US heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) companies saw a stock sell-off on Tuesday following news that Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips can be cooled with water at 45°C (113°F), “with no chillers necessary.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made the announcement at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas yesterday, revealing that the chips are now in “full production,” and fueling a share price drop for a number of HVAC companies, including Modine Manufacturing (7.5 percent), Johnson Controls (6.2 percent), Trane Technologies (5.3 percent), and Carrier Global (1 percent).
In his keynote speech, the Nvidia CEO promised Vera Rubin would have twice the power of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs, while also removing the need for water chillers in data centers.
“We are basically cooling this supercomputer with hot water; it is so incredibly efficient,” Haung said.
Nvidia expects Vera Rubin to be available in the second half of 2026.
HVAC companies have greatly benefited from the momentum of the data center industry in recent years, though many still only consider it a smaller part of their business.
Any shift away from chillers, space cooling, and air cooling could have an impact on the companies involved in these areas that lack a presence in liquid cooling.
On the other hand, some analysts have noted that nVent and Vertiv could benefit from the proliferation of Vera Rubin due to their strong existing positions in liquid cooling.
Nvidia says Vera Rubin will be able to reach 5x and 3.5x of inference and training performance, respectively, compared to Blackwell. The Vera Rubin NVL72 rack will be 100 percent liquid cooled and feature cable‑free modular tray designs.
“Rubin arrives at exactly the right moment, as AI computing demand for both training and inference is going through the roof,” said Huang. “With our annual cadence of delivering a new generation of AI supercomputers and extreme co-design across six new chips Rubin takes a giant leap toward the next frontier of AI.”
Boykin Air 