A new showdown in the computing center of the three home appliance giants

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A new showdown in the computing center of the three home appliance giants

Giant Tide WAVE

2026.11.11 09:40

· From Beijing

Full text 4070 words

Text | Juchao WAVE, author | Degree, editor | Yang Xuran

From indoor air conditioning to AI temperature control, it seems to be a logical development path. Relying on past accumulation, home appliance companies have extended their product tentacles to the AIDC liquid cooling track.

As the demand for high-intensity training explodes, the power density of AI chips has increased sharply. The power consumption of a single cabinet has climbed from the traditional 2-8kW to 20-50kW, and may exceed 100kW in the future. And when these chips are deployed into data centers by the thousands, the increase in power density is dramatically amplified at the cabinet level.

This makes AIDC a veritable "power-eating monster" and heat dissipation has become the second largest power consumption item after IT equipment.

Overseas markets, including Johnson Controls, Trane Technologies, and Carrier Global, have all entered the AIDC cooling field; domestically, the three home appliance giants Midea, Gree, and Haier have also set their sights on this hot and broad track.

Affected by the downturn in the real estate cycle, the traditional home appliance industry has entered into a struggle for stock. The industry market continues to shrink, and the rise in copper prices continues to siphon industry profits and even expand losses. Home appliance giants do not have many options other than diversification and transformation. In this regard, neither Gree's new energy nor Midea's industrial robots can match the historical opportunity of AI.

division

The climate in China's home appliance industry continues to turn colder with the arrival of winter.

According to AVC statistics, in the first three quarters of this year, domestic home appliance retail sales were 604.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year shrinkage of 10%. ‌‌The specific situation of the companies is obviously differentiated‌: among the 29 listed home appliance companies, only 4 are profitable and have positive net profit growth. The performance of the three white goods giants is generally under pressure.

If we exclude the "big razor brother" Feike Electric, black electricity company Hisense Video, and Skyworth Digital, which mainly relies on smart terminals, Midea is the only white goods company on this list that has truly achieved positive profit growth.

If you carefully break down Midea's business portfolio, you will find that in the first three quarters, building technology, robotics and automation contributed revenue of 30.9 billion yuan and 24.9 billion yuan respectively, a year-on-year increase of 10%, far exceeding the overall 1.2% growth rate.

Building technology, in particular, is already the largest business segment outside of the basic smart home market, and the gross profit margin of building technology is close to 30% (in the first half of the year), making it the most profitable department within the group.

By 2026, after years of exploration, the three home appliance giants have moved from the same track to quite different paths, and the differentiation of corporate performance has become more obvious.

What Fang Hongbo emphasized at the 2026 semi-annual performance briefing was very clear, "ToC business is the moat for current survival and development, while ToB business is the future guarantee for crossing the cycle."

Since taking over the reins from He Xiangjian, Fang Hongbo has begun to lead Midea's transformation from a traditional home appliance manufacturer to a diversified global technology enterprise. Although the previous acquisition of KUKA Robots brought a certain financial burden, after surviving the most difficult years, the transaction is gradually being digested into a valuable new asset.

At present, relying on ToB business such as commercial and industrial solutions to account for 26.8% (H1), Midea has withstood the risk of a decline in the white goods market and demonstrated strong growth resilience.

In comparison, Haier and Gree still rely more on their home appliance business.

Haier is one of the three giants that combines global brand creation with high-end and ecological development. Its overseas share has reached 52%, which is the highest among the three companies. Through the acquisition of international brands such as Sanyo Home Appliances and General Electric Home Appliances, as well as the self-built high-end brand Casarte, we will build seven global high-end home appliance brands and form long-term high-barrier competitiveness.

After Gree Electric completed the management buyout, HVAC is still the absolute core. In the first half of the year, consumer appliances accounted for 83% of the revenue, and overseas contribution was only 14%. The air-conditioning business contributed the vast majority of the revenue. Gree has been pursuing diversified transformation for many years, some with great fanfare and some with careful layout, but most of them have failed to really take off.

