Thermal Management and Cabinet PDU & Busway Lead Growth; Liquid Cooling Set to Quintuple by 2029
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – August 15, 2025 – According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the worldwide Data Center Physical Infrastructure (DCPI) market is projected to grow at a 15 percent CAGR from 2024 to 2029, reaching $63.1 billion by 2029 as AI-ready capacity accelerates through the mid-decade. This outlook reflects stronger-than-expected deployments to support accelerated computing workloads.
“AI is reshaping facility design from the rack up—densities are climbing, power is getting smarter, and liquid is moving from niche to necessary,” said Alex Cordovil, Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Our latest forecast shows the market scaling faster and more broadly than earlier expected, with vendors and operators adapting quickly to new thermal and electrical realities while navigating power constraints pragmatically.”
Additional highlights from the Data Center Physical Infrastructure 5-Year July 2025 Forecast Report:
- Thermal Management is projected to grow at a 19 percent CAGR by 2029; within it, Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) is set to surge from $1.1B in 2024 to $5.8B in 2029 as rack densities rise with accelerated computing and DLC asserts itself as the dominant heat technology to dissipate heat out of the rack.
- Cabinet PDU & Busway will expand at a 21 percent CAGR; overhead busbars—now the de facto choice for AI halls—are forecast to grow 25 percent CAGR, while RPPs lag at 5 percent CAGR.
- Service Providers (cloud & colocation) are set to grow at a 20 percent CAGR through 2029, while Enterprise increases 6 percent CAGR as enterprise leaders favor colocation partners to host AI infrastructure.
- Growth is broad-based, with North America leading and EMEA/China peaking around 2026 before moderating; AI sovereignty and export-policy shifts support momentum.
- Operators increasingly combine utility ties with on-site generation and other tactics; overall, we expect only a modest impact on capacity expansion from power constraints.
Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center Physical Infrastructure 5-Year Forecast report provides a complete overview of the Data Center Physical Infrastructure market. This covers market sizes and forecasts for uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), thermal management, cabinet power distribution and busway, rack power distribution, IT racks and containment, and software and services. Allocation of manufacturing revenues by cloud service providers, telco, colocation, and enterprise customer segments is also provided. For more information about the report, please contact us at dgsales@delloro.com.
Dell’Oro Group is a market research firm that specializes in strategic competitive analysis in the telecommunications, security, enterprise networks, and data center infrastructure markets. Our firm provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to facilitate critical, fact-based business decisions. For more information, contact Dell’Oro Group at +1.650.622.9400 or visit www.delloro.com.
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