GRT Expands Data Center Cooling Material Business... Actively Preparing for Next-Generation Ventures

GRT recently announced on the 27th its plan to expand its cooling material business alongside the rapid growth of the AI data center market in China. The company aims to seize market opportunities through expanding the application range of existing materials, developing new materials, and increasing exports.

The cooling materials produced by GRT belong to the cooling solution market, a downstream industry of AI data centers. The size of China's data center cooling market is estimated to reach $371.63 million (approximately 531.6 billion KRW) by 2025 and is projected to grow to $948.40 million (about 1.4 trillion KRW) by 2031. The compound annual growth rate during the forecast period is 16.9%.

The cooling materials currently produced by GRT include Thermal Pads, Phase Change Materials, and Absorbing Materials.

Thermal Pads eliminate air layers with high thermal resistance and induce uniform heat diffusion, providing protection and durability enhancement for electronic components. They can be used in both liquid cooling and air cooling systems and are mainly applied to server CPUs and GPUs.

Phase Change Materials regulate temperature by absorbing or releasing heat as they change from solid to liquid and from liquid to gas. In data centers, these materials are used in server racks, IT equipment, air conditioning systems, and UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) units to achieve efficient thermal management and energy savings.

Absorbing Materials primarily absorb heat, noise, electromagnetic interference (EMI), and moisture while also absorbing heat to create a stable operating environment. They are used in areas such as the walls and ceilings of data centers.

Considering that heat generation is a major future issue for data centers, GRT plans to develop new materials such as high-performance Thermal Management Materials, Energy Efficient Materials for power efficiency improvement, and Durable Eco-Friendly Materials for durability and environmental protection, thereby expanding its product lineup for use within data centers.

With technological advancements, demand in the cooling solution market is expected to grow further, and the trend of domestic production of AI semiconductors such as GPUs and HBM in China supports GRT’s business. GPUs and AI-specific accelerators used to train the latest AI models consume 5 to 10 times more power than traditional CPUs, generating significantly more heat, and technological progress accelerates heat generation.

HBM chips experience overheating of internal chips and circuits during high-frequency and high-bandwidth data transmission, and if heat dissipation is insufficient, performance degrades and surrounding components and circuits are affected, impacting the overall system’s performance and safety.

Large-scale investments by Chinese big tech companies in the AI sector also contribute to the expansion of the cooling solution market. Alibaba announced plans to invest approximately 75 trillion KRW over the next three years in cloud and AI, the largest investment in Chinese history, while ByteDance plans to double its AI investment to about 17 trillion KRW by 2025 compared to the previous year. Since 15-25% of data center construction investments are allocated to cooling systems, GRT’s business outlook appears promising.

A company representative stated, “According to sources within the Chinese industry, most companies involved in the data center value chain are already preparing for capacity expansion.”

GRT currently supplies cooling materials to Inspur, known as a partner of Deepseek. Inspur is the number one company in China and ranked second globally in market share as of Q1 last year. According to data disclosed by Inspur, about 29% of its Q3 sales last year were from exports. Leveraging its joint venture with Inspur, GRT plans to explore overseas customers as well.

GRT’s cooling and optical materials are also expected to play important roles in the humanoid robot and AI-based AR glasses sectors in the future. Humanoid robots use cooling materials to address heat issues from high-performance processors, motors, and batteries. Given that Chinese companies hold a 63% market share in the global humanoid industry, market opportunities for local Chinese firms are expanding.

GRT stated that it is currently forming partnerships with Chinese companies within the humanoid value chain and jointly developing humanoid robot-tailored materials such as optical and cooling materials. In the AR glasses sector, GRT supplies products including optical materials through its client Namsa Technology, which trades with major Chinese AR glasses companies like Rokid AI. As AI utilization in AR glasses is expected to become widespread, GRT’s role in handling optical and cooling materials will become increasingly important.

A company representative said, “Going forward, through joint development and partnerships with companies included in the AI data center and humanoid value chains, GRT will expand the scope of its product coverage, and with an increased proportion of high value-added products, the company’s growth will become more pronounced.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.