SLB to Buy Kelvion in $3.4 Billion Cash Deal
The energy-services company said the purchase adds thermal-management technology to its Data Center Solutions business.
SLB (SLB) agreed to acquire Kelvion for approximately $3.4 billion in cash, a move the company said would strengthen its Data Center Solutions unit with critical thermal-management technologies and expand its role in data-center infrastructure.
The all-cash transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027.
Chief Executive Officer Olivier Le Peuch framed the deal around the scale of AI-related capital spending. “AI is driving the most significant infrastructure investment cycle in our lifetime,” he said. “This transaction accelerates our ambition to become an industrial technology partner to the data center industry and help customers address the growing infrastructure complexity required to scale AI.”
SLB has already been positioning itself in that market. In April, it said that it and NVIDIA had expanded a technology collaboration to design and deploy critical AI infrastructure, with SLB serving as the modular design partner for NVIDIA DSX AI factories. The company described the modular approach as a way to manufacture components offsite, improving quality and reliability while reducing costs, labor constraints and lead times.
Kelvion’s thermal-management portfolio fits that trajectory. The company said the acquisition adds the technologies needed to address heat and cooling as data centers scale for AI workloads, and that it broadens SLB’s infrastructure role beyond the Data Center Solutions label.
The deal sits in a crowded run of cash purchases of cooling and thermal assets by industrial and energy-services companies. Ecolab agreed in March to buy CoolIT Systems for about $4.75 billion in cash, citing liquid-cooling technology for next-generation AI data centers. Vertiv announced in the same month that it would acquire ThermoKey S.p.A. to expand heat-rejection and heat-exchange capabilities, particularly in EMEA. Vertiv also agreed in November 2025 to buy PurgeRite for about $1.0 billion in cash plus a potential $250 million earn-out, a fluid-management services business for liquid-cooling loops. Trane Technologies agreed in December 2025 to acquire Stellar Energy’s Digital business, a provider of turnkey liquid-to-chip cooling. Halliburton and VoltaGrid signed a collaboration in January 2026 on distributed power for data centers. Baker Hughes reported year-to-date data-center awards of more than $650 million in its second-quarter 2025 update.
SLB’s $3.4 billion cash offer is smaller than Ecolab’s $4.75 billion CoolIT purchase and larger than Vertiv’s roughly $1.0 billion PurgeRite deal. The company did not disclose an exchange ratio, a premium, or a target revenue or earnings figure for Kelvion.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. SLB said it expects to complete the purchase in the first half of 2027.