AHEAD Opens New Air- and Liquid-Cooled Integration Facility, Cutting Enterprise Deployment Timelines from Months to Weeks
AHEAD, a leading integrator of advanced data center and AI infrastructure, has announced the opening of a new 10-megawatt, liquid-cooled rack integration facility on its Libertyville, Illinois campus. Purpose-built for high-density AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, the scalable facility is designed to help enterprises stand up NVIDIA-accelerated AI factories faster, with less risk and greater efficiency.
The new facility expands AHEAD's Libertyville campus to more than 350,000 square feet of warehousing, integration, and logistics space. It includes dedicated air- and liquid-cooled rack integration capabilities alongside a 40-rack Innovation Lab for hands-on AI infrastructure benchmarking. The facility is engineered to support the next generation of GPU-dense architectures, including NVIDIA AI Factory systems and future NVIDIA platforms such as Blackwell and Vera Rubin.
Unlike traditional deployment models where hardware arrives unconfigured and must be assembled on-site, this facility enables full rack-scale integration prior to delivery. Systems are installed, cabled, configured, and rigorously tested before shipping — reducing client deployment timelines from months to weeks, while dramatically minimizing risk.
"As AI and high-performance computing workloads push rack densities into territory that traditional air-cooled environments simply weren't designed for, enterprises need partners who can make the physics and the operations work at scale."
— Chris Tucker, EVP of AHEAD FoundryInside the Facility: Specifications and Capabilities
The Libertyville facility encompasses approximately 75,000 square feet of purpose-built rack integration space within AHEAD's broader campus footprint. Individual racks already exceed 100kW and are advancing rapidly toward 250kW and beyond — making robust cooling solutions an operational necessity, not just an option.
The site was repurposed from a former plastic injection molding facility, allowing AHEAD to increase integration capacity without requiring new construction or additional power infrastructure. This adaptive reuse underscores the company's pragmatic approach to scaling enterprise AI readiness efficiently and sustainably.
Cooling Approaches Supported
Air Cooling
Traditional air cooling remains supported for workloads within standard rack density limits, providing compatibility with existing data center designs and ensuring a seamless path for enterprises modernizing incrementally.
Rear-Door Heat Exchangers (RDHx)
Rear-door heat exchangers offer a hybrid solution that captures heat at the rack without requiring full liquid-to-chip integration, bridging the gap between conventional air cooling and direct liquid approaches for mid-density deployments.
Single-Phase Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling
The most advanced solution in the facility's arsenal, single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling transfers heat directly from high-powered components to liquid coolant. Designed with a closed-loop system, it enables more efficient and reliable operation of next-generation AI infrastructure at the extreme rack densities that modern GPU workloads demand.
Configuration as a Built-In Advantage
AHEAD's integration-first model fundamentally differs from the traditional approach where unconfigured hardware ships directly to customer data centers. Inside the Foundry facilities, the company consolidates design, configuration, integration, and validation into one cohesive workflow. A pre-integrated rack solution arrives with equipment installed, cabled, labeled, tested, and pre-configured — ready to go live in days once it rolls into the data center.
Because configuration is part of the integration process — not an afterthought — clients gain faster time to value, higher reliability with hardware and firmware issues resolved before shipment, and full lifecycle visibility through AHEAD's Hatch platform, which tracks asset-level data across thousands of devices and components throughout the entire integration lifecycle.
Supported NVIDIA Platforms
NVIDIA Elite Partnership and AI Factory Alignment
AHEAD holds Elite Partner status in the NVIDIA Partner Network and was recognized as the 2025 NVIDIA Americas Rising Star Partner of the Year. The Libertyville facility is purpose-designed to support NVIDIA AI Factory deployments, integrating the full NVIDIA AI platform stack with AHEAD's liquid-cooled capabilities to give enterprises a trusted pathway for rapidly designing and implementing next-generation AI factories.
The facility serves enterprises across regulated industries including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, and research universities — all of which require the combination of scalable AI compute, rigorous validation, and reliable deployment that AHEAD's Foundry model delivers.
"Enterprises need AI factories that are powerful and practical in real-world data centers. Our work to combine the full-stack NVIDIA AI platform with AHEAD's new liquid-cooled facilities provides a trusted pathway for customers to rapidly design and implement these next-generation AI factories."
— Craig Weinstein, VP Americas Partner Organization, NVIDIAA Scalable Innovation Lab for Real-World Benchmarking
Beyond production integration, the facility includes a next-generation Innovation Lab with five times the capacity of AHEAD's current lab. The lab features a digital twin environment designed to test, validate, and benchmark air, direct-to-chip liquid, and hybrid cooling solutions across state-of-the-art AI and HPC platforms — spanning storage, networking, and cloud-scale workloads. Enterprises can conduct side-by-side thermal efficiency and power consumption comparisons to make data-driven infrastructure decisions before committing to full deployment.
AHEAD's new 10MW Libertyville facility enables full rack-scale AI and HPC integration prior to delivery, cutting enterprise deployment timelines from months to weeks.
The facility supports three cooling approaches — air, rear-door heat exchangers, and single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling — for racks exceeding 100kW and scaling toward 250kW.
AHEAD repurposed a former plastic injection molding facility, expanding integration capacity without new construction or additional power infrastructure.
As an NVIDIA Elite Partner and 2025 Americas Rising Star Partner of the Year, AHEAD's Foundry is aligned to support NVIDIA Blackwell, Vera Rubin, AI Factory, and full-stack NVIDIA platform deployments.
A scalable Innovation Lab with 5X capacity includes a digital twin for testing, validating, and benchmarking cooling solutions across AI and HPC platforms before production deployment.
For enterprises navigating the realities of modern AI infrastructure, AHEAD's new facility represents a significant step forward in making high-density, liquid-cooled deployments operationally feasible at scale. By absorbing complexity inside the Foundry, the company allows organizations to focus on AI outcomes rather than infrastructure assembly — a compelling value proposition as GPU rack densities continue their relentless climb.
To explore AHEAD's AI factory capabilities, Foundry integration services, and liquid cooling solutions in depth, visit ahead.com.