Dive Brief:
- The energy transition arm of private equity firm Blackstone announced Wednesday it had acquired a majority stake in Advanced Cooling Technologies, a company that provides liquid cooling and other thermal management and energy efficiency solutions.
- ACT’s executive team will remain in place, Blackstone said in the press release. The Pennsylvania-headquartered company provides products and services to cool data centers; energy efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems; and cooling products for electronics enclosures, according to its website.
- Blackstone identified ACT as a company positioned to benefit from “the increasing importance of thermal management amid rising power intensity and AI innovation,” Blackstone Managing Director Mark Zhu said in the release, citing ACT’s “pioneering work helping meet the next generation of data center and high-performance chip cooling requirements.”
Dive Insight:
Blackstone said its investment is designed to help ACT maintain its current level of service, while adding capabilities and manufacturing capacity to the company’s product and technology portfolio. The company’s products include two-phase liquid cooling products, environmental control units and phase change materials — or substances that can absorb heat “with minimal temperature rise” while changing from a solid to a liquid.
Blackstone and ACT expect the deal to close in the second half of the year. The thermal management solutions company was founded in 2003 and has customers in the data center, energy electronics, HVAC, space and defense industries, according to the release.
“With Blackstone’s support, we will expand manufacturing capacity and accelerate the technologies our customers depend on,” ACT said in a Wednesday LinkedIn post. “We are energized by the opportunities ahead as we continue building ACT into a global leader in thermal management.”
For Blackstone’s energy transition business, the majority stake purchase follows the acquisition of environmental services platform Alliance Technical Group in January. The firm said it has committed over $27 billion in equity funding across the global energy industry.
The investment strategy for Blackstone’s transition business “focuses on identifying businesses [it] believe[s] are well positioned to benefit from long-term power demand growth and the need to manage power and energy more efficiently,” Global Head of Blackstone Energy Transition Partners David Foley said in Wednesday’s release.
Over the past few years — in addition to acquiring Alliance Technical Group and a majority stake in ACT — Blackstone’s energy transition business has also invested $1.2 billion in a West Virginia natural gas facility, became majority owner of a combined power grid infrastructure company, acquired energy data analytics firm Enverus and purchasing a majority stake in renewable energy platform Westwood Professional Services.
