Valeo advances aluminum cooling for data centers

Valeo will present the validation status of its aluminum heat exchanger technology for data center thermal management with OVH Cloud at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit 2026. Designed for rear door cooling modules in rack or fan wall deployments, the system targets high-density white space environments where AI workloads are increasing thermal demands.

The company says the aluminum design delivers a 38% increase in cooling capacity and 65% in power density compared with traditional copper solutions, while reducing fan electrical consumption by 25%. Valeo positions the approach as a lighter, scalable option for new racks and retrofits, with potential benefits for Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) and Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).

To address corrosion concerns, Valeo has run accelerated long-duration tests on its coating, while OVH Cloud has conducted real-time tests under operating conditions for several months. The coating has reached the equivalent of more than 10-years operating life, and Valeo is extending testing to 15 years as it evaluates production-grade aluminum infrastructure.

The aluminum exchanger is part of a broader liquid cooling portfolio that includes Direct-to-Chip systems in Single-Phase and Two-Phase formats, plus Zero-Water Immersion Units for Micro-Edge compute applications.