SLB Bets $4.1bn on Data Centre Cooling

Acquisition of Kelvion expands the oilfield group’s data centre business as artificial intelligence drives demand for thermal management

1 Sep 2026

SLB has agreed to acquire thermal management group Kelvion for $4.1bn, expanding its data centre business as rising artificial intelligence workloads increase demand for cooling infrastructure. The agreement, signed on August 31, brings heat-exchange technology into a portfolio traditionally centred on the energy industry.

Under the terms of the transaction, SLB will pay about $3.4bn in cash to Kelvion’s owners, funds managed by Apollo and Triton, and assume roughly $700mn of debt. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027.

Kelvion will become part of SLB’s Data Center Solutions business, adding cooling and heat-transfer systems used across industrial and digital applications. As AI models become more complex and chips consume more power, data centre operators face greater pressure to remove heat from increasingly dense computing infrastructure.

“AI is driving the most significant infrastructure investment cycle in our lifetime,” said Olivier Le Peuch, chief executive officer of SLB. The acquisition reflects the company’s effort to build businesses beyond its traditional oil and gas operations.

Kelvion brings an established global customer base and decades of engineering experience in heat-exchange systems. Its technology gives SLB an existing platform from which to serve hyperscale and enterprise data centre customers rather than developing those capabilities solely in-house.

For SLB, the transaction also broadens its exposure to the investment accompanying the expansion of AI infrastructure. Once the acquisition closes, the company expects to have a larger role in data centre cooling alongside its existing activities in design and power management.

The pace of that opportunity will depend partly on continued spending by data centre operators and the power requirements of future computing systems. Until the transaction closes, Kelvion will remain under its existing ownership.