended on social media platforms, with the hashtag #ZenithBankTechFair4 gaining traction among attendees and tech enthusiasts. Users shared highlights, photos, and key takeaways, further amplifying the fair’s impact.

Looking Ahead

As Zenith Bank Tech Fair 4.0 concludes, anticipation builds for the next edition. With its dedication to championing innovation, Zenith Bank continues to pave the way for technological progress and digital transformation in Nigeria.

*For more more stories on tech initiatives, keep following Techeconomy on social media.

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 Giordano (Gio) Albertazzi, Vertiv CEO. “With AI driving rack densities into three- and four-digit kWs, the need for advanced and scalable solutions to power and cool those racks, minimise 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 centre industry, according to Vertiv experts:

1. 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 centre operators toward cold-plate and immersion cooling solutions that remove heat at the rack level. Enterprise data centres will be impacted by this trend, as AI use expands beyond early cloud and colocation providers.

• AI racks will require UPS 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.

2. Data centres prioritise energy availability challenges:

Overextended grids and skyrocketing power demands are changing how data centres consume power.

Globally, data centres use an average of 1-2% of the world’s power, but AI is driving increases in consumption that are likely to push that to 3-4% by 2030.

Expected increases may place demands on the grid that many utilities can’t handle, attracting regulatory attention from governments around the globe – including potential restrictions on data centre builds and energy use – and spiking costs and carbon emissions that data centre organisations are racing to control.

These pressures are forcing organisations to prioritise energy efficiency and sustainability even more than they have in the past.

In 2024, we predicted a trend toward energy alternatives and microgrid deployments, and in 2025 we are seeing an acceleration of this trend, with real movement toward prioritising and seeking out energy-efficient solutions and energy alternatives that are new to this arena.

Fuel cells and alternative battery chemistries are increasingly available for microgrid energy options.

Longer-term, multiple companies are developing small modular reactors for data centres and other large power consumers, with availability expected around the end of the decade. Progress on this front bears watching in 2025. 

3. Industry players collaborate to drive AI Factory development:

Average rack densities have been increasing steadily over the past few years, but for an industry that supported an average density of 8.2kW in 2020, the predictions of AI Factory racks of 500 to 1000kW or higher soon represent an unprecedented disruption.

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.

This collaboration extends to development tools powered by AI to speed engineering and manufacturing for standardised and customised designs.

In the coming year, chip makers, infrastructure designers and customers will increasingly collaborate and move toward manufacturing partnerships that enable true integration of IT and infrastructure.

4. AI makes cybersecurity harder – and easier:

The increasing frequency and severity of ransomware attacks is driving a new, broader look at cybersecurity processes and the role the data centre community plays in preventing such attacks.

One-third of all attacks last year involved some form of ransomware or extortion, and today’s bad actors are leveraging AI tools to ramp up their assaults, cast a wider net, and deploy more sophisticated approaches.

Attacks increasingly start with an AI-supported hack of control systems, embedded devices or connected hardware and infrastructure systems that are not always built to meet the same security requirements as other network components. Without proper diligence, even the most sophisticated data centre can be rendered useless.

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

While the fundamentals and best practices of defence in depth and extreme diligence remain the same, the shifting nature, source and frequency of attacks add nuance to modern cybersecurity efforts.

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

While our 2023 predictions focused on government regulations for energy usage, in 2025, we expect the potential for regulations to increasingly address the use of AI itself.

Governments and regulatory bodies around the world are racing to assess the implications of AI and develop governance for its use.

The trend toward sovereign AI – a nation’s control or influence over the development, deployment and regulation of AI and regulatory frameworks aimed at governing AI – is a focus of The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act and China’s Cybersecurity Law (CSL) and AI Safety Governance Framework. Denmark recently inaugurated their own sovereign AI supercomputer, and many other countries have undertaken their own sovereign AI projects and legislative processes to further regulatory frameworks, an indication of the trajectory of the trend. Some form of guidance is inevitable, and restrictions are possible, if not likely.

Initial steps will be focused on applications of the technology, but as the focus on energy and water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions intensifies, regulations could extend to types of AI application and data centre resource consumption.

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