Source Code Capital Leads Tens of Millions of RMB Series A Round in Yixintong

Yixintong, an innovative company specializing in liquid cooling technology, has successfully completed a Series A financing round of tens of millions of RMB, led by Source Code Capital. Yixintong is dedicated to providing efficient liquid cooling products and solutions for high-performance computing data centers, AI supercomputing centers, intelligent computing centers, and 5G base stations.

Xia Zhang, founder of Yixintong, said: "Traditional 'fan-blowing' air cooling technology can no longer meet the growing heat dissipation demands of data centers. The 'liquid cooling era,' where servers collectively 'take cold baths,' will become the mainstream cooling approach going forward. Yixintong focuses on and deeply cultivates ICT liquid cooling, with a full product portfolio spanning cold plate liquid cooling and immersion liquid cooling, providing customers with comprehensive, reliable, and high-performance solutions."

Wu Fan, Managing Director at Source Code Capital, said: "Computing power, as one of the decisive production factors in the digital economy era, has become industry consensus. The core driver behind the rapid development of liquid cooling data centers is the massive leap in computing power brought by new-generation AI chips represented by NVIDIA's A100 and H100, and Huawei's Ascend series. At the same time, the rising power consumption of high-performance chips and increasing server rack density, combined with regional requirements across China limiting PUE energy efficiency metrics to no higher than 1.3 or even 1.2, are gradually highlighting the advantages of liquid cooling technology in terms of cost-effectiveness and temperature control performance. Liquid cooling technology can effectively enable large-scale deployment of high-performance chips, significantly improve server chip reliability, and effectively reduce PUE — it is an inevitable technological trend for the long-term development of data centers.

Yixintong is a full-lifecycle liquid cooling service provider and has gradually become a leading vendor in the market-oriented IDC liquid cooling service space. Its core team comprises senior practitioners and management from leading domestic internet companies, IDC data center service providers, and construction firms, with extensive experience in data center technology and construction, and a deep understanding of end-customer needs and pain points. Its outstanding product capabilities and commercial acumen have won full recognition from multiple top-tier clients, serving more than ten industry benchmark companies including ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu Kunlun Core, Inspur Information, H3C, PowerLeader, Chindata, Cnlink Data, China Unicom, and China Mobile. We look forward to the company continuing to deliver high-quality products and services that combine reliability and cost-effectiveness, driving continuous progress for the company and the entire liquid cooling industry."

What is the long-term value of liquid cooling?

Today, the enormous potential of AI technology has become a central theme of industry exploration, and a new industrial paradigm is taking shape. The power consumption of mainstream chips has risen sharply alongside AI's growing demand for computing power, while data center servers and communications equipment continue to enhance their processing capabilities and integration, with power density climbing steadily. Huawei's Ascend 910 chip and NVIDIA's A100 already exceed 350W per chip, while the currently supply-constrained NVIDIA H100 reaches 700W. Industry insiders anticipate chips with single-chip power consumption of 1000W or higher emerging in the near term, placing enormous pressure and challenges on thermal management systems.

As chip power consumption doubles, single-cabinet server power has risen from the original 4-5kW to 12kW-15kW, with existing high-performance servers already exceeding 20kW. AI server cabinets can reach 30kW to 100kW. Due to the physical limitations of air's specific heat capacity and the constraints on energy consumption and rotational speed of fans in air cooling systems, traditional air cooling struggles to maintain stable, appropriate operating temperatures for servers in environments above 15-20kW per cabinet, making liquid cooling the mandatory solution for high-computing-power scenarios. Beyond its inferior heat exchange performance, traditional air cooling also suffers from low energy efficiency, constraining its further development. Taken together, in the new round of industrial paradigm shifts driven by AI computing, and with the joint push from upstream and downstream industries spanning chips, servers, and cloud computing, traditional air cooling technology is expected to gradually become unsustainable, while liquid cooling technology continues to innovate and become imperative.

Data centers are the foundation of the digital economy. Against the backdrop of "East Data West Computing" and "dual carbon" goals, ever-increasing power density and PUE design requirements have become major challenges facing the industry. The vast majority of data center operating expenses go to electricity — energy consumption is extremely high. Traditional air-cooled data centers already have PUE values of 1.5-1.8. To reduce PUE to 1.2 while meeting high-performance computing demands, existing air-cooled data center approaches must be changed, with corresponding substitution or technical retrofitting using liquid cooling technology. Nationwide, PUE below 1.3 is an inevitable requirement. With its economic advantages including high density and low carbon footprint, liquid cooling technology has become the necessary path to address data center heat dissipation pressure and energy efficiency challenges.

According to Omdia's Data Center Thermal Management Market Analysis - 2022, "By 2026, liquid cooling market revenue could exceed $3 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50.4%, extending from 2021 to 2026." "The need to run compute-intensive workloads has given cloud service provider investment a particularly positive impact on the market's growth potential." According to Inspur Information's projections, by 2027, liquid cooling server penetration will reach 37%, far higher than the current 6%. Meanwhile, according to the liquid cooling white paper jointly released by China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile in June 2023, liquid cooling penetration is expected to reach 10% in 2024 and over 50% from 2025 onward.

Driven by policy, technology, and economics, liquid cooling technology is rapidly replacing traditional air cooling and becoming the mainstream thermal management technology for high-computing-power demands.

With an exceptional team, professional technical expertise, and experienced R&D personnel providing a solid foundation for Yixintong's technological innovation. Founder and CEO Xia Zhang previously worked at Baidu and GDS, and was a core executive at Hyxcloud Data, with over 10 years of experience in internet, data center construction, and entrepreneurship. CTO Cui Xujing was formerly technical head of Alibaba Cloud's IDC division, with 14 years in the industry and experience building over 1GW of data center capacity. The team's extensive experience enables them to deeply understand market demands and incorporate customer feedback into products and services, forming competitive moats.

Yixintong has fully deployed both cold plate and single-phase immersion technology routes, providing full-lifecycle liquid cooling system services, enhancing customer stickiness while continuously increasing per-customer revenue. It offers a proprietary "hyper-converged" thermal management system and products, with industry-highest T4-level reliability, online maintenance, and digital leadership. Additionally, Yixintong possesses proprietary cold plate technology and customized products, deeply engaging in supply chain core component definition of key parameter specifications, capable of reducing cold plate system delivery costs by 30-50% from existing baselines.

It is precisely because of Yixintong's high reliability, high efficiency, standardized manufacturing, and quality service — together with continuously iterative forward R&D capabilities — that the company has repeatedly won bids for annual domestic IDC projects featuring the largest-scale cold plate liquid cooling deployments and largest immersion liquid cooling deployments. To date, it has cumulatively delivered approximately 150MW of liquid cooling data center capacity, an industry-leading figure.

Meanwhile, Yixintong has achieved breakthroughs in the challenging overseas IDC market, establishing strategic partnerships with global top-tier precision air conditioning manufacturers, following leading customers and suppliers in going global, and actively laying out international markets.

Yixintong's successful financing marks the company's position and potential in the liquid cooling technology field, and will further accelerate its development, promote widespread application of liquid cooling technology in the data center industry, and make greater contributions to sustainable development in the digital economy era. The company will continue to uphold its philosophy of technological innovation and customer first, continuously delivering excellent products and services, and leading the way in green, low-carbon development.