$INV: The $550M Under-the-Radar Company Behind AI’s Second Infrastructure Bottleneck
Most companies in the AI sphere have already been discovered and overly talked. But for those willing to look beyond the obvious names, there are still overlooked opportunities. For your consideration, I present an undervalued and uncovered small-cap company with a market value of just $550 million that sits at the center of AI’s second major infrastructure bottleneck: **heat**.
A crisis is unfolding that could bottleneck the entire AI revolution. As AI investment races toward an estimated **$1 trillion annually** for the foreseeable future, the industry faces a growing constraint in its ability to cool the massive infrastructure powering this expansion.
https://preview.redd.it/kgg9eb0hth3h1.png?width=1751&format=png&auto=webp&s=543a5a92ab36ced3b1158a80085fa1588eee00c5
Mainstream chips are becoming much hotter after years of incremental increases in wattage. Suddenly, we're seeing a J-curve in terms of the heat these chips produce. With Rubin architecture coming as soon as **H2 2026**, power density will double compared to the previous generation.
Today's datacenters using the latest GPUs use single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling. However, as newer GPUs go past 200–300 kW per rack, **single-phase starts running into physical limitations**.
This means that the real challenge of the next decade remains unchanged: efficient heat dissipation at massive scale and doing it responsibly from an environmental standpoint. This is precisely where **dual-phase direct to chip cooling** comes in, because it can serve higher intensity GPUs, compared with single-phase.
https://preview.redd.it/m7cfuc0hth3h1.png?width=1463&format=png&auto=webp&s=513b6a128109b12626289d095231ad9d02eaa47f
**How do both systems work?**
* **Single-phase liquid cooling:** moves heat away by warming liquid;
* **Dual-phase liquid cooling:** removes heat by using the liquid-to-vapor transition as part of the cooling engine. Water can remain warmer than in single-phase (see [https://accelsius.com/warmer-water-unlocks-two-phase/](https://accelsius.com/warmer-water-unlocks-two-phase/) for more information).
**Better economics**
Cooling accounts for approximately **35%-40% of a data center's total energy consumption**, or **1.2% of total US energy consumption**. Reducing this spending is critical for every hyperscaler and neocloud. Dual-phase cooling reduces the CapEx required for chillers by reducing the number of chillers, significantly lowering annual OpEx, because all the racks in the data centers can operate with warmer water temperatures.
**Lower insurance costs**
Current data centers that use single-phase cooling face leak risk. However, with two-phase cooling, which uses specialized, non-conductive (dielectric) fluids, it significantly reduces the risk of equipment damage from leaks.
If you're still unsure whether dual-phase cooling will be the future, check these comments by industry experts:
· **Ali Heydari, Director of Data Center Cooling and Infrastructure at NVIDIA:** In August, 2025, stated that single-phase will be phased out in favor of two-phase within the next 5-7 years.
· **Dev Kulkarni, Intel’s Senior Principal Engineer and Thermal Architect:** In April 2024, he stated: "It’s important to think two or three generations ahead. If you go all out on single-phase only, you might find you need to switch some infrastructure to two-phase technologies within a short period."
**Source:** [https://accelsius.com/next-generation-of-cooling\_two-phase-direct-to-chip/](https://accelsius.com/next-generation-of-cooling_two-phase-direct-to-chip/)
**$INV and Accelsius**
According to Accelsius, its dual-phase cooling with almost no-water usage brings 35% lower annual OpEx vs. single-phase direct-to-chip and serves 4500W+ per socket cooled (above the stated 4000W limit for single-phase cooling).
**Clients:** The company is serving at least 6 clients, with one of them introducing a 300MW datacenter.
**Proven tech and backing:** The tech is backed by industry giants. Legrand ($45B mkt cap) and Johnson Controls ($85B mkt cap) participated in a funding round in Jan 2026 and are working closely.
**Financials:** Accelsius generated $1.4M in revenue in Q1 2026 (**7x growth YoY** from 200k). **Backlog currently sits at $50M** and the company expects to have **$100M ARR by EOY**. Accelsius also expects to be cash-flow positive by the EOY.
**Valuation:** Accelsius is a subsidiary part of $INV. Accelsius was recently valued in a private funding round at $665M ($INV's share is $286M). Innventure ($INV) also has two other subsidiaries (let’s forget the residual subsdiaries as Accelsius is the focus). Innventure stated that no funding will be done at the Group level, only at the subsidiary's level. Innventure is currently worth $558M.
**Biggest Risk**
The cooling market is crowded with lots of big players (Vertiv, CoolIt, Zutacore, Schneider Electric, etc.). Zutacore is the only one among these that currently has dual-phase cooling services (although it can only handle 2800W per socket, meaning less future proof, compared with Accelsius' 4500W). In my view, Accelsius doesn't need to monopolize the industry for this to win though, they just need a lot of sales growth.
In my view, a group with a subsidiary positioned as a leader in dual-phase cooling, growing 7x in a single year, is expected to start generating positive cash flow by the EOY, and backed by proven technology, trading at just 5x this year’s ARR in today's AI-driven market environment appears fundamentally undervalued.