South America Data Center Cooling Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends and Forecast (2026 - 2031)

South America Data Center Cooling Market Trends and Insights

Hyperscale and AI Workload Expansion

AI training and inference workloads are changing the cooling requirements of new data centers across the region. GPU clusters place greater demands on thermal management than traditional enterprise systems, which makes liquid-ready infrastructure more relevant in the South America data center cooling market. Ascenty began construction of its Sumaré 3 facility in March 2026, a 90 MW AI-optimized site designed with direct-to-chip liquid cooling and a closed-loop cooling architecture with zero WUE.^{[1]Ascenty, “Ascenty Secures 150 Megawatts of New AI Contracts,” Ascenty, ascenty.com} The facility is scheduled for delivery in Q3 2027, with a further 90 MW expansion phase planned. This type of project makes cooling capability an early design decision rather than a later equipment selection. It also increases the value of suppliers capable of supporting high-density racks, integrating hydraulic systems, and commissioning equipment on a demanding construction schedule. Equipment selection now has to account for piping paths, floor loading, maintenance access, leak detection, controls integration, and the ability to expand capacity without interrupting a customer’s compute environment. These requirements move more of the project discussion toward engineering capability and lifetime service support.

Cloud, Colocation, and Digital Infrastructure Investment

Cloud and colocation projects are driving the growth of large-scale cooling procurement programs in the South America data center cooling market. Amazon announced in May 2025 that it plans to invest more than USD 4 billion to launch the AWS South America Chile Region by the end of 2026. The planned region includes 3 Availability Zones in Santiago, each with independent power and cooling infrastructure. Ascenty also secured 150 MW of new AI contracts and committed USD 1.2 billion to 4 new data centers in Brazil. These investments require cooling decisions well before a facility begins operating, which gives vendors a defined window to qualify designs, establish supply arrangements, and plan field support. The concentration of capacity additions in major hubs also favors providers that can serve several projects from regional inventory and service bases. A supplier with a locally available product can reduce exposure to delivery delays during a narrow construction window. The benefit is especially important when several projects require similar cooling equipment simultaneously.

Energy-Efficiency and Sustainability Mandates

Energy and water requirements are becoming more important in cooling design across the South America data center cooling market. Brazil’s telecommunications regulator, Anatel, opened a public consultation in 2025 on conformity assessment requirements for data centers that integrate with telecommunications networks. The consultation addresses measurements of energy, water, and carbon performance, thereby strengthening the operational case for metering, sensors, and software. Closed-loop systems, dry coolers, and direct-to-chip designs can help operators align cooling choices with tighter water-use expectations. The requirement to monitor performance also makes control software part of the operating model rather than an optional layer. This favors cooling systems that combine thermal equipment with clear reporting, alerts, and operational data. Operators can use those functions to identify temperature changes, compare system performance, and plan maintenance before a condition affects availability. Better visibility also helps facility teams assess whether equipment is performing as intended under changing AI loads.

Digitalization, 5G, and Edge Computing Deployment

Digitalization, 5G, and edge computing are extending cooling needs beyond the largest cloud campuses. Smaller sites have limited space and may operate under conditions less controlled than those in a large data center hall. These environments need compact equipment that can reliably manage heat without occupying excessive floor area. The South America data center cooling market, therefore, includes demand for precision cooling, modular systems, and smaller liquid-cooling modules that can be adapted for edge locations. Distributed deployments can also create more frequent, smaller equipment orders than large hyperscale projects. Suppliers that can customize equipment and service it across secondary locations may be able to compete where scale alone is less decisive. Standardized modules can help operators repeat proven designs across sites while still accommodating different local climates and building constraints. This can reduce design effort for distributed programs that do not justify a fully bespoke cooling plant.

High Upfront Cost of Advanced Cooling Systems

Advanced liquid cooling requires more than a single piece of equipment. Direct-to-chip systems, immersion tanks, pumps, manifolds, coolant distribution units, compatible fluids, and installation services can increase a project's initial cost. This cost profile can delay adoption among operators without hyperscale purchasing power. The result is a divided adoption pattern in the South America data center cooling market, with large AI-oriented projects moving faster toward liquid systems while many enterprise facilities retain air-based equipment. Existing CRAH, CRAC, chiller, and cooling tower installations remain economically viable when rack densities are within their practical operating range. Import dependence and limited local availability of specialist components can further lengthen lead times and increase the capital needed for phased expansions. Operators may need to reserve key equipment earlier in the project cycle to protect commissioning dates. That approach can add planning complexity when capacity is being added in stages, and the final IT load remains uncertain.

