In this episode of theCUBE's AI Factory series, join John Furrier, co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer of SiliconANGLE Media Inc., as they converse with Gio Albertazzi, Chief Executive Officer of Vertiv, to discuss the intricacies and innovations within the field of physical AI and robotics. This conversation is part of theCUBE's NYSE Wired program, highlighting the latest developments in AI infrastructure and its impact on digital and physical systems.
Gio Albertazzi offers a wealth of expertise in digital critical infrastructure, sharing insights on Vertiv's role in the evolving landscape of data centers and physical AI. They discuss how power and cooling systems are essential to the functionality of AI factories, emphasizing Vertiv’s strategic partnerships, including with industry leader Nvidia. TheCUBE's research team, led by John Furrier, provides further depth into the conversation, engaging with the latest cutting-edge technologies and trends.
The discussion unveils key takeaways on the significant growth in the data center market, the importance of system-level innovation, and the necessity of collaboration to stay ahead in infrastructure technology. Albertazzi notes that optimizing power and cooling solutions is crucial in enabling future technologies, with Vertiv poised at the forefront of this transformation. Insights from theCUBE's analysts underscore the increasing importance of energy efficiency and system integration to ensure optimal performance in next-generation infrastructures.
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Gio Albertazzi, Vertiv
In this segment from theCUBE + NYSE Wired’s “AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future” series, theCUBE’s Dave Vellante sits down with Rob Biederman, managing partner at Asymmetric Capital, to unpack a disciplined approach to early-stage investing amid AI-scale infrastructure shifts. Biederman explains Asymmetric’s founder-first model: writing $1–$10M checks (often via SAFEs), joining boards as they form and helping operators with go-to-market, operations, finance and strategy (not product/engineering). He shares why the firm avoided 2021’s lofty SaaS multiples in favor of backing proven builders earlier (single-digit pre-money), and highlights portfolio execution such as a cash-efficient LATAM e-commerce company scaling from ~$1-2M to about $50M in revenue. The discussion also explores Asymmetric’s subscale buy-and-build plays (e.g., pool cleaning in San Diego, sleep apnea clinics in Houston), where density, tech-enabled services and platform ops expand margins and enterprise value.
Biederman weighs in on AI economics as enterprises race to “AI factories,” cautioning that not every AI workload creates ROI and that overbuilt compute assumptions could face a reckoning. He argues that winners will prove a clear 10× value equation and avoid scaling go-to-market before product-market fit. Additional insights include early liquidity discipline (returning $0.20 on the dollar before the fund’s third anniversary), portfolio survivability (34 of 35 companies still operating; three positive exits), and guidance to founders: make your value proposition relevant, credible and differentiated. Tune in for candid perspective on how capital efficiency, ownership discipline and anti-thematic sourcing intersect with a world where GPU-dense data centers and AI-scale software are reshaping enterprise infrastructure and economics.
In this segment from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI Factories – Data Centers of the Future, Gio Albertazzi, chief executive officer of Vertiv, joins theCUBE’s John Furrier to explain how AI factories are reshaping the fundamentals of enterprise infrastructure. Albertazzi outlines Vertiv’s role as a global leader in digital critical infrastructure – spanning power, cooling and physical systems from medium-voltage feeds to the chip – and shares how surging demand for AI-scale data centers is driving strong results, including 27% year-over-year growth and expanding ma...Read more
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What does Vertiv specialize in within the realm of data centers and telecommunications?add
What are some trends and developments in physical AI and data center infrastructure?add
What are the recent changes in power and cooling technology within data centers over the past few years?add
What factors need to be considered for optimizing critical infrastructure systems?add
>> Welcome back, everyone. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is our AI Factory series, where we unpack all the technologies that's driving the next-generation infrastructure. AI infrastructure is the hottest sector of the market, as innovation and also development's going to enable this next wave of tokens, agents, and then physical AI, as this all comes together. Of course we're talking to all the leaders here and we got Gio Albertazzi, who's here, the CEO of Vertiv. Welcome to theCUBE.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Well, thank you for having me, John. It's a pleasure.
