Nvidia unveiled a closed-loop liquid cooling design for AI data centers that it says can cut on-site water use to near zero.
The system runs coolant as warm as 45°C, pulling heat straight off the chips and skipping the chillers and cooling towers that guzzle water.
The claim covers water used inside the data center, not the power generation and chip making behind AI.
Nvidia announced a new cooling approach for AI data centers on Monday, June 22, 2026, at London Climate Week, saying it can nearly eliminate on-site water use while keeping its most powerful chips cool.
The design is part of the company’s Rubin-generation DSX reference architecture, which Nvidia calls the first fully liquid-cooled AI infrastructure, with no fans anywhere in the system.
How It Works
Traditional data centers lean on cooling towers that evaporate millions of gallons of water to dump heat into the air. Nvidia’s design instead sends liquid directly to cold plates sitting on the chips, where it absorbs heat at the source.
The coolant, a closed-loop mix of about 75% water and 25% propylene glycol, similar to car antifreeze, is filled once and recirculated for the life of the facility. The trick is heat tolerance: the liquid runs in at up to 45°C and exits around 55°C. Because it is already warm, outdoor dry coolers can shed the heat in most climates without big energy-hungry chillers.
The Numbers
Nvidia says conventional cooling-tower systems use roughly 2.6 million gallons of water per megawatt each year, and its design can cut that to near zero in favorable locations, up to a 100% reduction. C
ooling has historically eaten up to 40% of a data center’s electricity, so removing chillers also lowers power use. The company estimates a 50-megawatt facility could save over $4 million a year in cooling-related energy and water costs.
Read Nvidia’s full announcement here:
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/liquid-cooling-ai-factories/
The Catch
The “near zero” figure applies only to water used inside the data center. Generating the electricity to run these facilities, often from fossil fuels, still consumes water, and so does manufacturing the chips. In very hot regions like Arizona, chillers may still kick in a few days a year when outdoor air tops 45°C.
The rollout will also take years, existing data centers keep their old systems, and Nvidia has not disclosed build costs. The company is also clear the savings are meant to support more AI growth, not shrink AI’s overall footprint.
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Still, with public pushback mounting over data center water and power, and the UN warning AI could consume as much water as 1.3 billion people by the decade’s end, the design is a notable step toward making AI’s buildout less thirsty.
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