AST SpaceMobile and Vertiv Holdings represent contrasting investment opportunities in high-growth sectors. AST operates a satellite-based cellular broadband network connecting standard mobile phones in remote locations. In July 2026, the company completed a $1.15 billion convertible notes offering but reported a negative 1,296% net income margin for the quarter ended March 2026. Vertiv designs and manufactures critical systems for data centres and communication networks. The company recently acquired thermal engineering firms ThermoKey and Strategic Thermal Labs, generating a 15% net income margin for the quarter ended June 2026. Revenue performance differs markedly between the two. AST's quarterly revenue fluctuated from $1.1 million to $54.3 million over recent quarters. Vertiv demonstrated consistent growth, expanding from $2.1 billion to $3.3 billion quarterly. AST trades at 225 times trailing revenue, whilst Vertiv trades at nine times revenue.

Vertiv expands its manufacturing and testing capacity for AI-ready data center cooling solutions. Published: 06 Aug 2026 In August 2026, Vertiv announced new investments at its Tognana technology campus near Padua, Italy, in order to expand its manufacturing and testing capabilities for data center cooling systems, as demand for AI-ready thermal infrastructure continues to rise globally. The company also stated that the expansion will double chiller production capacity at the facility by the end of 2026, while a new large-scale testing laboratory is scheduled to become operational in early 2027. The investments are aimed at supporting the growing requirements of AI workloads and high-density computing environments. The new testing laboratory will enable Vertiv to evaluate large-scale chillers and validate their integration with liquid cooling systems under high-density workloads and extreme temperature conditions. According to the company, the facility will allow customers to verify thermal performance under expected deployment scenarios, helping accelerate the implementation of increasingly complex cooling infrastructure. The Tognana campus will serve as one of Vertiv's primary global centers for cooling technology development, bringing together research and development, product management, manufacturing, integrated testing, and customer engagement under one location. The site also features a Customer Experience Centre, where enterprise customers and consultants can participate in witnessing the testing of cooling technologies across the thermal management chain under real-world operating conditions before deployment. The investment reflects the growing demand for advanced cooling technologies as AI-driven data centers continue to increase rack densities and power requirements, making thermal management a critical component of next-generation digital infrastructure. Impact on the ICT Market. Data centers, which are vital aspects of the ICT industry, mostly face immense energy challenges, particularly regarding cooling systems that manage the relentless thermal output of high-density servers. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) motor technology has thus emerged as a transformative solution, delivering significant gains in operational efficiency and sustainability. The future of data center cooling lies at the heart of AI intelligence and precision. Through the integration of machine learning-driven predictive control, advanced motors like BLDC and PMSM, and the modulation capabilities provided by VFDs, engineers can achieve unparalleled energy efficiency and reliability. Vertiv also said that the expanded manufacturing and testing capabilities will strengthen its ability to support customers deploying AI infrastructure and high-performance computing environments that require increasingly sophisticated thermal management systems. The evolution of data center cooling, powered by AI-enhanced controls and advanced HVAC motor technology, presents an exciting frontier for sustainable digital infrastructure. Impact on the data center cooling market. The global data center cooling market size was USD 81.88 billion in 2025 and is expected to exceed USD 248.21 billion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 11.73% from 2026 to 2035. According to Precedence Research, the market is witnessing rapid growth, driven by growing hyperscale data center demand, growth of cloud services, deployment of edge computing, and rising deployments of AI and high-performance workloads, all of which are demanding advanced thermal management. The increasing adoption of high-density computing driven by artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), high-performance computing (HPC), and advanced analytics workloads is significantly contributing to the growth of the data center cooling industry. Artificial intelligence is transforming the data center cooling market by improving energy efficiency, enabling predictive maintenance, and optimizing resource use. Using sensor data, the AI algorithms adjust cooling systems interactively to avoid energy wastage and curb operational costs. Predictive maintenance also identifies operational faulty conditions early enough to steer clear of downtime and repair costs. AI, on the other hand, distributes workloads across servers to avoid hotspots and defend cooling from actual requirements. Modern AI training clusters are now able to concentrate on thousands of high-power GPUs in dense rack configurations, generating heat loads that require liquid-based thermal transfer in order to maintain component reliability and performance consistency. All these factors help to increase uptime and reduce latency, thus improving reliability and energy efficiency and making the data center an affordable environment. Impact on the data center immersion cooling market. The global data