John Furrier
>> I was chatting with you before we came on camera about telecom and then the big data. You guys have been doing a ton of work across all major critical infrastructure. Data centers, I should have said on the intro is the hottest area, everyone's building $50 billion. I saw Anthropic had news out, they say $50 billion, but whether that happens or not, we'll see. Share your thoughts on what you guys are doing. First, explain what business you're in because you guys are in the center of the action on where this money's being spent, but also where the critical ingredient, energy, is involved. Talk about what you guys do.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me here. Vertiv is a global leader in digital critical infrastructure. So, think everything infrastructural in a data center or in a telecom, as we were talking about telecom network, is around power and cooling, and all the physical infrastructure around the IT. IT needs to be cooled. That heat is not just about extracting from the IT, but needs to be then reused or any way expelled from the building. And then, you have to take power and bring the power in the various stages from medium voltage and take it to the chip. That's what we do. And sometimes even system level integration and a lot of service to follow a customer during the lifecycle of their asset. Global and-
John Furrier
>> Talk about the business. You guys are a NYSE listed companies that we'd love to have you on theCUBE in our NYSE Wired program and community. They've been a lot of active discussions in this peer group around architecture. Talk about what you guys do on the business side. What's the core products? How's business going? What are some of the stats?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Business is going strong. Strong market, but we believe we're growing more than the market, so we're gaining market share. Last week or a few days ago, we guided our end of the third quarter to a 27% year-on-year growth. So, both in terms of top line in terms of margin, we are taking numbers up. So, very pleased with the direction of travel, but even more pleased about our role in an industry that is growing and our role is really enabling the industry. Without power, cooling, the physical infrastructure, it's hard to think about a data center, it's hard to think about an AI factory. So, the centrality of what we do is absolutely undisputable important.
John Furrier
>> One of the trends that I think is your friend is obviously this trend towards physical AI. And if you look at like Jensen Wong and Nvidia, he was just speaking at... They had a mini GTC in DC because it's getting very political. Everyone wants their GB300s. The build out is not just getting started, there's a lot of headroom. So, obviously, the data centers are being designed from ground zero to be basically supercomputers. Existing data centers that don't necessarily have the footprint designed from a clean sheet of paper, brownfield as they say, is have to be retrofitted and reworked. Then, you have other opportunities that are emerging on infrastructure.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Sure.
John Furrier
>> What is your vision as AI factories get built, you got these centralized power sources? They have to talk to other distributed nodes in the network. It's distributed computing, this is what we're talking about. So, you got all kinds of physical, digital things happening. How do you see that market as a CEO, but also with your partners, what's the formation? Is there an ecosystem forming? How do you see that market?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Well, the ecosystem is really between a silicon and clearly Nvidia, first and foremost, colo, hyperscale and the likes of ourselves. We like to think of ourselves as the connecting tissue between all these players and the build out, of course is happening and if anything, it is accelerating. It's accelerating, certainly the larger data center giga-scale and sometimes beyond. But also, in a more distributed smaller footprint, smaller size, it is pretty ubiquitous.
John Furrier
>> Power and cooling, had a comeback. It never really went anywhere, but if you go back five years ago, there was some pretty much state-of-the-art power and cooling, liquid cooling, all kinds of new things. And now, it's become such the center point of all the economics and the design side. What's changed in power and cooling as a category over the past, say, four years? What's the biggest change? Is it just more action, different designs? What's your view on that?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Yeah. Well, I've myself been in the industry for decades. So, you move from a period in which things were not dramatically changing from a type of, it loads to a period now, the last few years, as you were saying, where power density has increased dramatically, and that is the quantum change in terms of challenges and opportunities from a cooling standpoint. You have to move to liquid cooling. Something that a few years ago didn't even exist. Well, it existed, but it's a very niche, niche scale and the same is happening on the power side. So, the whole conversation about high voltages is really to enable this continuous ongoing densification of loads, which is a phenomenal opportunity because with the densification of loads, you have way much higher performance of the-
John Furrier
>> You're supercomputing.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Exactly. So, the whole industry is changing radically. It's super interesting for us. And of course, we are at the center of that and we are leading together with Nvidia and some of our customer, most of our customers really this transformation, this transformation is not about the technology you have today. The technology you have today is very important, but the technology you're working on two, three years out is even long-term more important. So, being there at that table and being an actor, super important.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. You guys are in a good position. As they say in the middle of the fairway if you use a golf analogy or pole position if you're on the racetrack. I want to ask you about the system side of it. About four years ago we were reporting, Dave Vellante and our research team and I were saying, large-scale clustered systems or we were using, I think the word supercluster. It was not yet clear that the supercomputing would come out of Nvidia going, "Hey, let's connect InfiniBand to Blackwells," and look what happened. And then, all that software that they wrapped around it really changed the game. That densification is now a system architecture. You guys have this system thinking, you have to think like a system architect because you are the connective tissue. You're a control point. You have to write code and technology to know when to do something with power and cooling. You're in the critical machine layer.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely. Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> You're right there where everyone wants to be.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely. It's multi-layer thing. I mean, of course, in a critical infrastructure, be it we simplify talking about a power train and thermal chain, if you will. Every element of this chain needs to be optimized from a technology standpoint, but then it is how the system works together that makes a difference. Because you need to really think about the system, optimize the system and deploy rapidly the system. And then, there is a software layer that controls and optimizes the way the various parts of this complex system work together. The power of the thermal, the IT loads. And at Vertiv, Unify is what we use for that. And it's again, another layer of competitive advantage, if you will.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, it's very nuanced, but I do want to highlight that value you guys have because if you look at all the buzz going on in some of the core conversations where the real money's being made, the word interconnect is used. Interconnects, co-packaged optics. So, as the hardware starts getting smarter and closer and intelligent, you're essentially an interconnect. You're connecting things.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Very much so.
