Why is Legrand Boosting its AI Power and Cooling Portfolio?

Legrand has announced the acquisition of Kratos Industries and a strategic investment in Accelsius, moves designed to strengthen its end to end power and thermal management portfolio for AI-ready data centres.

The dual announcement expands Legrand’s capabilities across both the grey space – covering upstream power distribution – and the white space, where high-density racks and advanced cooling systems are deployed. 

As operators scale AI infrastructure, integration across these layers is becoming central to reliability and performance.

Expanding critical power in the grey space

Kratos Industries, based in Arvada, Colorado, manufactures low-voltage switchboards, medium-voltage switchgear and integrated power systems for data centre and industrial applications.

The company is known for its vertically integrated production model and engineered-to-order approach, enabling rapid delivery for mission critical environments.

By acquiring Kratos, Legrand extends its existing grey space portfolio, which includes cable bus, load banks and cable tray systems.

The addition also complements its white space power offerings such as busway, busduct and rack power distribution units.

“Data centres are facing unprecedented pressure to build out digital infrastructure at scale and with extreme reliability,” says Pedro Mendieta, Data, Power, and Control (DPC) President of Legrand, for North and Central America. 

“By welcoming Kratos to Legrand, we are deepening our ability to serve the complete data centre power train, ensuring our customers have a single, trusted partner for their entire power ecosystem.”

Pedro emphasises that hyperscale and colocation providers increasingly seek integrated partners capable of supporting the full power chain from utility interconnection through to rack-level distribution.

Rowan Koons, who will assume the role of VP/General Manager of the Kratos business unit within Legrand's DPC division, highlights the operational benefits of the deal. 

“Joining Legrand marks a pivotal chapter in our journey,” he says.

“By leveraging Legrand's global supply chain and operational infrastructure, we can accelerate growth and better support the massive, complex projects our customers are undertaking.

“We look forward to collaborating with the Legrand team to deliver the next generation of power solutions.”

Consolidation across power equipment suppliers may streamline procurement and reduce integration risk in large-scale builds, particularly as projects move towards gigawatt campuses.

Advancing two-phase liquid cooling

Alongside the Kratos acquisition, Legrand has participated in the Series B funding round for Accelsius, a specialist in two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

The partnership expands Legrand’s presence in advanced thermal management as rack densities increase.

AI and high-performance computing workloads are pushing traditional air cooling architectures beyond their practical limits, accelerating the shift to liquid-based systems.

Accelsius’ two-phase cooling technology removes heat directly at the processor level.

By leveraging phase change principles, the system is designed to enable higher compute densities while reducing the energy required for cooling compared with conventional approaches.

Through the strategic relationship, Legrand and Accelsius will collaborate on joint development initiatives in the white space, including integration of liquid cooling within rack infrastructure.

This reflects a broader industry trend in which power, mechanical and rack design considerations are converging.

As operators deploy GPU-heavy clusters for AI training and inference, thermal performance at the chip level becomes directly linked to uptime and overall energy efficiency.

Integrating liquid cooling into rack systems requires coordination across structural design, power distribution and coolant management.

A unified infrastructure strategy

Legrand describes the Kratos acquisition and Accelsius partnership as two pillars of a unified data centre strategy.

One pillar strengthens the power backbone in the grey space, while the other advances next-generation cooling in the white space.

Together, the moves position Legrand to address the full spectrum of mission-critical infrastructure requirements, from medium-voltage switchgear and low-voltage distribution through to rack-level liquid cooling integration.

The company states it remains focused on engineered-to-order, customer-first solutions that scale with the demands of AI and high-performance computing.

By combining expanded power capabilities with investment in advanced thermal technologies, Legrand is aligning its portfolio with the infrastructure shifts underway in AI-driven data centres.

For operators facing tighter delivery timelines and rising density requirements, the ability to source coordinated power and cooling solutions from a single supplier may offer advantages in design standardisation and deployment speed as new capacity comes online.