AI Infrastructure & Data Centers

SAN FRANCISCO – October 31, 2026 -- Branded data center Ethernet switch revenue rose 7% year-over-year in calendar Q3 2024 to the highest quarterly level on record, according to Crehan Research. The result ends two consecutive quarters of decline.

800GbE deployments for AI clusters drive the rebound

A strong ramp of 800 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) data center switches was a key contributor to the growth. These switches provide the network fabric for AI compute clusters. Crehan Research expects 800GbE to see the fastest speed ramp ever recorded for data center Ethernet switches.

COLUMBUS – October 31, 2026 -- Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) has completed its acquisition of Utility Innovation Holdings, Inc., which operates as UtilityInnovation Group (UIG), for about $1.45 billion in upfront cash. The deal also carries up to $1.15 billion in contingent cash consideration, tied to EBITDA targets over 12- and 24-month periods.

Upfront price equals 13x expected 2027 EBITDA

The upfront price represents approximately 13x expected UIG 2027 EBITDA. Vertiv expects the multiple to fall significantly if the full earnout is paid. The company expects the acquisition to be accretive to adjusted earnings per share in the first year after completion.

Columbus, Ohio – October 31, 2026 -- Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) launched SmartIT, a factory-validated AI infrastructure platform that combines rack, power, liquid cooling and monitoring in one pre-engineered design, and made it available globally from day one.

The platform targets enterprises, research institutions and colocation providers. It deploys in existing facilities and new data centers. Vertiv says it also covers commercial spaces and hyperscale environments, in each case without redesign.

SmartIT integrates five infrastructure layers before shipment

The solution combines rack infrastructure, DC power conversion and distribution, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, in-rack cooling distribution and monitoring. Vertiv validates these systems at the factory, which limits on-site commissioning to facility power and cooling connections. The design was previously deployed with NVIDIA to support the NVIDIA DGX GB300 system.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – October 31, 2026 -- Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE: VRT) has completed its acquisition of King Environmental Services Ltd. (KES), extending its thermal and fluid management services into Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Financial terms were not disclosed, and Vertiv does not expect the deal to be material to its financial results.

KES adds fluid management and load testing for liquid-cooled data centers

KES is a Europe-based provider of fluid management, commissioning and load-testing services for high-density, liquid-cooled data centers. Founded in 2002, it is headquartered near Dublin, Ireland, and serves EMEA customers from hubs in North Dublin and Frankfurt.

Its service scope covers design review and feasibility studies, pipework flushing, filtration and water treatment, testing, adjusting and balancing (TAB), data logging and thermography, and large-scale thermal and electrical load testing.

Berlin – October 31, 2026 -- Vertiv and NVIDIA modeled up to 30% more cumulative token output in the first 12 months at equal installed capacity. The gain comes from a combined design-and-deployment approach for AI factories, introduced at NVIDIA GTC Berlin. Polar Data Centers is applying the factory-built element to the first 41 MW phase of its multiphase AI data center at Herøya, Norway.

The pitch targets sequential engineering of power, cooling and facility systems, which Vertiv says creates complexity and potential delays. The new approach starts from pre-engineered reference architectures. These are configured to site requirements, virtually validated, then built as factory-made infrastructure.

Global – October 31, 2026 -- CIQ has released Stratum Kubernetes Engine (SKE), an Apache 2.0-licensed distribution that packages the roughly ten upstream projects a Kubernetes cluster needs into one signed file for installing, joining, upgrading and maintaining clusters on Enterprise Linux.

CIQ built SKE to cut the upkeep cost that AI workloads add, since training and inference spread across many systems and capacity moves with demand. The company is the team behind Rocky Linux, Fuzzball, Warewulf and Apptainer.

SKE pins and tests every component as one set

SKE builds Kubernetes, etcd, containerd, runc and kube-vip from unmodified upstream source. It adds Cilium for networking and CoreDNS for cluster DNS. Users download the file for their architecture and run stratum up.

The same file then handles four post-install jobs:

California – October 31, 2026 -- Switching off Gemma 4's default reasoning with a single flag raised accuracy by up to 48 points, cut cost 6x to 8x and made a correct answer up to 19x faster on short verifiable tasks, according to a 27-model local benchmark run on a Strix Halo machine with a power meter attached. The 12B and 26B variants rose from about 52% to 100% on the easy suite.

Each model answered 190 checkable tasks twice, under two different prompts. Electricity was priced at California summer rates of 34 cents per kilowatt-hour off-peak and 58 cents on-peak.

Gemma 4 reasons on 95 of 95 tasks even when told not to

Asked for a one-line answer with no explanation, Gemma 4 emitted reasoning on every task in both prompt conditions. On a 4,096-token budget, the 12B and 26B spent the entire allowance thinking and returned nothing on roughly half the questions.

ABU DHABI – November 01, 2026 -- Context Labs B.V. launched the AI Distillery, a Context Engine that converts an enterprise's operational and business data into a governed, customer-owned Context Package. The package works with any frontier or open-weight model and runs inside the customer's own environment. The product is available now through the Microsoft Marketplace.

Gartner and McKinsey data frame the AI-readiness gap

Gartner predicts organizations will abandon 60% of AI projects unsupported by AI-ready data through 2026. It also expects over 40% of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of 2027. McKinsey reports that eight in ten companies cite data limitations as the barrier to scaling AI agents.

COLUMBUS – October 31, 2026 -- Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) has launched a global ecosystem offering that combines an expanded collaboration with Dow and a new partnership with Solenis to manage liquid cooling as a single, integrated thermal system for AI-scale data centers.

The initiative pairs Vertiv's infrastructure, monitoring and global service capabilities with fluid chemistry, coolant and water treatment expertise from the two partners. Dow supplies advanced coolant technologies, while Solenis contributes specialty chemicals and water treatment solutions.

Vertiv extends Dow Coolant Care Network collaboration and adds Solenis

Vertiv expanded its work with Dow through the Dow Coolant Care Network and started a new partnership with Solenis to support end-to-end fluid management and thermal infrastructure services. Both are integrated with Vertiv's monitoring and lifecycle capabilities.

TAIPEI – October 30, 2026 -- Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) (TWSE: 2317) opened its seventh annual Hon Hai Tech Day with a record 321 exhibits, a quarter of them in a Token Factory zone covering components through full system integration for next-generation AI infrastructure.

Foxconn presents NVIDIA DSX POD as a factory-built reference design for Vera Rubin racks

The NVIDIA DSX POD is a standardized, factory-built reference design. Partners can preintegrate NVIDIA Vera Rubin rack-scale AI infrastructure in modular containers and complete critical validation before shipment. After delivery, the units connect to prepared site infrastructure. Foxconn showed the POD publicly for the first time, and it dominated the venue.

Foxconn also tied its vertical integration to the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, spanning rack-level AI supercomputing system integration down to sub-micron-level component manufacturing.