The secondary market has regarded Gree as a cash cow stock with "high dividends, high barriers but low growth" for many years, and actually does not have much expectations for its growth.

But now the explosion of AI infrastructure has brought epic opportunities to HVAC companies represented by Gree. Temperature control has become the second largest energy consumer in data centers after IT equipment. With the expansion of computing power infrastructure, the investment value of this link has begun to be re-examined.

CICC predicts that the global intelligent computing center liquid cooling market will be approximately 114.7 billion yuan this year, a year-on-year increase of 273%; Soochow Securities estimates that the global liquid cooling market will be close to 150 billion yuan next year. As a comparison, the annual compound growth rate of the traditional air conditioning equipment industry is only 4%.

The temperature control system itself is the advantage of HVAC companies. Now, the three giants of home appliances have come to the same door again.

path

Similar to the transformation ideas of the three companies, the three white goods giants have also taken different paths to enter the field of AIDC temperature control.

Relying on its own production capacity + full-stack self-research + ecological binding, Midea has quickly become a powerful player in the industry. At this year's OCP Global Summit, Clivet, a subsidiary of Midea Building Technology, won the Outstanding Technology Sharing Award for its new generation magnetic levitation centrifugal compressor and full-link liquid cooling solution.

Midea has thus simultaneously entered the list of ecological partners of NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform, and its temperature control solution has been incorporated into NVIDIA's next-generation AI supercomputing reference architecture.

This means that Midea's AIDC solution has been "endorsed" by NVIDIA. After the equipment is certified, it can be embedded in NVIDIA's next-generation AI base as a standard module with slight modifications. This standard capability may be more valuable than the parameter leadership of a single device.

Qualification certification is assisted by large-scale production capacity. The Shunde liquid-cooled intelligent manufacturing base with a total investment of over 1 billion yuan was officially launched in March, anchoring the magnetic levitation host and a full range of CDU (cooling distribution unit) core components; Midea Building Technology's four domestic liquid cold chains (Shunde, Chongqing, Hefei, Longyan), CDU, magnetic levitation cold source, energy storage air conditioner, air wall and other equipment have a total annual production capacity of 100,000 units.

Downstream customers have already placed many orders. Midea won a bid of over 200 million yuan for China Unicom's centralized procurement of communications equipment room air conditioners, and was shortlisted for a 70% share of China Mobile's new round of low-pressure chiller centralized procurement projects. It also teamed up with Alibaba Cloud to develop an AI cluster liquid cooling temperature control solution. Midea is also involved in China Telecom's liquid cooling intelligent computing project in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Gree chose to enter the liquid cooling track through capital marriage.

At the beginning of this year, Gree and Sinnet established a joint venture company "Grean Data Information Technology (Kunshan) Co., Ltd." This move aims to promote Gree's green computing equipment production base, focusing on liquid cooling systems, high-performance computing power cooling facilities, etc.

Sinnet is a well-established AIDC operator in China. Its current intelligent computing scale has exceeded 4000P, and the goal is to expand the capacity to 10000P in 2026. Gree and its joint research on liquid cooling solutions can skip lengthy customer certification and directly connect downstream procurement needs to the joint venture.

Gree's position and technological advantages in the HVAC field are obvious. It has been deeply involved in the field of refrigeration and thermal management for many years. It has mastered key technologies such as cold plate liquid cooling system and phase change cooling system. The full-stack cooling solution can achieve the energy saving target of PUE ≤ 1.15. It has previously successfully delivered many key projects such as China Unicom Yangtze River Delta Intelligent Computing Center and Ulanqab Intelligent Computing Center.

Haier is taking a global approach. In May, it invested more than 1 billion yuan in Rayong Industrial Park in Thailand, deploying data center equipment such as magnetic levitation cold sources, CDUs, and smart wind walls. At the same time, it integrates its subsidiaries, Thor Computing Power, Nahui New Energy and Da HVAC, to form a "computing-electricity-cooling" full-chain overseas trend.

In the third quarter, Haier's air-cooled magnetic levitation has achieved breakthroughs in North America. Data centers in Malaysia and Singapore have adopted Haier's air-cooled solutions.

