Vertiv Week 2026, held in Zagreb from September 21 to 25, brought together industry experts to discuss the future of data centers. The event, themed "Converged Infrastructure for the AI Era," focused on the impact of artificial intelligence on data center infrastructure. With AI driving demand, executives argued that traditional planning for power, cooling, and software can no longer be done separately. The conference featured three tracks, including the European Data Center Associations Summit and a media conference with NVIDIA.
NVIDIA's vice president for AI cloud infrastructure, Rod Evans, presented forecasts showing global data center IT demand rising from 60 gigawatts in 2023 to 219 gigawatts in 2030. This represents an annual growth rate of 22%, driven primarily by AI workloads, which are expected to account for 71% of demand by the end of the decade. Inference, the process of running trained models, is expected to drive much of this growth, with NVIDIA predicting AI inference demand to reach 93 gigawatts by 2030.
The growth in AI demand is also being driven by the increasing use of AI agents. According to Goldman Sachs estimates, token use by AI agents is expected to multiply 24 times by 2030, reaching 118 quadrillion tokens per month. Google's own monthly token volume has already seen significant growth, climbing from 9.7 trillion in May 2024 to 3.2 quadrillion in May 2026. Gartner data also shows that 80% of enterprise applications shipped or updated in the first quarter of 2026 embed an AI agent.
Despite the growth in demand, energy efficiency remains a major challenge for data centers. NVIDIA estimates that in a 1-gigawatt AI factory, only 60% to 70% of grid power contributes to AI output, with the rest lost to facility power and cooling inefficiency. To address this, NVIDIA is moving towards direct liquid cooling and from AC to DC power. The company claims its liquid-cooled rack systems deliver 300 times higher water efficiency than air-cooled systems.
Vertiv, a leading data center infrastructure company, is also focusing on improving efficiency and speed of deployment. The company's president for EMEA, Paul Ryan, identified five forces reshaping data center design: density, speed, scale, complexity, and dynamic load profiles. Vertiv's strategy involves moving assembly "from field to factory," with a focus on validated, repeatable infrastructure. The company recently announced an agreement to acquire UtilityInnovation Group, a provider of microgrid solutions.
The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approvals. Vertiv is also expanding its manufacturing capacity, adding 22,000 square meters of production space in Nové Město, Slovakia. The site will produce power, switchgear, and thermal management systems, including liquid cooling for high-density AI. The company expects this expansion to create hundreds of new jobs.
Market analysts are predicting significant growth in data center investment. According to Frost & Sullivan, global data center investment was valued at $502.7 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $1.457 trillion by 2035, representing a compound annual growth rate of 11.2%. The Americas currently account for 46.3% of investment, followed by Asia-Pacific at 29.2% and EMEA at 24.5%.
Key points
- Global data center demand is expected to more than double by 2030, driven by AI growth.
- NVIDIA predicts AI inference demand to reach 93 gigawatts by 2030.
- Vertiv is expanding its manufacturing capacity and acquiring new technologies to improve efficiency and speed of deployment.
