Understand any stock in simple English
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Vertiv makes the power and cooling equipment that keeps data centers running.
Vertiv sells the unglamorous but essential plumbing of the internet. Every time you ask an AI chatbot a question or stream a video, it runs on a rack of computers in a warehouse somewhere, and those computers produce enormous heat and need constant, clean electricity. Vertiv builds the systems that deliver that power and carry the heat away: backup power gear, power distribution units, and the liquid and air cooling systems that sit right next to the servers. Its customers are the giant cloud companies, telecom carriers, and businesses that run their own data centers, plus the chipmakers like Nvidia whose processors need serious cooling. Roughly two-thirds of revenue comes from the Americas, with the rest split between Asia-Pacific and Europe. Think of it as the HVAC and electrical contractor for the AI boom — when everyone builds bigger computer warehouses, Vertiv gets paid to keep them from melting.
The business has two main parts. The bigger one, critical infrastructure, is the hardware: uninterruptible power supplies, switchgear, busway, thermal management, and racks. The smaller but fast-growing piece is services — maintenance contracts, remote monitoring, and parts — which tends to be stickier and more profitable because once Vertiv gear is installed, customers call Vertiv when it breaks. Management has been leaning into liquid cooling, a newer approach that pipes coolant directly to hot chips, because the latest AI accelerators put out far more heat than fans can handle. That shift is a tailwind: liquid cooling kits sell for more than the old air-cooled gear.
Vertiv started in 1946 as Capitol Refrigeration, later known as Liebert, and was bought by Emerson, then spun out and renamed Vertiv in 2016 before going public via a merger with a blank-check company in 2020. Today it is one of the clearest ways to bet on data center spending without buying a chipmaker. Growth has been rapid — revenue rose about 17% in 2024 to roughly $8 billion, and the order backlog has swelled. The company uses its cash to fund factory expansion, pay a small dividend, buy back shares, and chip away at debt. The main risks are simple: AI spending could cool off, competitors like Eaton and Schneider Electric are big and hungry, and tariffs or supply chain snarls could squeeze margins. But as long as the world keeps building bigger computer farms, someone has to keep the machines cool and the lights on.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Oct 2026