SLB bets $4.1 billion on cooling AI data centres

SLB, the world’s largest oilfield services company, has agreed to acquire Kelvion, a thermal management specialist, in a deal valued at $4.1 billion. The purchase pushes the company further into data centre infrastructure at a moment when AI computing is making heat the binding constraint.

The structure is roughly $3.4 billion in cash plus about $700 million of assumed debt. SLB is buying from majority owner Apollo-managed funds and minority shareholder Triton.

The reasoning is about density. Modern AI accelerators draw far more power per rack than the servers data centres were designed around, and the heat they produce has to be moved out of the building before anything else can scale. SLB says Kelvion’s cooling and heat-rejection products more than double the revenue it can earn per gigawatt of delivered data centre capacity — the same physical site, more of the equipment supplied by one vendor.

The company expects its combined data centre business to generate more than $2 billion in revenue in 2026, and is targeting $4.5 billion to $5 billion by 2028. It also anticipates about $120 million in annual EBITDA synergies within three years of completing the deal.

Closing is expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions. The revenue targets are company projections, not results.

This article is a market report, not investment advice.