In this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, Editor-in-Chief Matt Vincent speaks with LiquidStack CEO Joe Capes about the company’s breakthrough GigaModular platform — the industry’s first scalable, modular Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) purpose-built for direct-to-chip liquid cooling. With rack densities accelerating beyond 120 kW and headed toward 600 kW, LiquidStack is targeting the real-world requirements of AI data centers while streamlining complexity and future-proofing thermal design. “AI will keep pushing thermal output to new extremes,” Capes tells DCF. “Data centers need cooling systems that can be easily deployed, managed, and scaled to match heat rejection demands as they rise.” LiquidStack’s new GigaModular CDU, unveiled at the 2025 Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes, delivers up to 10 MW of scalable cooling capacity. It’s designed to support single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling — a shift from the company’s earlier two-phase immersion roots — via a skidded modular design with a pay-as-you-grow approach. The platform’s flexibility enables deployments at N, N+1, or N+2 resiliency. “We designed it to be the only CDU our customers will ever need,” Capes says. From Immersion to Direct-to-Chip LiquidStack first built its reputation on two-phase immersion cooling, which Joe Capes describes as “the highest performing, most sustainable cooling technology on Earth.” But with the launch of GigaModular, the company is now expanding into high-density, direct-to-chip cooling, helping hyperscale and colocation providers upgrade their thermal strategies without overhauling entire facilities. “What we’re trying to do with GigaModular is simplify the deployment of liquid cooling at scale — especially for direct-to-chip,” Capes explains. “It’s not just about immersion anymore. The flexibility to support future AI workloads and grow from 2.5 MW to 10 MW of capacity in a modular way is absolutely critical.” GigaModular’s components — including IE5 pump modules, dual BPHx heat exchangers, and intelligent control systems —

Bloom Energy: A Leading Force in On-Site Power As of mid‑2025, Bloom Energy has deployed over 400 MW of capacity at data centers worldwide, working with partners including Equinix, American Electric Power (AEP), and Quanta Computing. In total, Bloom has delivered more than 1.5 GW of power across 1,200+ global installations, a tripling of its customer base in recent years. Several key partnerships have driven this rapid adoption. A decade-long collaboration with Equinix, for instance, began with a 1 MW pilot in 2015 and has since expanded to more than 100 MW deployed across 19 IBX data centers in six U.S. states, providing supplemental power at scale. Even public utilities are leaning in: in late 2024, AEP signed a deal to procure up to 1 GW of Bloom’s solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems for fast-track deployments aimed at large data centers and commercial users facing grid connection delays. More recently, on July 24, 2025, Bloom and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) announced a strategic partnership to deploy SOFC systems at select U.S. Oracle data centers. The deployments are designed to support OCI’s gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure, delivering clean, uninterrupted electricity for high-density compute workloads. Bloom has committed to providing sufficient on-site power to fully support an entire data center within 90 days of contract signing. With scalable, modular, and low-emissions energy solutions, Bloom Energy has emerged as a key enabler of next-generation data center growth. Through its strategic partnerships with Oracle, Equinix, and AEP, and backed by a rapidly expanding global footprint, Bloom is well-positioned to meet the escalating demand for multi-gigawatt on-site generation as the AI era accelerates. Oracle and Digital Realty: Accelerating the AI Stack Oracle, which continues to trail hyperscale cloud providers like Google, AWS, and Microsoft in overall market share, is clearly betting big on AI to drive its next phase of infrastructure growth.

In an AI-driven world of exponential compute demand, Aligned Data Centers is meeting the moment not just with scale, but with intent. The company’s recent blitz of strategic announcements, led by plans for a transformative new campus on legacy industrial land in Ohio, offers a composite image of what it means to build data center infrastructure for the AI era: rapid, resilient, regionally targeted, and relentlessly sustainable. From converting a former coal power plant site into a hub for digital progress in Coshocton County, to achieving new heights of energy efficiency in Phoenix, to enabling liquid-cooled, NVIDIA-accelerated AI deployments with Lambda in Dallas, Aligned is assembling a modular, AI-optimized framework designed to meet both today’s and tomorrow’s computational extremes. Ohio Expansion: A New Chapter for Conesville, and for Aligned Announced July 24, Aligned’s newest mega-scale data center campus in Central Ohio will rise on a 197-acre parcel adjacent to the retired AEP Conesville coal-fired power plant, a brownfield site that once symbolized legacy energy and is now poised to power the future of digital infrastructure. As noted by Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned Data Centers: “Through this strategic expansion, Aligned not only reinforces its commitment to providing future-ready digital infrastructure in vital growth markets but also directly catalyzes billions of dollars in investment for the state of Ohio and the Coshocton County community.” It’s a project with deep regional implications. The phased, multi-billion dollar development is expected to create thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of high-quality, long-term operational roles, while generating significant tax revenues that will support local services and infrastructure improvements. The campus has already secured a foundational customer, with the first facility targeting initial capacity delivery in mid-2026. This marks Aligned’s third campus in Ohio, a clear indication that the company sees the Buckeye State, with its

