Guohai Securities: NVIDIA's architecture upgrade promotes liquid cooling development, with significant advantages for domestic companies

According to Zhitong Finance APP, Guohai Securities released a research report stating that NVIDIA's architecture upgrade is driving the development of liquid cooling, with the GB300 liquid cooling covering over 80% of heat-generating components. The Rubin architecture Kyber rack is expected to achieve 100% liquid cooling by 2027, significantly increasing the demand for GPU liquid cooling. ASIC cooling has high gross profit potential, with a shipping surge expected in 2026, as tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon will launch a large number of ASIC chips. The core of liquid cooling is manufacturing + materials science, and local Chinese companies have clear advantages in this regard. It is optimistic that international first-class liquid cooling companies will emerge in China, and it is recommended to pay attention to Qihong Technology, Shuguang Shuchuang (872808.BJ), Envicool (002837.SZ), FRD (300602.SZ), and Chuanhuan Technology (300547.SZ).

Guohai Securities' main viewpoints are as follows:

The GB300 liquid cooling covers over 80% of high-power components, and the Rubin architecture Kyber rack is expected to achieve 100% liquid cooling by 2027.

The performance of the Blackwell architecture has surged, and liquid cooling has almost become a necessity to fully utilize Blackwell chips. According to information from the Yunfan Thermal Management public account in August this year, the core of the GB300 liquid cooling system is the "Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling (DLC)" architecture, where the cooling liquid directly contacts high-power components such as GPUs, NVLink switching chips, and CPUs through microchannel cold plates (Cold Plate), achieving precise heat conduction (accounting for over 80% of total heat generation). The remaining low-power components (such as memory, storage, and I/O interfaces) are cooled through system-level air cooling or auxiliary liquid cooling (such as backplane circulation liquid cooling). NVIDIA plans to launch the Rubin Ultra NVL576 (600kW level) Kyber rack in 2027, which will completely eliminate air cooling and achieve 100% liquid cooling.

Cold plate liquid cooling boosts demand for four major components, with the GPU liquid cooling market expected to reach 80 billion yuan in 2026.

Cold plates, CDU, UQD, and Manifold are the main components of the cold plate liquid cooling solution on the indoor side, and it is estimated that these four components currently account for over 90% of the total value of the GB200 NVL72 cooling solution. The first batch of GB300 shipments will still use the Bianca architecture, while the future Cordelia architecture will adopt an independent liquid cooling plate design, with each chip equipped with a separate liquid cooling plate. The number of cold plates in the Compute tray will increase from 54 in GB200 to 126 in GB300; the UQD size will shrink to one-third of the original, with a decrease in unit price but a doubling in quantity. Based on a liquid cooling value of 700,000 yuan per cabinet, assuming 100,000 to 120,000 cabinets are shipped next year, the GPU liquid cooling market is expected to reach 80 billion yuan.

ASIC cooling has higher gross profit potential, with a surge in ASIC chip shipments expected in 2026.

ASIC products are often designed and developed in collaboration with customers, which includes mold design and manufacturing costs. With fewer competitors, the overall pricing space is more flexible, and it will become another key development direction in the industry chain Currently, Google has fully adopted liquid cooling solutions, and its liquid-cooled TPU clusters have achieved a GW-level operating scale, maintaining a high availability of 99.999% over the past seven years. A surge in ASIC chip shipments is expected in 2026. According to the Electronic Semiconductor Observation WeChat account, it is estimated that Google's TPU shipments will reach 1.5 to 2 million units in 2025, while Meta plans to launch over a million high-performance AI ASIC chips (approximately 1 to 1.5 million units) between the end of 2025 and 2026. Amazon AWS's Trainium2 ASIC chip shipments are expected to reach 1.4 to 1.5 million units.

The liquid cooling sector may give rise to new industry leaders, with strong growth potential for Chinese companies in the future.

Qihong Technology: The company and its subsidiary, Fushida, have successfully entered the core supply chain of American cloud vendors' GB200/GB300 server liquid cooling architecture, while further enhancing product added value in the application of ASIC platforms. Sugon Data Innovation (872808.BJ): The company is the only domestic enterprise to achieve large-scale commercial deployment of immersion phase change liquid cooling solutions and has broken through the traditional air cooling heat dissipation mode with its cold plate liquid cooling solution, adopting a liquid cooling + air cooling hybrid heat dissipation method.

Envicool (002837.SZ): By 2024, the company's UQD products have been validated by Intel and included in NVIDIA's MGX ecosystem partners. FRD (300602.SZ): The self-developed 3DVC cooler currently has a heat dissipation power of up to 1400W and has become a core supplier for leading companies in liquid cooling, with some products already achieving mass delivery. Chuanhuan Technology (300547.SZ): The liquid cooling server pipeline products have reached V0-level standards and obtained UL certification in the United States.

Investment Recommendations

Blackwell's performance has surged, making liquid cooling solutions essential; the demand for liquid cooling in ASIC chips is clear, with high customization driving profit margin increases. With the continuous volume increase and iteration of GB200/GB300 and the gradual introduction of ASIC servers, the heat dissipation industry is expected to open up growth space and see both volume and price rise. Additionally, based on China's strong foundation in manufacturing and materials science, we are optimistic that the domestic market will give rise to internationally leading liquid cooling companies in the future.

Risk Warning

Downstream industry demand recovery may fall short of expectations, AI large model development may not meet expectations, technological development may lag behind expectations, risks of raw material price fluctuations, intensified market competition, and exchange rate fluctuation risks, etc