Water, Grid, and Site-Specific Infrastructure Constraints

Water availability, grid conditions, and local infrastructure constraints affect cooling design choices across South America. In Santiago, water stress drives greater interest in adiabatic and closed-loop glycol designs than in water-intensive approaches. Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies received House Bill 2601746/2026 in February 2026, proposing national standards for the installation, operation, expansion, and decommissioning of large data centers. The proposal includes restrictions on the use of artesian wells and aquifers for data center cooling. Grid bottlenecks and high energy costs can further strain a project’s design and operating economics. These conditions make site-specific engineering, low-water designs, and dependable power planning important considerations for the South America data center cooling market. A system that performs well in one metropolitan location may need a different heat-rejection method in another. Cooling suppliers must therefore assess local water, power, ambient conditions, and service access before applying a standard configuration.

*Our forecasts treat driver/restraint impacts as directional, not additive. The impact forecasts reflect baseline growth, mix effects, and variable interactions.

Segment Analysis

By Cooling Technology: Liquid Cooling Changes the Premium Revenue Mix

Air-based cooling held 78.24% of the South America data center cooling market share in 2025. The segment benefits from a substantial installed base of CRAH and CRAC units, chillers, economizers, and cooling towers across hyperscale, enterprise, and colocation facilities. Air-based systems remain practical for workloads that operate below the rack-density levels that require liquid cooling. Replacement of functional equipment is often difficult to justify before the end of its useful life. Cooling towers, chillers, and economizers continue to support many established campus facilities. Precision cooling equipment also remains relevant for telecom shelters and modular edge deployments. These uses maintain a broad installed base for service, replacement, and incremental upgrades in the South America data center cooling market.

Liquid-based cooling is forecast to grow at a 16.53% CAGR through 2031, which is the highest rate among cooling technologies. Direct-to-chip systems are gaining early use in new AI-oriented hyperscale developments, while immersion cooling is being considered for purpose-built AI environments and selected high-density retrofit zones. Rear-door heat exchangers offer a middle path for facilities that want to increase density without rebuilding every cooling circuit. The South America data center cooling industry is therefore likely to retain air equipment in volume while liquid systems take a larger role in high-value deployments. Liquid cooling can have higher revenue per kilowatt and a larger service requirement than air-based alternatives. Suppliers with both air and liquid portfolios can address existing facilities as well as new AI-ready projects. Their ability to support hybrid designs is important because many sites will adopt liquid cooling in phases rather than through a single full conversion.

By Cooling Component: Monitoring Software Gains a Larger Role in System Value

CRAH and CRAC units accounted for 33.62% of the cooling component segment in 2025. Their leading position reflects their use across enterprise and colocation facilities, not only their role in new builds. Chillers and heat exchanger units, cooling towers and dry coolers, and pumps and valves form the physical infrastructure that moves heat away from IT loads. These components can serve air-side systems, liquid-side systems, or hybrid designs. Pumps and valves may have a lower unit value but remain essential, as hydraulic circuits require maintenance, replacement parts, and controls. The South America data center cooling market size for components is supported by this combination of installed-base service requirements and new capacity additions.

Control and monitoring software is forecast to expand at a 16.38% CAGR through 2031. Its growth is linked to operator needs for real-time thermal visibility, power planning, and performance reporting. Anatel’s 2025 consultation on data center conformity assessment reinforces the importance of measuring energy, water, and carbon-related performance. Schneider Electric’s Motivair MCDU-70, launched in January 2026, includes EcoStruxure software for digital-twin simulation, adaptive load balancing, and real-time monitoring.^{[2]Motivair by Schneider Electric, “Motivair by Schneider Electric Announces New Range of CDUs to Meet the Rising Demands of HPC and AI Workloads,” Motivair by Schneider Electric, December 15, 2025, globenewswire.com} This product approach bundles monitoring functions with coolant distribution hardware. It also makes software more directly connected to compliance and cooling performance. The South America data center cooling industry can therefore see controls become a recurring part of cooling procurement rather than a separate discretionary purchase. When hardware and software are selected together, operators can establish a more consistent operating view across the cooling chain.

By Data Center Type: Hyperscale Facilities Lead in Size and Growth

Hyperscale facilities held 45.36% of the South America data center cooling market share in 2025 and are forecast to grow at a 16.73% CAGR through 2031. Their leading role reflects the region’s concentration of cloud, AI, and large colocation investment in major metropolitan corridors. Hyperscale projects require more capacity, higher system availability, and more rigorous cooling design than smaller enterprise facilities. They also often need solutions that can support the increase in rack density over time. Enterprise facilities remain an important part of installed cooling capacity. However, some organizations are moving workloads to public cloud and colocation providers instead of adding on-premise infrastructure. This shift directs a larger portion of new cooling investment toward shared and hyperscale environments in the South America data center cooling market.

