AI Reshaping, emerges as top data centre trend

Innovation in powering and cooling AI racks and rising demands are expected to strain the grid, leading to restrictions on data centre construction, energy consumption, and carbon emissions. In response, data centre organisations are intensifying their focus on energy efficiency and sustainability, making these priorities a focus during 2025.

AI continues to reshape the data centre industry, a reality reflected in the projected 2025 data centre trends from Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions. Vertiv experts anticipate increased industry innovation and integration to support high-density computing, regulatory scrutiny around AI and focus on sustainability and cybersecurity efforts.

Vertiv CEO Giordano (Gio) Albertazzi said, “Our experts correctly identified the proliferation of AI and the need to transition to more complex liquid- and air-cooling strategies as a trend for 2024, and activity on that front is expected to further accelerate and evolve in 2025. With AI driving rack densities into three- and four-digit kWs, the need for advanced and scalable solutions to power and cool those racks, minimise their environmental footprint, and empower these emerging AI Factories has never been higher. We anticipate significant progress in 2025, and our customers demand it.”

According to Vertiv experts, the 2025 trends most likely to emerge across the data centre industry are mentioned herein.

Power and cooling infrastructure innovates to keep pace with computing densification: In 2025, the impact of compute-intense workloads will intensify. Advanced computing will continue to shift from CPU to GPU to leverage the latter’s parallel computing power and the higher thermal design point of modern chips. This will further stress existing power and cooling systems and push data centre operators toward cold-plate and immersion cooling solutions that remove heat at the rack level. Enterprise data centres will be impacted by this trend as AI use expands beyond early cloud and colocation providers.

• AI racks will require UPS systems, batteries, power distribution equipment and switchgear with higher power densities to handle AI loads that can fluctuate from 10 percent idle to 150 percent overload in a flash.
• Hybrid cooling systems, with liquid-to-liquid, liquid-to-air and liquid-to-refrigerant configurations, will evolve in rackmount, perimeter and row-based cabinet models deployed in brown/greenfield applications.
• Liquid cooling systems will increasingly be paired with dedicated, high-density UPS systems to provide continuous operation.
• Servers will have factory-integrated liquid cooling, making manufacturing and assembly more efficient and deployment faster, increasing system energy efficiency.

Data centres prioritise energy availability challenges: Overextended grids and skyrocketing power demands are changing how data centres consume power. Globally, data centres use an average of 1-2% of the world’s power, but AI is driving increases in consumption that are likely to push that to 3-4 percent by 2030. Expected increases may place demands on the grid including restrictions on data centre builds energy use and carbon emissions that data centre organisations are racing to control. These pressures are forcing organisations to prioritise energy efficiency and sustainability.

In 2024, Vertiv predicted a trend toward energy alternatives and microgrid deployments. In 2025, it sees an acceleration of this trend, with real movement toward prioritising and seeking out energy-efficient solutions and alternatives that are new to this arena.

Industry players collaborate to drive AI Factory development: Average rack densities have been increasing steadily over the past few years, but for an industry that supported an average density of 8.2kW in 2020, the predictions of AI Factory racks of 500 to 1000kW or higher soon represent an unprecedented disruption. As a result of the rapid changes, chip developers, customers, power and cooling infrastructure manufacturers, utilities and other industry stakeholders will increasingly partner to develop and support transparent roadmaps to enable AI adoption. This collaboration extends to development tools powered by AI to speed engineering and manufacturing for standardised and customised designs. In the coming year, chip makers, infrastructure designers and customers will increasingly collaborate and move toward manufacturing partnerships that enable integration of IT and infrastructure.

AI makes cybersecurity easier:  The increasing frequency and severity of ransomware attacks are driving a new look at cybersecurity processes and the role the data centre community plays in preventing such attacks. One-third of all attacks last year involved some form of ransomware or extortion, and today’s bad actors are leveraging AI tools to ramp up their assaults, cast a wider net, and deploy more sophisticated approaches. Attacks increasingly start with an AI-supported hack of control systems, embedded devices or connected hardware and infrastructure systems that are not always built to meet the same security requirements as other network components.

Government and industry regulators tackle AI applications and energy use:  In 2025, Vertiv expects the potential for regulations to increasingly address the use of AI itself.

Shrirang Deshpande, Country Head – AI Practice and Strategic Programs at Vertiv said, “This year witnessed the AI revolution taking centre stage, with the momentum anticipated to grow in the coming year and beyond. In India, our government is also playing a role in accelerating AI adoption and supporting the development of a sovereign AI Cloud. With a comprehensive power and cooling portfolio, including the new Vertiv™ 360AI portfolio, we are well-positioned to address the dynamic demands of customers exploring AI support. Combined with a global service network and expert engineers, we’re ready to support transformative AI journeys”.