Lenovo (00992) announces the extension of Neptune liquid cooling technology to the full line of data center product portfolio.

In November 27, 2025, Lenovo (00992) officially announced the expansion of its Neptune liquid cooling technology to its entire data center product portfolio to address the increasing computing demands and energy pressure in modern data centers. On the same day this announcement was made, the trading system of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) was paralyzed due to a cooling system failure in the data center, leading to a global derivatives market shutdown lasting over 10 hours. Behind this coincidence is the comprehensive pressure on traditional data center cooling systems under the soaring AI computing power, with skyrocketing power consumption and uncontrolled energy consumption pushing the global digital infrastructure to the "heat out of control" edge, prompting a large-scale technological upgrade that is imminent. The cost of "cooling" failure The incident was triggered by a sudden activation of a high-temperature protection mechanism at a data center in Aurora, Illinois, causing server clusters to shut down automatically. According to CME's statement after the event, the root cause of the data center failure was a sudden mechanical failure of a chiller unit, which caused the room temperature to rise from 24C to 48C within 90 minutes, far exceeding the safe threshold for electronic components. The cost of the incident was quite severe, with trillions of dollars in contracts affected by it the CME futures electronic trading halted during the Asian session, European traders were forced to turn to lower-liquidity over-the-counter markets, and the S&P 500 index futures main contract experienced a volatility increase of 2.3% shortly after trading resumed, marking the largest intraday fluctuation since 2025. The CME outage event is not an isolated incident, it is not just a trading interruption, but also a test of the reliability of the financial market infrastructure and a microcosm of global data centers collectively falling into a "thermal out of control" state. The imbalance between computing power and cooling With the proliferation of high-density computing scenarios like generative AI and large model training, server power consumption is rising exponentially NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture GPU single-chip power consumption has exceeded 1000 watts, a 3x increase from 5 years ago with the A100; standard server cabinet power has jumped from the traditional 5-10 kilowatts to 600 kilowatts, equivalent to the power consumption of a small factory. The core problem lies in the fact that the iteration speed of cooling technology is far behind the growth of computing power. The thermal conductivity of air is only 1/20 that of water, traditional air cooling systems can only handle up to 350 watts of heat dissipation for a single chip, while the current mainstream AI chips have already exceeded this limit. The data illustrates the dilemma. The International Energy Agency (IEA) statistics show that global data centers consume 1.8% of the total electricity consumed worldwide annually, with 38% of the power used for cooling systems this means that for every 1 kWh of computing value generated, nearly 0.4 kWh is consumed to "fight against heat." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently stated on the BG2 podcast that despite the continued high demand for AI chips in the market, Microsoft is currently facing not an excess of computing power, but the limitation of power supply and physical space in data centers, resulting in a large number of AI chips being stuck in inventory, unable to be "powered up and running." Lenovo targets the liquid cooling market Against the backdrop of air cooling nearing its physical limits, liquid cooling technology is becoming the core direction of industry transformation, and the boom in global data center construction indicates the enormous potential of this market. LENOVO GROUP's announcement to expand its Neptune liquid cooling technology to its entire data center product portfolio at this time has officially targeted this market opportunity. The latest data shows that servers equipped with Lenovo Neptune liquid cooling systems can reduce energy consumption by 40% compared to traditional air cooling, and the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) can be as low as 1.1 this means that for every 1 watt of computing energy consumption, only 0.1 watt is needed for cooling, far better than the average PUE of 1.5 or higher for air cooling systems. The core advantage of liquid cooling technology lies in "direct heat dissipation." Taking Lenovo Neptune's Direct Water Cooling (DWC) architecture as an example, 45C warm water directly contacts heat-generating components like CPUs and GPUs through precision cooling plates, achieving a heat absorption efficiency of 100% without relying on high-energy-consuming chiller units. "In the data center applications we built for DreamWorks Animation, not only did we improve the performance of the HPC system by 20%, we also reduced cooling water usage by 35%." Kumar Mitra, ISG Executive Director for Asia Pacific at LENOVO GROUP, said that institutions such as the Korean Meteorological Administration and the National Research Center of Malaysia have fully adopted this technology to address high-density computing needs for weather simulations, gene sequencing, and more. Mitra emphasized that Lenovo's leading position in the Top500 and Green500 rankings fully demonstrates the practical application value of these innovative technologies. As artificial intelligence scales up, solutions that combine performance with responsible energy consumption will define the next era of digital growth, and this is the core value that Lenovo delivers. The CME outage event has become a "catalyst" for industry transformation, with global tech giants and policymakers inevitably accelerating their deployment of liquid cooling technology. China's three major telecommunications operators' 2025 plans show that over 50% of new data centers will adopt liquid cooling solutions; North American cloud service providers Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure have incorporated liquid cooling into the design specifications of their next-generation data centers, planning to achieve 80% liquid cooling of AI servers by 2027. Data shows that the market size of liquid-cooled servers in China is expected to reach $3.39 billion in 2025, a 42.6% increase from 2024. It is projected that from 2025 to 2029, the market's compound annual growth rate will reach approximately 48%, with the market size reaching approximately $16.2 billion by 2028. This rapid growth trend not only reflects the surge in demand for high-performance computing but also highlights the urgent need for green transformation in data centers. Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2030, global data center electricity demand will increase by 165%, posing a significant risk to the sky-high revenue projections of tech giants. This means that the association between energy efficiency and business success is becoming increasingly close. A data center product portfolio with higher energy efficiency will become a mandatory choice for these giants.