John Furrier
>> Not in the classic definition, but you're in the network.
Gio Albertazzi
>> But the ability to have an perfect interoperability of all the elements of the physical infrastructure is so important for the efficiency and the ability to scale the data center-
John Furrier
>> I know you did a couple acquisitions, I'm looking at the news here, but I want to talk about your relationship with Nvidia. I'm Really bullish on Omniverse. I think the digital twins work that they're doing is going to usher in way more efficiencies. So, I want to get your thoughts on Nvidia Omniverse and how you guys are looking at that and partnering with them. And then, also throw a little futuristic question out at you. Not that I date myself, but grid computing was a concept in the '90s. Use some cycles from one PC was a... But this idea of grid energy and the way you guys are looking at this, I could see potentially scenarios where energy could be managed from these large systems in a very effective way. And it sounds like you guys are doing that now, at many levels, or in that world. Are you in that world of gridding out or connecting energy?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Yeah, two big topics.
John Furrier
>> Two big topics.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Two big topics, exactly. Let me use the next two hours to address it. Let's start from the first note. So, clearly, Omniverse is extremely important. It's a vision of where giga-scale the industry is going. And the fact that we are prominently visible in everything Nvidia material discourse presentation is testament to our role, not just a role in the industry, but role in terms of partnership. And again, the partnership is not just about having the technology or the ability to scale today, super important, but working together with them-
John Furrier
>> You guys are co-designing-
Gio Albertazzi
>> Co-designing, exactly. What do we want to achieve two years from now? Don't forget that the type of infrastructure that we make available needs to be there ahead of when the new GPUs versions or models are deployed because the physical infrastructure needs to be there. So, being ahead is extremely important.
John Furrier
>> Talk about extreme co-design. That's a big topic of Nvidia. They've actually pioneered with you guys this notion of actually leaning in, not just doing some business deal, "Hey, we're partnering. Get this API." This co-design is an intentional Nvidia strategy. You guys are in that. Explain what that means.
Gio Albertazzi
>> That means that our engineers and their engineers are working together on a very, very stringent and cadenced calendar, if you will. It is really working together, doing things together in labs, but also, conceptually understanding where are the limits of physics for the physical infrastructure, so that the silicon technology can really thrive and the future silicon technology can be enabled. So, that is really a lot of hours of engineering work together and that's been going on for years now.
John Furrier
>> And the benefit is you take advantage of the next step-function change of the technology?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So, having the visibility is so important for both. Let's go to the grid, the second part of your two-hour question. So, clearly, we see energy as a pacing factor for the industry. And I'm personally not too worried about the ability to solve the energy problem because we see that is not just great at generation, but it's the entire industry that is directing capital, ingenuity and creativity really on how to solve the problem. We see more and more bring your own power, behind-the-meter power generation. We have a big role there in-
John Furrier
>> Define behind-the-meter for people who don't what that means?
Gio Albertazzi
>> For example, if you have a turbine generating power, within the gate of a data center. We see more and more data center being designed that way. So, that requires a very well-designed from the power generation point to the chip. Power train gives an opportunity to use the heat generated by the whatever the technology use. It's a fuel cell, it's a gas turbine. Then, there is heat that can be used in many ways, shapes and form for the data center. So, our role in that respect is extremely central. But at the same time, those data center, many data center, even when they do not have on-site power generation have increasingly an active interface role with the grid. So, battery, energy storage systems for peak shaving, all elements that are changing the dynamics between the data center and the grid, much more interoperable.
