US Industrials: 30 exhibits on the state of cooling and electrical equip. procurement in North American Data Centers: U.S. Multi Industry & Electrical Equipment

Research evidence excerpt

20 August 2026

U.S. Multi Industry & Electrical Equipment

US Industrials: 30 exhibits on the state of cooling and electrical

equip. procurement in North American Data Centers

Varun Govindaraj

Chad Dillard

Alasdair Leslie

Sunaina Ocalan

.+1 917 344 8503

Madison Rezaei

Specialist Sales

Steve Song

We ran a survey of 50 data center procurement leaders (~40% hyperscalers, ~60% colos /

neoclouds / enterprise DCs) making purchase decisions for North American projects to

understand where ever-changing market dynamics currently sit. We did this at the equipment

level (e.g., for PDUs, CDUs, Chillers, etc.) offering a level of granularity that we do not

believe exists for investors today. Key insights highlighted below. The raw survey data can be

accessed here.

Ordering patterns: Double ordering (or more accurately, excess ordering) seems to be a

phenomenon for ~50% or more of the respondent set. When it does take place, we see the

magnitude of excess orders are north of 20% for a material share of the respondent set

(and in some cases north of 50% excess equipment) with some nuance by product type.

Excess capacity concerns seem overblown; in most cases lead times have tightened, not

lowered. Cancellation penalties also seem to be more punitive than we initially anticipated

(we were worried customers could cancel orders for <10% of their down payment; that

does not seem to be the case). Our takeaway here is that we expect to see nearterm market strength for equipment players, and even if data center build slows,

relatively punitive cancellation terms could incentivize customers to still take

delivery of some equipment. However, it also implies that longer-term, equipment

demand is being pulled forward and when capex does slow, customers will likely

have surplus stock of cooling and power making the slowdown all the more painful.

Modular and pre-fab: Modular and pre-fab are expected to increase significantly in

prevalence over the coming months (~60% of respondents expect an increase while

40% expect it to remain relatively unchanged). ~50% would find value in having both IT/

cooling pods and power pods, however, there still does not seem to be a strong impact on

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