Global critical infrastructure giant Vertiv and power-systems leader Caterpillar have signed a strategic agreement to develop fully integrated, pre-engineered energy solutions that dramatically cut deployment time and energy waste for high-density data centers.
The partnership combines Caterpillar’s natural-gas turbines, reciprocating engines and Solar Turbines’ expertise in Combined Cooling, Heat and Power (CCHP) systems with Vertiv’s industry-leading power distribution, modular cooling, and lifecycle services portfolio. The result: factory-validated, plug-and-play reference architectures that allow data center operators to bring megawatts of new capacity online faster than ever before.
Under the new collaboration, customers will gain:
-Faster time-to-power through modular, pre-designed building blocks that shorten design and construction cycles
-Significantly lower Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) via end-to-end optimization of power generation, cooling and dynamic load management
-Reduced or eliminated reliance on strained public grids
-Single-point global service and support backed by both companies’ extensive networks
Vertiv CEO Giordano Albertazzi described the tie-up as the cornerstone of the company’s “Bring Your Own Power & Cooling” (BYOP&C) strategy.
“AI workloads are pushing power demands to levels the grid simply cannot meet in many locations,” Albertazzi said. “By pairing Caterpillar’s proven on-site generation with our power and thermal management systems, we’re giving customers resilient, predictable and highly efficient alternatives that are ready to deploy today.”
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Jason Kaiser, Caterpillar Group President for Power & Energy, highlighted the urgency of the partnership amid explosive AI growth.
“As AI-driven workloads continue to accelerate, the demand for robust and scalable power infrastructure and cooling is becoming increasingly critical,” Kaiser said. “Together with Vertiv, we can now deliver integrated on-site solutions that lower PUE and future-proof data centers from day one.”
The companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will guide joint engineering, testing and go-to-market activities. First reference designs and customer pilots are expected to be announced in early 2026.
The Vertiv-Caterpillar alliance arrives as hyperscalers and colocation providers scramble to secure tens of gigawatts of new power for AI training and inference clusters, underscoring a broader industry shift toward hybrid and fully off-grid data center models.