center immersion cooling market size accounted for USD 1.52 billion in 2024 and is predicted to increase from USD 1.81 billion in 2025 to approximately USD 8.52 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 18.81% from 2025 to 2035. According to Precedence Research, the trends of the data center immersion cooling market are motivated by the increasing usage of high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), and big data analytics that demand an immense amount of processing power and produce significant heat loads. Government and organizations around the globe are also encouraging the use of energy-efficient technologies, which makes the world more open to using renewable energies. With the ever-growing workloads in the data center due to cloud computing, the growth of 5G, and the implementation of edge deployments. The data center immersion cooling market is being transformed at the stage of the incorporation of AI to guarantee the optimization of performance, efficiency, and reliability. Immersion cooling systems can have artificial intelligence to monitor real-time temperature, fluid flow, and energy consumption so that precautions can be implemented before the system overheats and fails. The AI is also used to enhance automation, reduce human involvement in monitoring and maintenance of the system, and improve system resilience. The future of green, smart data centers is being characterized by AI and immersion cooling, which is more dynamic, functional, and effective. Expert opinion. Commenting on the expansion, Gio Albertazzi, Chief Executive Officer, Vertiv, said, "AI is driving thermal demands that didn't exist two years ago, with higher densities, faster deployment demands, and no room to compromise on reliability. The expansion at Tognana puts us further ahead with more manufacturing capacity, integrated testing, and advanced thermal management systems built for current and future generations of silicon. This investment reinforces our position at the front of the curve."

Bitzero & Vertiv: tackling AI's power and cooling needs. August 04, 2026 Bitzero is partnering with Vertiv to strengthen its critical power, cooling and infrastructure capabilities for the AI and HPC data centres of the future What happens when the demands of AI data centres become too much for traditional infrastructure approaches? Bitzero's answer is to bring more of the specialist expertise needed to build them under one roof, starting with a new collaboration with Vertiv. The sustainable high-performance compute and AI data centre infrastructure provider has partnered with Vertiv to strengthen its capabilities across critical power, thermal management and infrastructure deployment. The relationship is designed to support Bitzero's plans for AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and hyperscale data centres, giving the company access to Vertiv's engineering expertise and infrastructure technologies as it develops its portfolio. "Bitzero is intentionally building an ecosystem of leading providers across every critical layer of data centre delivery," says Bitzero Founder & CEO, Mohammed Bakhashwain. "Following our previously announced relationships, Vertiv further enhances our technical depth across critical power, thermal management and infrastructure solutions, while strengthening our supply chain capabilities as we continue advancing our platform for hyperscale, AI and HPC applications." Power and cooling move up the agenda. Increasing compute density is placing greater demands on the systems that keep those servers powered and within operating temperatures. That puts critical power and cooling at the heart of data centre design as AI and HPC workloads drive higher power densities. Vertiv brings expertise across both areas, with its role in the collaboration expected to include critical power systems, thermal management and advanced liquid cooling design and engineering. Liquid cooling is now a vital element of AI infrastructure as conventional air cooling is harder to apply efficiently at higher rack densities. For Bitzero, access to this expertise forms part of a wider strategy to assemble the technical capabilities required to deliver modern high-performance compute environments. "Successfully scaling AI requires more than advanced compute, it requires end-to-end infrastructure capable of supporting increasingly demanding power and thermal profiles," says Paul Ryan, President for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Vertiv. "Vertiv draws on decades of experience in critical digital infrastructure to help organisations deploy and operate the power and cooling systems that underpin AI and HPC environments, helping accelerate AI readiness and support faster time-to-token outcomes. "We are pleased to support Mohammed and the Bitzero team as it expands its capabilities to meet growing customer demand." Building an infrastructure ecosystem. The Vertiv collaboration is part of Bitzero's broader effort to establish a network of specialist providers spanning technical design and supply chain coordination. Instead of treating power, cooling and other infrastructure requirements as separate elements, Bitzero says it is developing an integrated execution platform that can bring these capabilities together as projects move from design to delivery. The approach also reflects the growing importance of modular and integrated infrastructure as operators look to deploy AI capacity more quickly. Bitzero says Vertiv's technologies will form a key pillar within its execution platform, supporting the delivery of resilient and scalable infrastructure. The company's focus is now on combining these relationships with its portfolio of sites and development strategy, with Vertiv adding another specialist capability to its delivery network. Company Portals