SLB agreed to acquire Kelvion, a data center cooling solutions provider, from investors including Apollo Funds and Triton for $3.4 billion in cash, according to the announcement.
The deal positions SLB, an oilfield services giant with a market capitalization near $100 billion, in the infrastructure layer of artificial intelligence computing. Data center cooling has become a critical bottleneck as cloud operators and AI chip makers scale compute capacity. Kelvion supplies immersion cooling systems, liquid cooling loops, and air cooling units to hyperscalers building out GPU clusters and training farms.
Apollo held a majority stake in Kelvion before the sale. Triton held a minority position. SLB said it will integrate Kelvion into its Energy Systems division, which already serves industrial and energy clients with thermal management and separation equipment. The company did not disclose the expected closing date.
Data center cooling has attracted acquisition interest across industrial companies as electricity demand from AI inference and training drives capex across the cloud ecosystem. Kelvion counted major cloud operators among its customers and had revenue growth exceeding 20 percent annually in recent years, according to investor materials.
SLB has historically focused on upstream oil and gas services, drilling fluids, and subsurface imaging. The Kelvion acquisition is the company's largest entry into AI infrastructure and follows its 2025 investment in carbon capture and storage ventures. SLB chief executive Bharat Sharan said the acquisition would diversify the company's exposure to energy demand drivers.
The $3.4 billion price is roughly 15 times Kelvion's estimated 2025 revenue, a multiple consistent with recent cooling and thermal management deals in the industrial sector. The data center cooling market is expected to exceed $20 billion annually by 2028 as power constraints on AI clusters tighten, according to research from several infrastructure consultancies.
SLB is betting that Kelvion's thermal engineering expertise and customer relationships will anchor a long-term position in AI infrastructure services. The industrial services model SLB operates gives it direct access to hyperscalers and the engineering depth to embed cooling solutions at scale. If Kelvion achieves high single-digit to low double-digit revenue growth in its first three years under SLB, the acquisition will have paid for itself from new customer wins alone.