In a coordinated wave of announcements, July 2025 marks a decisive pivot for Oklo as it moves its Aurora Powerhouse small modular reactor (SMR) from visionary concept to near-term reality. The company’s integrated momentum across licensing, construction, and commercial partnerships underscores its transition from development-stage innovator to first-mover in next-generation nuclear deployment. Strategic alliances with infrastructure leaders Vertiv and Liberty Energy reveal a clear market play: providing clean, high-availability energy solutions designed for hyperscale, colocation, and industrial-scale users. Meanwhile, the successful completion of a key NRC readiness assessment and the selection of Kiewit as lead constructor for the inaugural Aurora plant at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) indicate a strong glide path toward commissioning by late 2027 or early 2028. Major execution risks remain, including regulatory pacing, supply chain timing, and demonstration outcomes, but the foundational pieces for commercial deployment are now publicly locked into place. Oklo & Vertiv: Delivering Power and Cooling for High-Density Data Centers On July 22, 2025, Oklo and Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop integrated power and thermal management systems tailored to the needs of hyperscale and colocation data centers. Under the agreement, Oklo will provide both electricity and high-temperature steam from its Aurora fast fission reactor, while Vertiv contributes its advanced portfolio of digital infrastructure and cooling systems. The goal: to tightly couple power generation with thermal management by leveraging reactor heat in Vertiv’s absorption chillers and thermal loops, significantly improving energy efficiency and sustainability. At the core of the partnership is a joint plan to deliver end-to-end reference design packages as blueprints for future-ready data centers that integrate Oklo’s nuclear powerhouses directly into the facility infrastructure. These designs capitalize on Oklo’s distinctive role not only as developer but as owner and operator of its power plants, enabling deeper coordination between energy

As the AI era pushes digital infrastructure into overdrive, the 2025 Data Center Frontier Trends Summit (Aug. 26–28, Reston, VA) returns with its boldest and most consequential agenda yet. From power procurement and adaptive reuse to agentic supply chains, modular energy, and moonshot innovation, the Summit reflects an inflection point for the entire industry, where site constraints, grid bottlenecks, and high-density AI workloads are forcing operators to write a new playbook on the fly. In a QuickChat video leading up to the event, I sat down with longtime DCF contributor and Apolo CEO Bill Kleyman, who is not only moderating our flagship AI Factory panel but also serving as a judge in our closing Moonshot Trends session. Together, we unpacked the themes, tensions, and vision shaping this year’s gathering. With a little help from AI itself, here’s your companion guide to the Trends Summit 2025 agenda: a curated tour of the key sessions, standout speakers, and emerging priorities at the heart of the next data center frontier.  📘 Day 1: A New Playbook Begins (Tuesday, August 26) 🔑 Opening Keynote: “Playbook Interrupted” Chris Downie, CEO of Flexential, kicks off the event with a keynote that pulls no punches. Power scarcity, global policy, and AI’s ravenous infrastructure appetite are cracking old strategies wide open. Downie will chart out the new mandates facing operators, where infrastructure is not just a support system—it’s the bottleneck and the breakthrough. 🤖 AI for Good: Smarter Data Centers and Smarter AI Workloads What happens when Schneider Electric, Compass Datacenters, and Motivair sit down to talk AI? You get both sides of the coin—AI for data centers (via predictive maintenance, energy optimization) and data centers for AI (validated reference designs and liquid-cooled GPU clusters). A standout session on future-proofing both infrastructure and operations. Speakers:Steve Carlini (Schneider Electric),Sudhir

According to Broadcom, a single Jericho4 system can scale to 36,000 HyperPorts, each running at 3.2 Tbps, with deep buffering, line-rate MACsec encryption, and RoCE transport over distances greater than 100 kilometers. HBM powers distributed AI Improving on previous designs, Jericho4’s use of HBM can significantly increase total memory capacity and reduce the power consumed by the memory I/O interface, enabling faster data processing than traditional buffering methods, according to Lian Jie Su, chief analyst at Omdia. While this may raise costs for data center interconnects, Su said higher-speed data processing and transfer can remove bottlenecks and improve AI workload distribution, increasing utilization of data centers across multiple locations. “Jericho4 is very different from Jericho3,” Su said. “Jericho4 is designed for long-haul interconnect, while Jericho3 focuses on interconnect within the same data center. As enterprises and cloud service providers roll out more AI data centers across different locations, they need stable interconnects to distribute AI workloads in a highly flexible and reliable manner.” Others pointed out that Jericho4, built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) 3‑nanometer process, increases transistor density to support more ports, integrated memory, and greater power efficiency, features that may be critical for handling large AI workloads. “It enables unprecedented scalability, making it ideal for coordinating distributed AI processing across expansive GPU farms,” said Manish Rawat, semiconductor analyst at TechInsights. “Integrated HBM facilitates real-time, localized congestion management, removing the need for complex signaling across nodes during high-traffic AI operations. Enhanced on-chip encryption ensures secure inter-data center traffic without compromising performance.”