Guosheng Securities: Moving from anticipation to fulfillment of liquid cooling to the second stage of development

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Guosheng Securities released a research report saying that with Nvidia's GB300 launch and subsequent accelerated implementation of the Vera Rubin platform, the liquid cooling industry is undergoing a critical phase of transformation: from a “first development stage” dominated by concept and expectation verification to a “second development stage” centered on order confirmation, capacity implementation, and performance fulfillment. In the competitive landscape, the current liquid cooling ecosystem is expanding from single-component competition to a complete thermal management system spanning servers, cabinets, and computer room equipment. The value is no longer limited to a single component, but rather the system's ability to collaborate with cold plates, CDU, control, operation and maintenance, and customers are increasingly dependent on solution providers.

Guosheng Securities's main views are as follows:

From anticipation to fulfillment, liquid cooling is moving to the second stage of development

In 2024 and the first half of 2025, the market focus was on discussions on liquid cooling concepts, research on technology routes, and estimation of the long-term market space, which formed the “first development stage” of the liquid cooling industry — the expected stage.

As the large-scale construction of AI clusters progresses, liquid cooling systems have begun to be implemented, and the liquid cooling industry is entering the “second stage of development” marked by the implementation of performance. 100kW+ high-power cabinets have become the new normal, and the GB200/GB300 NVL72's TDP (Thermal Design Power Consumption) continues to break through, and they all use full liquid cooling (DLC) architectures. With mass production of GB300 series AI server cabinets starting at the end of 2025, and the expected launch of the Vera Rubin platform from H2 in 2026, the value of liquid cooling will further increase. Next-generation ASIC accelerators are successively shifting from air cooling to liquid cooling. ASICs developed by AWS and Meta will gradually adopt liquid cooling solutions starting in 2026, and Google and Microsoft's self-developed ASIC AI servers are also expected to gradually switch from air cooling to water cooling. The boundaries of liquid cooling applications extend from GPU servers to devices such as switches and ASICs, and the market space should be systematically re-evaluated.

Order and certainty have become the key, and those with a strong industrial pattern are always strong

As the liquid cooling industry enters the second stage of development where performance is realized, orders and certainty become the key, and the industrial pattern of strong players is highlighted. The focus of competition is shifting upward, from component competition to system capability: The liquid cooling ecosystem is expanding from single-component competition to a complete thermal management system spanning servers, cabinets, and computer room equipment. The value is no longer limited to a single component, but rather the system's ability to collaborate with cold plates, CDU, control and operation and maintenance, and the customer's dependence on solution providers is increasing.

Strong industrial pattern: The liquid cooling industry has strong long-term certainty, and industry leaders have outstanding advantages in the fields of full chain layout, system integration and delivery, and leading customer certification.

The liquid cooling industry chain layout is leading, and it has full-chain solution capabilities: liquid cooling is no longer a single-point technology to replace air cooling, but involves collaboration between CSPs, infrastructure providers, etc. Liquid-cooled faucets not only provide a single component, but can also provide an overall solution covering CDU, cold plates, quick joints, coolant, etc., to achieve a complete layout from component to overall.

System integration and delivery+operation and maintenance capabilities: Customers are increasingly dependent on pre-sales design and after-sales operation and maintenance of liquid cooling systems. Leading manufacturers have full-chain self-development and system collaboration, as well as large-scale, stable and reliable production and delivery capabilities, and have natural advantages in global delivery experience, certification systems, and customer collaboration.

Leading customer certification: Leading manufacturers lay out ahead of time and are expected to enter the domestic and foreign mainstream cloud service providers, server vendors, or chip manufacturers supply chains.

The liquid cooling industry is entering the second stage of development from “driven by expectations” to “delivering results”. With the accelerated implementation of ASIC clusters developed by Nvidia GB300, Vera Rubin and major cloud vendors, 100kW+ high-power cabinets have become the norm, and liquid cooling has become the required infrastructure. The core of industry competition has been upgraded from a single component to a full chain of system capabilities covering design, delivery and operation and maintenance. This transformation has prompted a systematic revaluation of market space and established a “strong and strong” industry pattern — leading companies with full-stack solution capabilities, certified by leading customers, and large-scale delivery experience, will be the main beneficiaries of this round of definitive industry dividends. In summary, I am optimistic about the leading company, Invek, which has the most ability to go overseas, and the leading upstream and downstream supporting industry chains, including pump manufacturer Feilong Co., Ltd.

In summary, continue to be optimistic about the computing power sector, and strongly recommend enterprises related to the computing power industry chain, such as Zhongji Xuchuang (300308.SZ), Xinyisheng (300502.SZ), etc., and also recommend focusing on optical devices “one big five small” Tianfu Communications (300394.SZ) +Shijia Photon (688313.SH) /Taichenguang (300570.SZ) /Changxin Bochuang (300548.SZ) /Deckley (688205.SH) /Dongtian Wei (301183.SZ), etc. The industrial chain, such as the liquid in it Cold links include Invec (002837.SZ), Dongyangguang (600673.SH), etc.

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