Manufacturers Can Barely Keep Up With the Data Center Gold Rush

The data center boom has been showing up in the manufacturing sector for several quarters now as demand has risen rapidly for steel racks, cooling systems and electrical gear. Just how rapid that growth is—and looks to be for quite a while—was made clear by the CEOs of 3M Co. and Carrier Global Corp.

Speaking at the 16th Annual Wells Fargo Industrials & Materials Conference in Chicago, 3M’s Bill Brown and Carrier’s Dave Gitlin said they are recalibrating on the fly just how big their businesses serving data centers could be.

Gitlin told attendees that Carrier’s data center work making heat management systems, which his team had initially estimated would book $1.5 billion in sales this year, has been “phenomenal” so far. The company is “certainly pushing” to top that number, he added, and its biggest issue “is just keeping up.”

“Our exit rate […] going into next year, that would be enough capacity for $2.5 billion […] and our demand exceeds that,” Gitlin told Wells analyst Joe O’Dea, adding that his team is looking to invest in more capacity. “We typically have capex around $500 million. That’s probably closer to $600 million because these are incredibly compelling investments.”

Brown and 3M expect to bring in about $600 million in 2026 from their work with data centers. Roughly $500 million of that comes from gear outside the facilities, equipment such as cables and insulation. Sales of those products have been rising around 10% annually and 3M’s backlog is growing solidly, Brown said.

Where things are moving at breakneck speeds for 3M are with its Expanded Beam Optical cabling line, which is among the products that are replacing traditional copper cables. In March of this year, 3M leaders said they were investing in new capacity.

With a $100 million business group that’s growing at 50% per quarter, that plan might already be chasing the facts.