Vertiv Is Up 64% in 2026 and Wall Street Says It's Still a Buy. Is This the Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Infrastructure Stock?

We've all heard about artificial intelligence's (AI) need for more electricity, more hardware, more everything. But less talked about is the issue of what AI generates, well, aside from the responses you get to your prompts.

I'm talking about heat.

Anyone who's built a gaming PC knows that heat management with computers is very important. If your hardware runs too hot for too long, it can cook itself; basically, it thinks itself to death.

AI runs even hotter.

As reported by Marketplace, Vinod Narayanan, the University of California, Davis' director of the Western Cooling Efficiency Center at the college, has stated that AI chips can run at 70 or 80 degrees Celsius (175 degrees Fahrenheit).

According to research done by Arizona State University, the heat kicked off by data centers may also raise the temperature of neighboring communities by as much as 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, needless to say, for the sake of the people living near data centers and for the sake of the hardware in the data center itself, keeping things cool is critical for AI. And it's a need of the technology that often flies under the radar in the media.

Wall Street is very aware of the cooling issue, though, and that's likely why Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) is up about 64% year to date.

Vertiv is a major producer of cooling equipment for data centers, and according to Wall Street's analysts, it's still rated as a buy. Here's why.

Image source: Getty Images.

Cool running circuits

Vertiv has been in the data center colocation, power, and cooling industry for over 60 years, and its product line includes just about everything a data center would need to keep its computing hardware within its happy operating temperature.

A few of the highlights include data center air conditioning systems, in-rack cooling systems for processors, and thermal management systems to get the most out of all of Vertiv's cooling hardware.

It's a nice, straightforward business model that can be summarized in a single sentence: Vertiv keeps computer hardware cool.

And Vertiv has locked in some pretty critical partnerships, including one with Nvidia last month. The deal will see Vertiv provide Nvidia with advanced liquid-cooling systems for use in its data centers.

Equinix, a leading data center real estate investment trust (REIT), has also contracted with Vertiv in the past. In 2017, it hired Vertiv to redesign the power supply system for its PA7 data center in Courbevoie, France. They partnered up again in 2021 to develop fuel cells for data centers in Italy.

It's not just the companies you might expect, like Nvidia, either. Caterpillar partnered with Vertiv back in November 2025 to provide cooling solutions for its own data centers.

And now, the company offers Vertiv OneCore, which is an end-to-end data center solution designed to standardize the cooling setup for an entire data center and make it easier to manage.

Also of note is the company's SmartRun power and liquid cooling container for data center chips. It's a key component of the OneCore system that is standardized, built in a factory, and shipped out complete to a data center for installation.

Vertiv is carving out a space for itself as a leader in the data center cooling industry, and that is a market Grand View Research expects to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3% from 2026 to 2033 and hit a size of $128.31 billion by 2033.

And the financials make a compelling case for Vertiv's fortunes as well.

Cool chips, blazing growth

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Vertiv saw its new orders climb 252% and its backlog increase 109% to $15 billion, so it's clear there's no lack of interested customers.

Looking at the whole of 2025, Vertiv saw organic sales growth of 26% over 2024, and its full-year diluted earnings per share (EPS) grew 166% over 2024.

Finally, Vertiv is running a 13% net profit margin at present, and it has a nice, comfortable balance sheet with a total debt-to-equity ratio of 0.82.

Wall Street's optimism for further growth despite Vertiv's considerable bull run this year alone likely has something to do with the fact that its current price-to-earnings-to-growth ratio is sitting at 0.86, meaning it's rather undervalued when you consider its future earnings projections.

So, the financial state of the company alone makes a compelling case for it being one of the best AI infrastructure stocks out there right now. But when you add in its decades of experience and the Nvidia partnership, the case for Vertiv gets even stronger.

James Hires has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Caterpillar, Equinix, Nvidia, and Vertiv. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.