LG Electronics has secured NVIDIA's final quality certification for its flagship coolant distribution unit (CDU), becoming the first Korean company to do so. The company aims to strengthen its position as an early mover in the global liquid-cooling market for AI data centers.
LG Electronics announced on July 27 that it had received NVIDIA's final quality certification for its 600 kW-class CDU. The certification marks a first for a Korean company.
A CDU is a core component of liquid-cooling infrastructure. As AI data centers deploy more high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high-performance GPUs, power density and heat generation within server racks are rising rapidly. This has increased the importance of supplementing conventional air cooling with liquid-cooling systems.
LG's CDU uses a direct-to-chip (DTC) cooling architecture, circulating coolant through cold plates mounted on GPUs and CPUs to remove heat. It offers temperature-control accuracy of ±0.25°C and supports virtual-sensor technology and leak-detection functions.
In a fault-tolerance test required by NVIDIA, the unit was confirmed to maintain uninterrupted cooling by switching to a backup system in the event of a pump failure.
The certification demonstrates LG's thermal-management capabilities for NVIDIA server racks, which are widely used in AI data centers. It is expected to broaden LG's partnership opportunities with hyperscale cloud operators and shorten customer validation timelines, potentially helping the company win large-scale projects.
Starting with the 600 kW-certified model, LG plans to pursue NVIDIA certification across its full high-capacity CDU lineup, including 1 MW, 2.5 MW, and 4 MW systems. The strategy is aimed at capturing growing demand for megawatt-scale cooling equipment.
LG is expanding its portfolio through a “chip-to-chiller” total solution encompassing chillers, CDUs, and cold plates. It is also pursuing CDU supply opportunities for key projects, including LG CNS's design-build-operate (DBO) AI data center business and modular AI data centers.
The company has built 60 years of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) engineering experience through projects at nuclear power plants and major hospitals. More recently, it has supplied cooling solutions for hyperscale projects in North America and the Sinar Mas data center in Indonesia.
“The explosive growth of the AI data center market is making reliable liquid-cooling solutions increasingly important,” said Lee Jae-sung, president of LG Electronics' ES Company. “Leveraging our proprietary cooling technologies and the group-wide 'ONE LG' integrated infrastructure, we will lead the market as a total-solution provider for AI data centers.”
