Trane buys its own coil supplier the day Nvidia promises near-zero-water AI factories
Trane Technologies agreed on October 21 to buy Cancoil Thermal, the family firm that already supplies its heat-rejection coils, the same day Nvidia showcased an AI-factory blueprint it says needs almost no water. Both announcements value the same layer: the hardware that carries heat out of the building.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A family firm sells to its own customer
On October 21, Trane Technologies−4.77% — Trane Technologies, down 4.77 percent today (NYSE: TT) agreed to buy Cancoil Thermal, the Ontario, Canada manufacturer that already supplies coils and coolers to its chiller and air-handling businesses 12. Cancoil was founded in 1983 by Chander and Anju Datta and employs more than 450 people at plants in Ontario and Jacksonville, Texas 1. Terms were not disclosed; the deal is expected to close before the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval, with investment bank Lazard advising Cancoil 123.
Chief Operating Officer Donny Simmons called Cancoil "a critical capability at the right time," and the announcement lists data centers first among its end markets 1. The stock closed up 2.17% at about $471.42 3.
Nvidia's blueprint still ends at a dry cooler
The same day at GTC Berlin, Nvidia's−4.37% — Nvidia, down 4.37 percent today conference, the chipmaker said European partners are building AI factories on DSX, its reference design that treats chips, power and cooling as one system, and it named Trane among the participating engineering firms 4.
The near-zero-water claim is a hardware claim: coolant runs past the chips in a closed loop and releases its heat to the outdoor air through dry coolers, with no water evaporated 45. Nvidia says a two-gigawatt site built that way saves 54 million litres a day 4, the daily water use of 180,000 households 5.
Trane has already published seven thermal reference designs, three of them 250-megawatt DSX blueprints; one pairs modular cooling plants from Stellar Energy, bought alongside liquid-cooling maker LiquidStack, with dry fluid coolers stacked on top 56. Cancoil's fluid coolers and coils are that layer.
The prices nobody disclosed
The Nvidia camp wants to compress the build itself: DSX POD, a factory-built container design, cuts deployment at a prepared site from six months to as little as 14 days, with Dell, Schneider Electric and Vertiv−7.92% — Vertiv, down 7.92 percent today delivering in early 2027 7. Inside the same program, Vertiv's 2.3-megawatt CoolChip coolant unit is DSX Ready beside Trane's GigaModular, rivals listed side by side 5.
Demand shows in the books, the bill does not
Demand shows in Trane's books: second-quarter revenue hit $6.4 billion, up 10.6% in a year, and backlog reached a record $12.1 billion, up 70%, mainly on data-center chillers 89. Trane locks in coil supply against that backlog, the Datta family sells a 40-year-old firm to its own customer, and independent coil makers now face a market consolidating around the incumbents they supply 1268. What no document carries is the bill: Trane never disclosed what it paid for Cancoil 12, and the prices of LiquidStack and Stellar appear nowhere in the coverage here 68.
Trane's quarterly revenue hit a record $6.4B in Q2 2026
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '23 | $4.88B |
| Q4 '23 | $4.42B |
| Q1 '24 | $4.22B |
| Q2 '24 | $5.31B |
| Q3 '24 | $5.44B |
| Q4 '24 | $4.87B |
| Q1 '25 | $4.69B |
| Q2 '25 | $5.75B |
| Q3 '25 | $5.74B |
| Q4 '25 | $5.15B |
| Q1 '26 | $4.97B |
| Q2 '26 | $6.35B |
Trane reports third-quarter results on October 29 6; the Cancoil deal is expected to close by year-end 23. Nvidia can standardize the chip side of cooling; the heat still has to leave the building through somebody's coils.
Get Data Center by email, free
Who is building AI's data centers, and who is paying for them. In our daily email, every weekday.
More about NVIDIA
NVDA · Fiscal Q2 2027Revenue rose 106% to $96.2B, 92.5% of it from Data Center, “driven by the ramp of our Blackwell Ultra infrastructure”. Gains on equity stakes of $7.8B lifted net income to $59.7B.
Show as a table
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Revenue | $96.2B |
| Gross margin | 75.0% |
| Operating margin | 66.2% |
| Net income | $59.7B |
| Hyperscale | $48.7B |
| AI clouds & enterprise | $40.3B |
| Data Center | $89.0B |
| Edge Computing | $7.2B |
| Gross profit | $72.1B |
| Cost of revenue | $24.1B |
| Other income | $7.8B |
| Operating income | $63.7B |
| Operating expenses | $8.4B |
| Tax | $11.8B |
| R&D | $7.1B |
| SG&A | $1.4B |
