nVent Electric, the St. Louis Park maker of electrical protection and liquid-cooling gear, wrapped up 2025 with $3.9 billion in sales after a 30% year-over-year jump largely powered by demand from AI data centers. The surge helped the company land Manufacturer of the Year – Extra Large at this year’s Minnesota Manufacturing Awards and sped up production expansions around the Twin Cities. Those moves have turned into new manufacturing lines and hiring across the metro.
According to nVent’s 2026 proxy statement, the company wrote “Our sales grew 30% to $3.9 billion” and reported that data-center sales climbed to roughly $1 billion as it scaled liquid-cooling production. The filing notes that acquisitions and new products materially contributed to the year-over-year gains and that backlog finished the year at an all-time high.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal named nVent Manufacturer of the Year – Extra Large and highlighted that the St. Louis Park company works directly with partners including NVIDIA and AMD to design cooling systems for high-performance chips. As reported by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, the award underscores the local economic impact of the firm’s AI-focused product push.
Local factory growth: Blaine and Anoka expansions
nVent leased a 117,000-square-foot production site in Blaine to scale liquid-cooling output and expects the facility to employ more than 175 people once fully staffed. In a press release, nVent said the Blaine site is the company’s second expansion in two years and that, combined with work in Anoka, the company will add more than 325 local jobs. nVent’s press release notes the Blaine plant will build liquid-cooling products for data-center customers.
AI chip demand is the tailwind
Executives told investors that higher chip power densities and AI workloads have made advanced liquid cooling essential, which has prompted nVent to increase capacity and introduce new cooling distribution units for higher heat loads. As outlined by nVent’s Investor Day materials, the company has ramped liquid-cooling production capacity sharply since mid-2023 to meet orders from cloud and chip customers…