SLB Pays $4.1 Billion for Heat Exchangers
The oilfield services major is buying Kelvion from Apollo funds, with data centres already accounting for $1.2–1.3 billion of the target's 2026 revenue and a combined 2028 target of up to $5 billion.
SLB has agreed to acquire the thermal management specialist Kelvion from funds managed by Apollo Global Management for approximately $3.4 billion in cash plus around $0.7 billion of assumed debt — an enterprise value of about $4.1 billion. That is roughly 11 times Kelvion's estimated 2026 EBITDA before synergies, or about 8.5 times including them.
The numbers behind the target explain the price. Kelvion is projected to generate $2.3 to $2.4 billion of revenue in 2026 with adjusted EBITDA of $350 to $400 million, and data centres already account for $1.2 to $1.3 billion of that revenue. SLB targets approximately $120 million in annual EBITDA synergies within three years of closing, expects the deal to be accretive to earnings and free cash flow per share within twelve months, and has set a combined 2028 data-centre target of $4.5 to $5 billion in revenue and $700 to $800 million of adjusted EBITDA. Closing is expected in the first half of 2027 subject to regulatory approvals.
An oilfield services company paying $4.1 billion for a heat-exchanger manufacturer is a clear signal about where the binding constraint on AI infrastructure now sits. Compute capacity is limited by power delivery and heat rejection, and of those two, heat rejection is the one that can be addressed with equipment that is already manufactured at scale. Liquid cooling moves the problem from air handling to a plate heat exchanger, a coolant distribution unit and a dry cooler — components with long-established industrial supply chains that were not sized for this demand.
For plant engineers outside the data-centre world, the consequence is competition for the same equipment. Kelvion's heat-exchange product lines also serve energy, general industrial markets, heat pumps, renewables and carbon capture, and a manufacturer whose fastest-growing and best-funded customer segment is data centres will allocate capacity accordingly. Expect consolidation pressure and repricing across heat exchangers, dry coolers and liquid-cooling components — and longer lead times for the process plant that has always quietly relied on them.
Source: SLB