John Furrier
>> And it's design specific.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> You have to design that architecture.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Exactly. Of course, like everything in this industry that is going at a speed that is going, industrialization is the word. So, prefabrication is key. So, referent design, so that you don't have to, every time, design everything from scratch is central to the speed at which the industry needs to go.
John Furrier
>> It's such a fascinating position. I think it's one of those most important areas you're playing in. Now, when you think about the AI factory, there's a lot of energy involved. There's behind-the-meter, thanks for explaining that for people who don't know. And then, you're going to have distribution, you hear terms like scale up, scale out, that's been around, now scale across. So, now you have design points for how packets are going to move, how tokens are going to move across the network. How does that affect you? Because I can see other elements involved with the old IoT market. You mentioned you guys do some work with telecoms, a lot of physical opportunity, physical AI opportunities. How do you see you managing AI to help with designing this energy?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Well, certainly, we use AI to optimize the way the system works, if you will. But if your question is, do you see AI as something that generate an opportunity beyond data center? Yes, as well. There's-
John Furrier
>> Well, inside you mentioned how you're handling all the energy. AI could help you on that for sure.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the acquisitions that we've done recently, Waylay, is exactly addressing that type of opportunity. So, system-level AI-enabled preventative maintenance and, for example, energy-use optimization, all things that are augmented by AI.
John Furrier
>> Okay, you're in a fun area. Obviously, so much... We can go another hour and talk about the other distributed computing points because you have telecom, you have all these towers, you have all these systems, old operational systems that could be modernized, that are throwing off heat, they could get factory capabilities.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely. Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> So, I can see simulation being important there.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Yeah, we've been in the telecom space, together with the data center space, for decades. That's also important now because telecom space traditionally is a DC power, so direct current type of electrical infrastructure. And we all know that DC power is also coming to the data center. So, we see a lot of synergy and it plays to one of our strengths, the DC power. But you're right, I mean there is a telecom network that will, we believe, be upgraded to the level of intelligence, not just a token generation at the far end of a network. So, super interesting for-
John Furrier
>> Yeah, I mean if you crack the code on energy management or that area, you're going to have a lot of benefits. What's your vision on what's possible for you guys to know? You're a public company, so you can't do forward-looking statements, but in terms of the opportunity going forward, there's a lot of headroom as you guys crack the code, co-design with Nvidia, get this distributed goal points in place.
Gio Albertazzi
>> I think we are in a very, very important position to today for the relationship with Nvidia, of course, and others as well. But also, because the breadth of our portfolio and the reputation we have in the industry brings us to all the tables very early on, and we have very good visibility on an industry that is dynamically evolving like we've never seen before, and that's going to last. So, it's all about being able to scale, being actively contributing to the future technology and that's what we do very well.
John Furrier
>> And as digital and physical merge into first-party citizens, they're going to be completely connected.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely. Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> That's why I love the Omniverse. Okay, final question. What's your focus now? What are you optimizing for? What's your business goals? What's on your CEO plate?
Gio Albertazzi
>> Well, two things are really central to my focus. One, continue to innovate. And innovate because we know that the industry and the underlying technology is not static, not at all. So, in innovation, in terms of pure technology, but also innovate in ways in which we bring the technology to the market. So, to what extent interoperability across all elements of the chain and train, as I was saying, and prefabrication can enable... For example, we launched recently a Vertiv OneCore that is fully pre-designed and prefabricated, if needed, AI factory. So, technology, how it evolves and how it enables. And the other is scale, focus on scale, scale, scale, scale. Because that's-
John Furrier
>> Scale's great....
Gio Albertazzi
>> now it's the moment.
John Furrier
>> Well, we'll see you at Supercomputing next week and Mobile World Congress certainly around the corner next year.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Absolutely.
John Furrier
>> Thanks for coming on.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Thanks a lot. .
John Furrier
>> We could easy do another two hours, get digging.
Gio Albertazzi
>> Thanks.
John Furrier
>> The energy is the central point of all the innovation, all of the AI, cryptocurrency, all the innovation around this new infrastructure is bounded by energy. Crack the code there, a lot more innovation's coming. Of course, we've got it here on the AI Factory series. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier