What’s funding like in the Data Center Cooling market right now?

All funding deals in the Data Center Cooling Market over the last 24 months

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the Data Center Cooling Market.

Is Data Center Cooling funding actually healthier now?

Data Center Cooling funding is healthier today if we look at how many companies can raise and how far the strongest companies can scale, but the improvement is much less impressive for ordinary-sized rounds.

We counted 10 deals across 10 companies in the latest 12 months, double the five deals and five companies from the previous period. Funding also reached four cooling categories instead of two, seven of the twelve monthly windows contained a deal versus four before, and the identifiable investor pool grew from roughly five investors to around twelve.

The big change is at the top. Accelsius raised $65M, ZutaCore raised $100M and DCX announced a $176M strategic equity transaction with LITEON. Nothing above $50M appeared in the previous period.

The middle of the market looks weaker. Median disclosed round size slipped from $24.0M to $19.6M, while capital from rounds below $50M fell from $85.9M to $78.1M. So we have a market that can currently fund more companies and support much bigger winners without making the average fundraising environment obviously easier.

Metric	Current L12M	Previous 12M	Change
Deals	10	5	+100%
Funded companies	10	5	+100%
Disclosed/estimable capital	$419.1M	$85.9M	+387.9%
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$78.1M	$85.9M	-9.1%
Median disclosed round	$19.6M	$24.0M	-18.3%
Average disclosed round	$41.9M	$21.5M	+95.1%
First-financing share	30%	40%	-10 pp
Later-stage deal share	50%	0%	+50 pp

Is the 388% jump in Data Center Cooling funding mostly a mirage?

The 388% increase in Data Center Cooling funding is real on paper, but three large transactions explain almost the entire surge.

Current disclosed and estimable funding reached $419.1M, up from $85.9M. DCX contributed $176M, ZutaCore $100M and Accelsius $65M. Together, those three financings account for 81.4% of all current capital.

Remove rounds above $50M and funding actually falls by about 9% year over year. Remove only the $176M DCX transaction and the market still reaches roughly $243M, so DCX alone does not create the whole increase. ZutaCore and Accelsius show that a real scale-up financing layer has emerged underneath it.

The median tells the other half of the story. It declined 18% even while average round size almost doubled. That is hard to reconcile with a market where everyone suddenly has easier access to capital. What we are seeing these days is a much fatter upper end.

Anyone looking only at the jump from $85.9M to $419.1M would therefore miss the main structural change: large checks became available to a few proven cooling companies while sub-$50M funding stayed roughly flat to slightly down.

Are more Data Center Cooling companies getting funded now?

Yes, Data Center Cooling funding is reaching far more companies now, and this is one of the clearest improvements in the market.

Ten different companies raised during the latest period, compared with five previously. There were no repeat financings by the same company inside either 12-month window, so the increase cannot be explained by one or two startups repeatedly coming back for money.

Funding also became less sporadic. Seven of the latest twelve monthly windows contained at least one transaction, compared with four in the previous period. The number of zero-deal months dropped from eight to five.

The companies themselves are more varied too. The current group stretches from very young entrants such as KuhlTherm and MegaCool to established businesses such as ZutaCore and Iceotope, with Corintis, Accelsius, Enaxiom, YxinData, MicroRefrigeration and DCX filling out the middle.

Capital still arrives in bursts, especially when a $100M or $176M transaction lands. Deal formation, though, has become much more regular. For a young infrastructure market, that is more encouraging than a funding increase produced by one isolated megadeal.

Are new Data Center Cooling startups still breaking through?

New Data Center Cooling startups are still breaking through, although startup formation is growing much more slowly than overall deal activity.

We found three first financings in the latest period versus two previously. Because total deal count doubled, first financings fell from 40% to 30% of activity.

Two current examples look like classic startup formation. MegaCool, founded in 2025, raised about $5.9M. KuhlTherm, also founded in 2025, raised $1.1M. Those are young companies getting their first meaningful outside capital.

DCX makes the first-financing dollars look much larger than the underlying startup story really is. Its $176M LITEON transaction is the first financing we recorded for the company, but DCX was founded in 2019 and had already reached a very different level of commercial maturity. Excluding DCX, the two young first-financing companies raised only around $7M combined.

The market is still creating funded startups. What has accelerated much faster is the amount of capital available once a cooling company has proved enough to move into serious infrastructure deployment.

Are investors mostly backing existing Data Center Cooling winners now?

Existing Data Center Cooling companies are taking a larger share of funding activity now, and the biggest venture rounds are going to businesses that had already raised before.

Follow-ons increased from 60% to 70% of deals. More tellingly, the current period includes two large step-ups from companies we can track cleanly across rounds.

Accelsius went from a $24M Series A to a $65M Series B, about 2.7 times the size. ZutaCore moved from a $30M financing to a $100M Series C, roughly 3.3 times larger. Corintis raised $24M and then another $25M a little over two months later, although that second financing was an additional Series A/A1 and should not be treated like a normal new fundraising cycle.

The typical follow-on has not exploded in size: the median is around $25M now versus $24M before. The real change is that a small number of companies have graduated into a much higher financing tier.

The current market is clearly more rewarding for companies that can prove commercial relevance. A startup can still get funded early, but the really large checks are clustering around companies investors already know.

Financing profile	Current L12M	Previous 12M
First financings	3	2
First-financing share	30%	40%
Known first-financing capital	$183.0M	≥$7.9M
Follow-ons	7	3
Follow-on share	70%	60%
Known follow-on capital	$236.1M	$78.0M
Median follow-on round	$25M	$24M

Why did the typical Data Center Cooling funding round get smaller?

The typical Data Center Cooling round got smaller because funding has spread toward both very early companies and very large scale-ups, leaving fewer deals in the old middle.

The median disclosed round fell from $24.0M to $19.6M. Yet the average jumped from $21.5M to $41.9M because the largest transactions pulled it sharply upward.

At the low end, KuhlTherm raised $1.1M, Enaxiom $1.8M and MicroRefrigeration about $4.1M. MegaCool added another round of roughly $5.9M. At the other end, Accelsius raised $65M, ZutaCore $100M and DCX $176M.

One year earlier, the $20M–$50M range dominated the market, accounting for 60% of deals. Today that bracket represents only 20%.

The lower median is therefore less alarming than it first appears. Investors are funding more young companies with small checks while also writing much bigger checks for companies that have moved into scale. The middle has thinned out.

Has Data Center Cooling funding split into a two-tier market?

Yes, Data Center Cooling funding now looks distinctly two-tiered, with small startup rounds at one end and $50M-plus scale capital at the other.

Rounds below $5M went from zero to 30% of deals. At the same time, rounds of at least $50M went from zero to another 30% of deals.

That leaves only 40% of activity between $5M and $50M. A year earlier, 80% of disclosed or estimable deals sat in that broad middle range.

The company examples make the split easy to see. KuhlTherm, Enaxiom and MicroRefrigeration raised between roughly $1M and $4M. Meanwhile Accelsius, ZutaCore and DCX are playing in a completely different capital market.

Some polarization is normal in an infrastructure category moving from experimentation toward deployment. Investors can fund a new technical approach relatively cheaply, then wait for commercial proof before committing the tens or hundreds of millions required for manufacturing, deployment and global expansion.

Deal size	Current deals	Current deal share	Current capital share	Previous deal share
<$5M	3	30%	1.7%	0%
$5M–<$20M	2	20%	4.8%	20%
$20M–<$50M	2	20%	12.2%	60%
$50M–<$100M	1	10%	15.5%	0%
$100M+	2	20%	65.9%	0%
Undisclosed	0	0%	-	20%

Who is actually winning Data Center Cooling funding right now?

Direct-to-chip cooling currently has the strongest broad-based funding momentum, while CDU funding has attracted almost as much capital through far fewer companies.

Direct-to-chip produced six current deals worth about $201M. In the previous period we counted four deals and at least $78M. Its deal share fell from 80% to 60%, but that happened because other cooling approaches finally started showing up more often, not because direct-to-chip weakened.

The category also has a useful stage ladder. KuhlTherm and MegaCool are young entrants. Corintis is around Series A. Accelsius reached Series B. ZutaCore raised a $100M Series C. Seeing funding across several stages gives us much more confidence in direct-to-chip momentum than one giant transaction would.

Cooling distribution units reached about $190M, almost as much as direct-to-chip, through only two deals. DCX alone accounts for $176M of that total, so the category's enormous capital share is still heavily dependent on one company.

Immersion cooling moved from a $7.9M financing to Iceotope's $26M Series B, but remained at one deal in each period. Heat rejection appeared through Enaxiom's $1.8M round.

Category	Current deals	Current capital	Previous deals	Previous known capital	What we see now
Direct-to-chip	6	$201.1M	4	≥$78.0M	Broad momentum
Cooling distribution units	2	$190.2M	0	$0	Huge capital, concentrated
Immersion cooling	1	$26.0M	1	$7.9M	Bigger check, same breadth
Chillers / heat rejection	1	$1.8M	0	$0	Early funding signal

Is DCX making the Data Center Cooling market look stronger than it really is?

DCX makes the Data Center Cooling funding boom look much bigger, but the move toward large-scale financing survives even after we take DCX out.

LITEON announced a roughly $176M investment for around 25% of DCX. That single transaction represents 42% of current disclosed capital. It also creates most of the apparent funding surge in cooling distribution units and explains a large part of Europe's current capital share.

There is an important caveat. LITEON and DCX described the investment as subject to closing, so the $176M should be read as an announced strategic equity transaction rather than automatically assumed to be cash already received.

Even after removing DCX, current disclosed capital comes to roughly $243M, versus $85.9M in the previous period. ZutaCore's $100M Series C and Accelsius' $65M Series B therefore leave a very substantial increase.

DCX exaggerates the size of the boom more than it changes the direction. As seen above, the underlying scale-up shift shows up across several companies.

Why are Johnson Controls, Carrier and LITEON moving into Data Center Cooling?

Big infrastructure companies are moving into Data Center Cooling because cooling is increasingly tied directly to AI power density, rack design and data-center deployment.

The investor names are unusually revealing. Johnson Controls led Accelsius' $65M Series B, with Legrand participating. Carrier backed ZutaCore and then increased its involvement before ZutaCore's $100M Series C, which also included Mitsubishi Electric and Samsung Ventures. Applied Digital led Corintis' $25M additional Series A. LITEON agreed to invest $176M in DCX.

These companies already operate around HVAC, building infrastructure, data-center power, electrical systems, electronics or data-center operations. Their interest in cooling sits directly beside businesses they already understand.

The scale of the checks has changed more than the frequency of strategic involvement. Strategic investors appeared in 40% of deals in both periods, while the median strategic-backed financing jumped from about $19M to $82.5M.

Johnson Controls has also kept expanding its own liquid-cooling exposure, including a direct strategic investment in Accelsius and subsequent moves around advanced thermal-management technology. LITEON described its DCX investment in terms of combining liquid cooling with AI-server power management and rack-level power architecture. Carrier framed its ZutaCore relationship around integrated cooling for next-generation data centers.

Corporate capital is now moving closer to the center of the scaling phase.

Are Data Center Cooling companies raising to build products or to scale them?

The biggest Data Center Cooling financings are increasingly paying for manufacturing, deployment and commercial expansion.

Accelsius said its $65M Series B would support scaling of its two-phase cooling platform, with the company expanding production capacity and pushing further into large AI infrastructure deployments. By later in 2026, Accelsius was pointing to customer deployments covering hundreds of megawatts of new capacity alongside the general availability of new cooling products.

ZutaCore tied its $100M Series C to global commercialization as bookings and deployments increased. The company had already deepened its relationship with Carrier and attracted Mitsubishi Electric and Samsung Ventures by the time the round was announced.

DCX and LITEON described their partnership around joint engineering, manufacturing scale-up, global go-to-market and integrated power-and-cooling solutions for high-density computing.

Iceotope gives us another useful example at a smaller scale. Its $26M Series B is being used for product and engineering development, IP expansion and partnerships designed to move its cooling technology into more commercial systems.

We cannot calculate a clean historical use-of-funds percentage because many companies do not disclose enough detail. Still, the largest recent rounds are clearly associated with getting technology into more products, more facilities and more markets.

How much proof does a Data Center Cooling startup need to raise a big round now?

A Data Center Cooling startup can still raise early on a technical thesis, but $50M-plus rounds now tend to come after investors can see a credible path to real infrastructure deployment.

The contrast between the small and large financings is sharp. KuhlTherm raised $1.1M as a young company. Enaxiom raised $1.8M while developing its HydroCool heat-rejection system. MegaCool raised about $5.9M around its engineered cold-plate technology.

ZutaCore was already reporting growing bookings and deployments when it announced its $100M Series C. Accelsius had moved beyond a single technology concept into a broader commercial product platform and was scaling customer deployments when it raised $65M. DCX said it had secured major hyperscale business before LITEON agreed to invest.

Company age reinforces the same point without giving us a simple "older is better" rule. The current first-financing cohort includes companies around one year old, while large rounds also went to businesses founded years earlier, including ZutaCore and Iceotope.

Investors are still taking technical risk at the bottom. Bigger checks currently arrive after some combination of product readiness, manufacturing capability, strategic relevance and customer adoption becomes visible.

Are Data Center Cooling companies raising again faster now?

We still cannot say that Data Center Cooling companies are generally raising faster, because the comparable historical sample is too thin.

Only three of the seven current follow-on companies have a previous financing date we can use confidently. Their intervals are roughly two months for Corintis, 14 months for Accelsius and 15 months for ZutaCore.

Corintis needs special treatment because its December financing was an additional Series A/A1 following the September Series A, so the two-month gap says more about the structure of that financing than about a normal fundraising cycle.

Accelsius and ZutaCore are more useful. Both came back within roughly 15 months and raised rounds more than 2.7 times the size of their previous financing.

The previous 12-month cohort has no comparable previous-round history that is complete enough for a proper before-and-after test. Any market-wide claim about faster fundraising would be too fragile for now.

What we can say with confidence is narrower: the repeat raisers we can actually track have been able to come back relatively quickly, and the two clean scale-up examples returned with much larger checks.

Is Europe really taking the lead in Data Center Cooling funding?

Europe currently leads Data Center Cooling funding by capital in our dataset, although DCX makes that lead look much stronger than the underlying regional picture.

European companies account for four of the ten current deals and roughly $233M, or 56% of disclosed capital. North America has three deals and about $169M. Asia-Pacific also has three deals but only around $17M.

Poland alone contributes $176M through DCX. Remove that transaction and Europe's capital falls below North America's.

North America also has the stronger typical round. Its current median is $65M, helped by Accelsius and ZutaCore. Europe mixes DCX's very large strategic transaction with smaller rounds such as MegaCool and Corintis, while Iceotope sits in between at $26M.

Asia-Pacific looks much more active by company count than by dollars. YxinData, KuhlTherm and Enaxiom give the region 30% of current deals but only around 4% of capital.

Europe has clearly broadened its presence, but calling it the new center of gravity would be premature. One large financing can still move the regional leaderboard dramatically.

Is immersion cooling actually coming back?

Immersion cooling is attracting larger checks again, but one deal is not enough to call it a comeback.

Our dataset contains one immersion financing in each period. The previous deal was roughly $7.9M for Green Cloud Map. The current one is Iceotope's $26M Series B.

Iceotope is interesting because the company has spent years building precision dielectric cooling technology and is now positioning itself more as a co-development and licensing partner for OEMs. After closing the $26M round, Iceotope also expanded its work around partner integration and commercial product development.

That shows investors are still willing to put meaningful money behind alternatives to conventional cold-plate cooling when the technology has a clear commercial route.

Breadth has not followed yet. Direct-to-chip produced six current deals, while immersion stayed at one. For now, immersion looks like a viable funded segment with a few established specialists rather than the next broad funding wave.

Is AI demand really strong enough to explain the shift in Data Center Cooling funding?

AI infrastructure demand is strong enough to make the recent Data Center Cooling scale-up rounds economically plausible, especially as rack power and chip heat loads keep rising.

TrendForce estimated in August 2026 that liquid-cooling penetration among AI chips would rise from roughly 33% in 2025 to 53% in 2026 and approach 60% in 2027. It also reported that more than 80% of Google's AI servers were already using liquid cooling and pointed to chip thermal design power above 1 kW and rack-scale systems consuming hundreds of kilowatts.

That industry shift lines up unusually well with the financings we are seeing. Accelsius is scaling two-phase direct-to-chip systems. ZutaCore is funding global commercialization. Corintis is developing microfluidic chip cooling with backing from a data-center operator. DCX is pairing liquid cooling with LITEON's power-management infrastructure. Iceotope is pushing deeper into OEM co-development.

We would not claim that rising AI demand mechanically caused every funding round. Investors still make company-specific judgments on technology, customers and execution.

What is clear as of now is that cooling has moved much closer to the critical path of AI data-center construction. Companies that can solve that problem at deployment scale have become much easier to justify as large infrastructure investments.

What really changed in Data Center Cooling funding over the last 12 months?

Data Center Cooling funding became broader, more mature and far more capable of supporting scale, while normal-sized capital did not improve nearly as much.

The biggest structural change is the arrival of $50M-plus financing. The previous period had none. The latest period produced Accelsius at $65M, ZutaCore at $100M and DCX at $176M. That has created a real financing path for cooling companies that reach industrial scale.

Breadth improved too. We found twice as many funded companies, activity in more monthly windows, twice as many represented cooling categories and a much wider identifiable investor pool. Those changes are hard to dismiss as a statistical artifact from one giant deal.

At the same time, the funding boom looks much smaller once we move below the scale-up tier. Capital excluding rounds above $50M fell about 9%, and the median round declined 18%. Anyone saying simply that "Data Center Cooling funding grew 388%" would leave readers with the wrong picture.

Existing winners gained the most from the new money. Follow-ons now represent 70% of deals, and Accelsius and ZutaCore raised rounds several times larger than their previous financings. New startups are still appearing, but their first checks remain comparatively small.

Direct-to-chip has the most convincing category momentum because it gained both companies and capital across several stages. CDU funding is attracting enormous checks too, although DCX currently dominates that story. Immersion remains alive and fundable, with Iceotope's larger round providing the clearest recent example, but deal breadth has yet to expand.

Strategic investors have become more important in dollar terms as well. Johnson Controls, Legrand, Carrier, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung Ventures, Applied Digital and LITEON are showing that cooling now sits close enough to power, HVAC, electronics and data-center operations to attract industrial capital alongside venture money.

The best description of the market today is a more mature funding system with two clear lanes. Young cooling companies can still enter with relatively small rounds, while a much smaller group that proves commercial and infrastructure relevance can now raise at a scale we simply did not see one year earlier.