LG Electronics has secured a long-term contract to supply cooling equipment for artificial intelligence data centers across North America, covering a planned 5 gigawatts of capacity. The agreement places the South Korean manufacturer deeper into the infrastructure race around AI compute, where thermal management has become as strategic as servers, power and network connectivity. LG’s U.S. subsidiary said Monday that it recently signed the supply agreement with AIR Control Concept (AIR), a North American infrastructure platform focused on data center development and services. The contract value remains undisclosed, but an LG spokesperson said it amounts to several trillion won, equivalent to several billion dollars.

LG Targets 5 Gigawatts of AI Data Center Cooling

LG will supply chillers and related cooling equipment in phases as AIR develops AI data centers with a combined capacity of 5 gigawatts. AIR designs and builds facilities across the U.S. and Canada while also managing public procurement and aftermarket services, giving the partnership a route into large-scale infrastructure programs rather than individual equipment orders. Its data center subsidiary, AIR Mission Critical, executes major projects and serves data center operators globally. LG views the long-term volume commitment as evidence that its cooling technologies can satisfy the technical performance and reliability requirements demanded by hyperscale operators.

The scale of the agreement reflects a broader shift in how developers approach AI infrastructure. High-performance GPUs draw substantially more electricity than conventional server hardware and convert much of that energy into heat, creating thermal constraints that can limit computing performance and operational reliability. Chillers remain a core component of many cooling architectures because operators must continuously remove that heat to prevent equipment from throttling or failing. As AI workloads push rack densities higher, cooling has moved from a facilities concern toward a central design and investment decision.

LG’s AI Cooling Orders Accelerate

LG said orders for its AI data center cooling business exceeded 600 billion won ($446.4 million) during the first half of this year. The company expects cumulative orders to reach several trillion won by the end of 2026 and said it now expects to achieve its 1 trillion won chiller-sales target earlier than its original end-2027 schedule. LG also began supplying and installing cooling equipment this year for a major North American AI data center project secured in 2025.

Beyond North America, LG has won cooling contracts for major facilities in markets including the Middle East and Indonesia. The geographic spread matters because hyperscale and AI infrastructure developers increasingly deploy standardized technology across multiple regions while adapting projects to local power, climate and water constraints. For LG, those deployments can strengthen its credentials with operators seeking suppliers capable of supporting large portfolios rather than isolated facilities. The AIR agreement therefore represents both a sizable commercial win and a platform for expanding LG’s position in the global AI thermal-management market.

LG Bets on High-Efficiency AI Cooling

The company is betting that rising compute density will sustain demand for more sophisticated thermal systems as AI infrastructure moves toward larger deployments and increasingly demanding rack configurations. Its strategy combines high-efficiency chillers with liquid-cooling technologies, allowing LG to participate across different cooling architectures as operators determine how best to manage next-generation AI loads. The shift also gives equipment manufacturers greater influence over data center design decisions, where cooling performance can directly affect power efficiency, uptime and usable compute capacity. Meanwhile, the race for AI capacity is increasingly becoming a race to remove heat at scale.

“Based on our differentiated technologies, including high-efficiency chillers and high-performance liquid cooling solutions, and our experience supplying rapidly expanding large-scale data centers, we will lead the global AIDC cooling market,” said James Lee, president and head of LG Electronics’ global heating, ventilation and air conditioning and AI data center thermal management operations. LG’s latest deal signals a broader infrastructure reality: as AI campuses scale into gigawatt territory, thermal capacity is becoming a strategic bottleneck. Companies that can deliver efficient cooling across both air and liquid architectures may capture a growing share of the capital flowing into AI infrastructure, particularly as hyperscalers prioritize density, reliability and energy efficiency alongside raw compute.