Legrand: Boosting AI Data Centre Infrastructure Capability

Legrand has announced the acquisition of Kratos Industries and a strategic investment in Accelsius. These moves are 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. This is 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 systems

Based in Arvada, Colorado, Kratos Industries 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. This enables rapid delivery for mission critical environments.

Acquiring Kratos extends Legrand's existing grey space portfolio, including cable bus, load banks and cable tray systems. This complements white space power offerings like busway, busduct and rack power distribution units.

Legrand notes that data centre projects increasingly require integrated partners to support the full power chain. This spans from utility interconnection to rack-level distribution.

This integration is vital as hyperscale and colocation providers face unprecedented demand.

“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 providers seek partners capable of managing modern power ecosystem complexities.

Consolidation across suppliers could streamline procurement and reduce integration risk in large-scale builds. This is particularly relevant as projects move towards gigawatt campuses requiring robust industrial power solutions.

Supporting complex infrastructure projects

Rowan Koons, incoming VP/General Manager of the Kratos business unit within Legrand's DPC division, highlights the operational benefits.

"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," Rowan says. "We look forward to collaborating with the Legrand team to deliver the next generation of power solutions."

Rowan notes that access to Legrand’s global supply chain enables the business unit to better support the scale of customer projects.

For infrastructure developments, sourcing coordinated power solutions from a single supplier offers advantages in design standardisation and deployment speed.

Advancing thermal management solutions

Legrand has also 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 beyond practical limits. This accelerates the shift to liquid-based systems.

Accelsius’ two-phase cooling technology removes heat directly at the processor level. Leveraging phase change principles, the system enables higher compute densities while reducing cooling energy requirements.

Legrand and Accelsius will collaborate on joint development initiatives in the white space. This includes integrating liquid cooling within rack infrastructure.

This collaboration reflects a broader industry trend in which power, mechanical and rack design considerations are converging. Integrating liquid cooling into rack systems requires coordination across structural design, power distribution and coolant management.

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

Legrand describes the Kratos acquisition and Accelsius partnership as two pillars of a unified data centre strategy. One strengthens the grey space power backbone, while the other advances next-generation cooling in the white space.

Together, these moves position Legrand to address mission-critical infrastructure requirements, from medium-voltage switchgear to rack-level liquid cooling.

The company remains focused on engineered-to-order solutions scaling with AI and high-performance computing demands.

Combining expanded power capabilities with investment in advanced thermal technologies aligns Legrand's portfolio with infrastructure shifts in AI-driven data centres.