China Buys Liquid Cooling by the Rack Now
Revenue more than doubled as the unit of purchase shifted from the server to the rack.
IDC reported on 11 November 2026 that vendor revenue in China’s liquid-cooling server market grew 153.1% in the first half of 2026, with shipment volume forecast to compound at nearly 49% over five years. Internet companies account for 65.6% of purchases and cold-plate designs for about 90.2% of the technology mix. The more telling number is delivery format: rack-level delivery has reached 47.4% in North America against just 5.0% in China. The report attributes part of that gap to tightening availability of high-end accelerators rather than efficiency alone, which explains why domestic supernode architecture has become such a prominent talking point. China’s overall server market is forecast to grow shipments at about 6.8% a year but revenue at 24.6%.