Motivair on Engineering Liquid Cooling for AI at Scale

This summer, TechArena has been talking to the companies building the power and cooling infrastructure behind AI data centers.  

We caught up with Rich Whitmore, president and CEO of Motivair by Schneider Electric, which designs and manufactures liquid cooling systems, including coolant distribution units, for high-density AI and HPC deployments.

As rack densities climb and heat removal becomes as critical to AI deployment as power delivery, liquid cooling has become a foundational part of data center design from the outset. We talked about how Motivair builds cooling into AI projects from the beginning, how far liquid cooling can scale as rack power keeps rising, and what the company is engineering next as AI infrastructure demands continue to grow. Here’s what we learned.

Q1: Cooling has moved from the back of the house to the center of the design. How does Motivair help operators build cooling in from the start rather than add it at the end?

A: Cooling is now a foundational design decision for AI infrastructure. Motivair works alongside Schneider Electric’s power and digital infrastructure portfolio to help customers design liquid cooling into the project from day one. That integrated approach supports higher-density computing, simplifies deployment and helps customers reduce time to power by avoiding costly redesigns later in the project.

Q2: As rack power keeps climbing, how far can liquid cooling scale, and what changes along the way?

A: Liquid cooling is designed to scale alongside the growing demands of AI, from today’s high-density racks to tomorrow’s AI factories. As rack power increases, the challenge shifts from simply removing heat to delivering reliable, efficient and scalable thermal management across an entire facility. Motivair by Schneider Electric is advancing this next generation of liquid cooling with solutions such as coolant distribution units designed to support multimegawatt AI deployments and beyond. The future of cooling requires deeper integration with power, controls and digital infrastructure so operators can deploy faster, optimize performance and support the next wave of AI workloads.

Q3: What separates cooling that works for a supercomputer from cooling that works across thousands of racks in production?

A: Production environments require more than excellent thermal performance. They require repeatability, uptime, ease of service and seamless integration with the rest of the infrastructure. Motivair combines decades of liquid cooling expertise with Schneider Electric’s end-to-end infrastructure capabilities to help customers deploy AI at scale while reducing operational complexity and accelerating deployment.

Q4: When an operator chooses Motivair over another cooling option, what usually tips the decision in your favor?

A: Customers are looking for proven technology backed by deep engineering expertise and the ability to deploy quickly. Motivair offers high-performance liquid cooling that is part of Schneider Electric’s broader AI infrastructure portfolio, giving customers confidence that power, cooling, controls and services are engineered to work together. That integration helps reduce project risk and improve time to deployment.

Q5: What are you engineering for next, beyond today’s deployments?

A: The industry is moving toward even higher-density AI infrastructure with greater demands for efficiency, flexibility and speed of deployment. We’re focused on advancing liquid cooling technologies, expanding manufacturing capacity, and developing integrated solutions that help customers deploy next-generation AI infrastructure with greater confidence, scalability and operational efficiency.