For Trane Technologies, that demand is contributing to strong growth in its commercial HVAC business. The company reported 50% growth in Americas Commercial HVAC bookings and 130% growth in applied equipment bookings in the second quarter. 

Matt Orcutt, vice president, system strategy and product management, Trane Technologies, said data centers are only one part of a broader market shift. 

“Our growth reflects a broad-based, diversified demand for modern, energy-efficient building systems, with active momentum across multiple key sectors like higher education, healthcare, government, and data centers,” he said. 

The expansion of digital infrastructure is an important contributor, Orcutt said, but customers across markets are increasingly focused on resource efficiency, lower utility costs, and improved building performance. 

The data-center opportunity has nevertheless changed how Trane approaches commercial HVAC. 

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“The rapid pace of innovation required by the AI infrastructure buildout has reinforced our focus on systems-level innovation, early-stage design collaboration and engineered flexibility,” Orcutt said. 

Higher rack densities and changing computing workloads are putting greater demands on thermal infrastructure, making cooling part of the strategic planning process much earlier in a project. 

“We serve as a strategic innovation collaborator across the full lifecycle, working with customers from early concept through delivery, controls, commissioning, and long-term modernization,” Orcutt said. 

That lifecycle approach is also changing the mix of cooling technologies being deployed. 

Orcutt said Trane is seeing a shift toward hybrid thermal architectures that combine air, water, and liquid cooling into coordinated systems. Chillers remain fundamental to managing total facility heat loads, but higher-density racks increasingly require cooling closer to the chips themselves. 

That includes the company’s LiquidStack CDU 2.X platform for rack-level liquid cooling and the GigaModular CDU, which has qualified as an NVIDIA DSX Ready CDU for next-generation accelerated computing platforms. 

Modular construction is also becoming increasingly important as operators try to overcome space, construction, and deployment constraints. 

Trane’s 250-MW AI Factory reference designs feature factory-built modular cooling plants from Stellar Energy, with dry fluid coolers stacked directly on top of the modular plant. According to Trane, the configuration can reduce the dry-cooler footprint by up to 40% while achieving zero Water Usage Effectiveness. 

For HVAC contractors, perhaps the most important news is that increasingly sophisticated technology does not eliminate the need for skilled labor. It increases it. 

“As building technology gets more sophisticated, the need for hands-on technical expertise in the field actually increases,” Orcutt said. “We view technology and people as partners in this transition.” 

That creates opportunities beyond the initial installation, including commissioning, controls, service, troubleshooting, maintenance and long-term modernization. 

Trane is also developing training specifically around the data center market. Its Advanced Technology Training Center offers a certification pathway for data center technicians focused on the precision and technical depth required to maintain uptime and efficiency. 

For contractors, that points to a market in which traditional HVAC skills remain important, but additional expertise in controls, liquid cooling, commissioning, and data center operations can become a differentiator. 

The demand is unlikely to disappear when the current wave of AI infrastructure construction slows. 

“The continuous expansion of digital infrastructure suggests that the demand for highly efficient, resilient systems will remain a priority for years to come,” Orcutt said. 

He sees a broader opportunity as well. Technologies developed to optimize high-density data centers — including predictive optimization, real-time diagnostics, and smart controls — can be applied to existing commercial buildings. 

Orcutt pointed to the energy consumed by commercial buildings and the opportunity to reduce waste through smarter building management. 

“The predictive optimization and real-time diagnostics honed in high-density data environments are actively paving the way for other sectors to modernize their existing physical infrastructure and operate more efficiently,” he said. 

The market also is pushing HVAC manufacturers toward new approaches to system efficiency.  

Trane, for example, has demonstrated an 800-volt direct-current chiller proof of concept developed with Eaton and Danfoss. By using a direct DC feed, the system is designed to bypass traditional power-conversion steps and improve efficiency by up to 2%, potentially reclaiming up to 1.8 MW of power in a large facility. 

Over the next five years, Orcutt expects physical constraints — including energy, water, and local infrastructure capacity — to increasingly influence where and how data centers are built. 

That could favor modular, repeatable systems that allow operators to add capacity in phases rather than overbuilding infrastructure upfront. 

“The digital infrastructure underpinning the AI era is no longer simply an engineering challenge but one of the defining industrial and economic stories of our time,” Orcutt said. 

For commercial HVAC contractors, that means the opportunity is not limited to building the next generation of data centers. 

It is also about helping those facilities operate efficiently as their cooling requirements evolve — and applying what the industry learns from them to the much larger commercial building market. 

Developing that thermal strategy early, Orcutt said, allows organizations to build for today’s needs while keeping systems adaptable for what comes next.