SLB has agreed to acquire heat-exchange specialist Kelvion in a transaction valued at approximately $4.1 billion, expanding its engineering offer around data-centre cooling and thermal infrastructure.
SLB will pay about $3.4 billion in cash and assume approximately $700 million of debt. Kelvion is being acquired from Apollo-managed funds, its majority owner, and funds advised by Triton, which hold a minority interest.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions and is expected to complete during the first half of 2027. SLB values the deal at approximately 11 times Kelvion’s estimated 2026 EBITDA before synergies, falling to around 8.5 times when projected annual run-rate synergies are included.
Kelvion supplies heat-exchange and thermal-management equipment across data centres, energy, and industrial markets. Its technology becomes increasingly important in computing infrastructure as processor density rises and more electrical power has to be converted into useful computing output without allowing equipment temperatures to exceed operating limits.
The acquisition therefore moves SLB further into the physical plant behind AI and high-performance computing. Servers may be the visible technology investment, but the usable capacity of a data centre also depends on electrical distribution, backup power, cooling, pumps, heat exchangers, controls, and the mechanical infrastructure required to remove heat continuously.
Cooling becomes more difficult as rack density increases. Large quantities of heat have to move away from processors and into a secondary system capable of rejecting or reusing it, while operators also have to minimise pumping energy, water consumption, space, and the amount of electrical capacity consumed by equipment that performs no computation itself.
SLB has already been building a Data Center Solutions business around modular manufacturing, engineering, offsite construction, and digital systems. The company expects its cumulatively delivered data-centre capacity to exceed 2GW by the end of 2026, giving Kelvion a route into projects where SLB is already involved in infrastructure design and delivery.
Bringing thermal-management equipment inside the same group increases the portion of a project SLB can engineer and supply. It also reduces an interface between modular construction and one of the major mechanical packages that has to be commissioned before computing equipment can operate at design load.
That does not make the engineering simple. Cooling architecture differs according to chip power, rack density, redundancy requirements, local climate, water availability, heat-reuse opportunities, and whether customers use air, direct liquid cooling, or a combination of systems.
Heat exchangers consequently have to be selected as part of a wider plant design. Oversized equipment increases capital cost and footprint, while undersized equipment limits operating capacity or redundancy. Controls also have to accommodate rapid changes in computing demand without allowing temperature excursions elsewhere in the cooling circuit.
Kelvion’s business is not limited to data centres. Heat exchangers are established equipment in chemical processing, power, refrigeration, renewable energy, heat pumps, and carbon-management systems, giving SLB a broader industrial market for the acquired technology if the current computing investment cycle weakens.
SLB nevertheless places the data-centre opportunity at the centre of the transaction. On a pro-forma basis, it expects the combined businesses to generate more than $2 billion of data-centre revenue and approximately $300 million of adjusted EBITDA during 2026.
By 2028, SLB is targeting between $4.5 billion and $5 billion of revenue and $700 million to $800 million of adjusted EBITDA from the combined data-centre solutions operation. Those are forward targets rather than booked results, and depend on continued investment in computing infrastructure as well as successful integration of Kelvion.
The company expects approximately $120 million in annual EBITDA synergies within three years, combining cost efficiencies with additional revenue opportunities. It also expects the transaction to be accretive to earnings per share and free cash flow per share during the first 12 months after closing.
Integration creates its own industrial risks. Kelvion serves customers through an established manufacturing and engineering network, while SLB is moving into a data-centre market with different project cycles and customer requirements from its traditional energy businesses. Combining product development, sales, manufacturing, and project delivery without disrupting existing customers will matter as much as the financial model used to justify the purchase.
SLB has also been broadening its role in integrated industrial infrastructure, including recent engineering work on the Havstjerne carbon-storage development. The Kelvion transaction is separate, but both place more emphasis on engineering complete systems around large physical assets rather than supplying individual technologies in isolation.
The acquisition will not close until regulatory approvals are secured, leaving the projected synergies and 2028 growth targets dependent on an integration process that has yet to begin. If completed as planned, however, SLB will gain an established thermal-equipment manufacturer at the point when cooling capacity is becoming one of the harder physical constraints on data-centre expansion.