Amazon’s planned AWS South America Chile Region and Ascenty’s AI-related expansion illustrate the scale of demand that hyperscale projects can create. These facilities need coordinated cooling, power, controls, and service plans that can operate at a large scale. Hyperscale contracts can be larger and more customized than those associated with smaller sites. They may also require more demanding testing and commissioning processes. This creates a higher bar for suppliers that want to serve the segment. It also gives established vendors with regional engineering resources an advantage. Colocation remains strategically important because it can serve enterprise cloud migration and provide a route for hyperscale capacity where an operator does not own a campus. This makes the segment a bridge between smaller customers that need flexible capacity and large cloud tenants that require dependable regional infrastructure.

By End-User Industry: Healthcare Adds Faster-Growing Demand

IT and telecom held 34.57% of end-user cooling demand in 2025. Content delivery, telecom core networks, cloud services, and AI inference workloads support its continued importance. Media and entertainment, retail, and consumer goods also require capacity for streaming, digital payments, e-commerce, and customer platforms. Government and institutional users continue to add data processing needs as public services become more digital. These users may remain cost-sensitive and continue to rely on air-based precision cooling in many deployments. The South America data center cooling market continues to depend on IT and telecom, as they support much of the region’s digital infrastructure.

Healthcare is forecast to grow at a 16.59% CAGR from 2026 to 2031. Hospital networks, health technology platforms, medical imaging, and connected diagnostics need reliable compute capacity and high availability. Medical imaging AI can create heat-intensive processing needs that exceed those of earlier healthcare data centers. Data protection concerns can also support domestic infrastructure for sensitive workloads. Brazil’s data protection authority provides guidance and enforcement of the country’s personal data protection framework. These conditions support demand for cooling that is reliable, closely monitored, and suited to mission-critical operations. Fintech, agritech, and mining analytics are also emerging demand pools, though the input does not provide individual shares or growth rates for these applications. Their growing use of digital platforms can widen the range of facilities that need dependable thermal control.

Geography Analysis

Brazil held 57.34% of the South America data center cooling market share in 2025. São Paulo remains the region’s main hyperscale hub, supported by the concentration of cloud operators, colocation facilities, and large new data center plans. Ascenty’s USD 1.2 billion commitment to 4 new data centers and 150 MW of new AI contracts creates a meaningful pipeline for cooling procurement. Brazil’s regulatory environment is also placing greater emphasis on water use, energy performance, and environmental licensing. House Bill 2601746/2026 proposes national requirements, including limits on artesian-well and aquifer water withdrawals for cooling. Existing colocation facilities in the São Paulo corridor provide a separate retrofit opportunity as operators add AI-ready cooling zones. This blend of greenfield and brownfield work supports Brazil’s central role in the South America data center cooling market.

Chile is forecast to grow at a 16.34% CAGR through 2031, the fastest rate among the regional geographies. Amazon plans to invest more than USD 4 billion to establish the AWS South America Chile Region by the end of 2026.^{[3]Amazon, “Amazon to Invest More Than USD 4 Billion to Launch Infrastructure Region in Chile,” Amazon Press Center, aboutamazon.com} The project is planned with 3 Availability Zones in Santiago and independent power and cooling infrastructure. Water stress in Santiago is directing attention toward adiabatic and closed-loop glycol systems. This issue makes water efficiency a core element in cooling technology selection for new projects. Argentina has a smaller share but has continuing demand for edge and colocation infrastructure. Vertiv’s October 2025 alliance with Grupo Datco covers Argentina and Chile, indicating a commercial effort to reach both countries with power and cooling technologies. 

Colombia and the rest of South America accounted for the remaining regional demand in 2025. Bogotá has an established role in Colombia’s data center activity, and new capacity supports demand for cooling equipment and related services. The South America data center cooling market in Peru, Uruguay, and other smaller countries is more closely linked to modular systems that can serve edge sites and smaller deployments. Uruguay’s large data center planning has brought attention to water-use conditions in hyperscale project approvals. This development supports the wider regional focus on lower-water cooling approaches. The planned fiber network connecting Argentina, Chile, and Brazil can help extend data center activity to secondary cities over time. As a result, regional suppliers need product ranges that serve both large metropolitan campuses and smaller distributed facilities.