As an emerging business segment, data center is developing rapidly. According to data, the sales volume of this department in the third quarter was nearly five times that of the same period last year. This was another increase after the 50% growth rate in the first half of the year.

To this end, Haier Smart Home has set the goal of "expected growth of 150% for the whole year and 10 billion in three years." This shows the room for growth in this track.

Return together

Although the development paths are very different, the three white goods giants all "heavily stocked" the same technical base - magnetic levitation.

In 1993, the Turbocor team in Melbourne, Australia, started the research and development of magnetic levitation oil-free centrifugal compressors, starting the commercial implementation of this technology. By 2004, Danfoss first integrated and then fully acquired Turbocor, becoming the undisputed overlord in this track.

Today, Danfoss dominates 70% of the global magnetic levitation compressor market share, with a cumulative shipment of more than 160,000 units, and its domestic compressor share is close to half.

However, due to the explosion of AI demand, Danfoss' production capacity is tight, and it is only a compressor supplier, not a complete machine manufacturer. The three domestic appliance giants are catching up with their self-developed magnetic levitation compressors and full-stack technology.

You must know that the compressor is the only source of energy to drive the refrigeration system, and its operating efficiency determines the performance output of the entire system. Data shows that the cost of refrigeration compressors accounts for about half of the chiller.

The compressor has become the link with the highest value and technical barriers among the primary cooling sources. The home appliance giant uses magnetic levitation as the technical base to build full-stack capabilities, which can create a thick moat.

The refrigeration system can be divided into primary side and secondary side. The primary side is a large cold source loop, which is cooled by magnetic levitation chillers and cooling towers and is responsible for finally discharging heat to the outdoors; the secondary side is a cabinet loop close to the GPU and is isolated by CDU heat exchange.

At present, domestic manufacturers are focusing on secondary side terminal components, such as Invic, Shenling Environment, Gaolan Co., Ltd., etc., mainly focusing on CDU, connectors, quick connectors, etc.

The three giants have primary side cold source capabilities, starting from the core of the cold source, jumping out of the red ocean of competition in a single category, and strangulating the "vital gate" of AIDC efficiency.

For example, Haier took the lead in compiling the first national standard for oil-free suspended centrifugal chillers in China, and jointly developed the CDU cooling maglev product with leading Internet companies. In a national supercomputing center, 27 Haier maglev units helped the overall PUE to be lower than 1.2.

Midea has recently launched a new generation of dual-rotor variable-speed magnetic levitation technology, which breaks out of the design framework of traditional air conditioners and is specifically developed for data center working scenarios.

In the supply chain, Gree has joined forces with Dun'an Environment to integrate parts and systems. AIDC air-cooled maglev units have been offline in batches in October. Previously, the "Ice Cube" maglev integrated CDU was released.

Unlike installing air conditioners after a home or commercial center is built, AIDC's temperature control solution is an extremely sophisticated and complex system that even requires the participation of suppliers from the early stages of design.

Moreover, the geographical environment, water resources, electricity prices, green electricity, policies and other factors in different regions have different refrigeration solutions. Therefore, the competition dimension of providers has risen from "competition of a single device and a single parameter" to a comprehensive competition of "comprehensive capabilities + system adaptation + project delivery".

The system delivery advantages that HVAC companies have accumulated in the past have begun to be highlighted during this period.

write at the end

Finding increments from existing stocks has been the most important proposition on the desks of home appliance companies in recent years.

Prior to this, both smart homes and the global market had provided certain increments for home appliance companies, but for the three largest giants in the industry, these market spaces were still not large enough.

The explosion of AI computing infrastructure construction has provided these home appliance companies with a new era of opportunities. Based on the natural technological advantages of these companies, the huge barriers to manufacturing scale, and the reuse of past comprehensive capabilities, the core capabilities of the three home appliance giants and the development of the AI industry have ushered in a historic intersection.

Such a strategic position is not simply business diversification, but is inevitably determined by the emergence of the demand side, the migration of supply side capabilities, and the huge increase in the business side.

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