Huachuang Securities: Optimistic about the growth trend of the liquid cooling industry chain, it is recommended to focus on two types of investment opportunities

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Huachuang Securities released a research report saying that AI is developing at an accelerated pace, and liquid cooling is expected to become the mainstream cooling solution for data centers in the future. Cold plate liquid cooling is a mature short-term mainstream solution, and the immersion future is expected to meet supercomputing needs. The bank is optimistic about the growth trend of the liquid cooling industry chain in the context of AI development. It is recommended to focus on two types of investment opportunities: 1) Nvidia industry chain: suppliers of cooling modules and components; 2) new interbank auto parts companies.

The main views of Huachuang Securities are as follows:

AI accelerates development, and liquid cooling is expected to become the mainstream cooling solution for data centers in the future

In the context of the accelerated development of global AI: 1) The intensive release of AI models is driving the growth in demand for data center construction. Global cloud companies continue to increase capital expenses, and trillion-dollar investment plans are gradually being launched. 2) Model changes drive increased computing power requirements, further increasing the power density of chips, servers and data centers, and also increasing the overall heating power of the system. In order to ensure the safety, stability and service life of the system, the importance of system thermal management is more prominent. Compared with traditional air cooling, liquid cooling solutions have significant advantages such as low energy consumption costs (air cooling PUE value about 1.4-1.6, liquid cooling is about 1.05-1.2) and high heat dissipation (liquid cooling power density in 2MW computer rooms is about 4-9 times that of air cooling), gradually replacing air cooling as the mainstream cooling solution for data centers.

Cold plate liquid cooling is a mature short-term mainstream solution, and the immersion future is expected to meet supercomputing needs

Liquid cooling technology routes are diverse, mainly including two categories: non-contact (cold plate type) and contact type (immersion type, spray type, etc.). Cold plate liquid cooling is the current mainstream liquid cooling solution due to its relatively mature technology, perfect ecology, low initial investment, and basic consistency in operation and maintenance models, computer room weighing and air cooling scenarios. Along with the increase in power consumption of supercomputing center chips, and in the context of carbon neutrality, major countries and regions have put forward stricter requirements for indicators such as PUE power utilization efficiency of data centers. In the future, immersion liquid cooling is expected to become the main solution for high power density cooling in intelligent computing centers.

The total value of Nvidia GB series cold plate liquid cooling systems is about 70,000,000 to 100,000 US dollars

The cold plate liquid cooling system includes two parts: the primary side (outdoor side) and the secondary side (indoor side). The core secondary side is mainly composed of components such as CDU, piping, valves, liquid cooling plates, quick plug joints, and Manifold. Taking Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 solutions as an example, the value of the secondary side of cold plate liquid cooling is about 600-800 US dollars/kW. The total value of liquid cooling systems for GB series products is about 70,000,000 to 100,000 US dollars.

Optimistically, the global cold plate liquid cooling scale is expected to exceed 10 billion US dollars in 2026

Based on Nvidia's latest guidelines, the bank estimates that the 2025-2026 Nvidia GPU shipments will be 9.2 million and 12.5 million units, respectively. As next-generation system architectures are introduced, the proportion of liquid cooling will also increase. The demand for cold plate liquid cooling for Nvidia GPUs is expected to reach 6.9 to 17.3 billion US dollars in 2025-2026, while the demand for liquid cooling of ASIC chips from other manufacturers is estimated to be 500 to 1.2 billion US dollars.

Liquid cooling industry chain pattern score, auto parts companies expand into the market based on upstream components

The liquid cooling industry chain mainly covers three links: upstream components and IT equipment, midstream solutions (integrators), and downstream application scenarios (data centers, AI computing power, electronic terminals, etc.). Auto parts companies mostly started with automotive thermal management (Sanhua, Silver Wheel, etc.) and automobile pipelines (Ling Yun, Chuanhuan, Feilong, etc.), and entered the market through industrial research and development. Most of their products are liquid-cooled upstream component pumps, valves, pipelines, quick couplings, Manifold, etc., which are expected to quickly open up the market with years of technology accumulation and precision manufacturing advantages.

The continuous iteration of Nvidia's AI chips also profoundly affects the development of liquid cooling solutions

At the 2025 GTC conference, Nvidia unveiled the next generation of AI chips, which are expected to consume more than 2000W. The thermal power consumption of Rubin GPUs may even increase from 1.8 kW originally anticipated to 2.3 kW, which has already exceeded the cooling load of current cold plates, so the heat dissipation requirements are extremely high, and “microchannel water cooling plate (MLCP)” technology is expected to become the mainstream trend in the next generation of cooling.

Risk warning: Data center construction falls short of expectations, domestic liquid cooling solutions fall short of expectations, geopolitical risks, and calculation errors due to insufficient considerations.