Schneider Electric drops $22.6B on PTC as datacenter boom rains money on infra companies

Schneider Electric has significantly increased its market value over the past four years due to the surge in AI-related demand for datacenter power and cooling infrastructure. Anticipating its growing role in the industry, the French multinational is now acquiring PTC, an American industrial software company, for $22.6 billion. Founded in 1985, PTC initially focused on computer-aided design and lifecycle management tools for industrial products.

The acquisition is expected to bolster Schneider's capabilities in datacenter infrastructure, as the demand for AI models at scale has led to larger datacenters with more complex power and thermal management requirements. Since 2022, the AI arms race has spurred the development of 250kW liquid-cooled systems, necessitating denser power delivery and efficient thermal management systems.

Schneider has previously invested in Motivair, a leading provider of components for liquid-cooled servers, to strengthen its position in the datacenter market. The company also acquired Cognite, a vendor of industrial data operations software, for $3.1 billion earlier this year. Schneider CEO Olivier Blum believes that owning PTC and Cognite will allow the company to introduce software-defined automation to power systems, potentially improving their efficiency during development.