NEXTDC wins DCA Innovation Achievement for Liquid Cooling

NEXTDC wins Innovation Achievement Award for Liquid Cooling Centre of Excellence

NEXTDC, alongside Vertiv, has won the Innovation Achievement Award at the inaugural Data Centres Australia Excellence Awards 2026, recognising the NEXTDC Liquid Cooling Centre of Excellence at S3 Sydney. 

The awards recognise achievement across Australia’s data centre sector, with the Innovation Achievement category focused on technology, processes and design approaches that advance how data centres are designed, built and operated.

For NEXTDC, the recognition reflects an important shift in AI infrastructure: moving liquid cooling from theory and specification into a live environment where organisations can see how high-density infrastructure performs before committing to deployment

Recognising innovation in a live AI environment

The NEXTDC Liquid Cooling Centre of Excellence is a live, liquid-cooled AI environment operating inside S3 Sydney.

Data Centres Australia recognised the Centre as a practical test environment where customers can observe, test and tune AI hardware configurations under real operating conditions. The award citation highlights its role in supporting further innovation, educating customers and accelerating AI development in the market.

NEXTDC’s own announcement describes the Centre as a live direct liquid cooling environment where teams can see high-density power, liquid cooling and facility systems working together in a production data centre, and assess configurations against their own hardware before committing to deployment.

That distinction matters.

AI infrastructure decisions increasingly extend beyond selecting GPUs or servers. Power density, cooling architecture, rack design, connectivity, resilience and the underlying facility all need to work as one system.

Why liquid cooling matters for AI

As AI and high-density computing increase power and thermal demands, liquid cooling is becoming an important part of infrastructure design.

NEXTDC’s Liquid Cooling Centre of Excellence at S3 Sydney gives organisations a live environment to see how direct liquid cooling, high-density power and supporting facility systems work together before deployment.

Built in collaboration with technology partners including Vertiv, the Centre helps customers assess practical infrastructure requirements and prepare for increasingly dense AI workloads.

Recognised by Australia’s data centre industry

The inaugural Data Centres Australia Excellence Awards were held in Melbourne on 8 September 2026, recognising achievements across seven categories spanning innovation, sustainability, workforce development, stakeholder engagement and industry leadership.

Winning the Innovation Achievement Award for the Liquid Cooling Centre of Excellence reinforces NEXTDC’s focus on developing infrastructure that can support the rapidly changing requirements of AI and accelerated computing.

But the value of the Centre is not simply in demonstrating new technology.

It gives organisations a place to ask practical questions, understand constraints and make more informed infrastructure decisions before committing significant capital to an AI deployment.

Planning a liquid-cooled AI deployment?

If your organisation is evaluating GPU infrastructure, higher rack densities or liquid cooling, the earlier infrastructure requirements are considered, the more options you have when designing the environment.

Explore NEXTDC’s liquid cooling capabilities and book an appointment discuss your AI or high-performance computing requirements.