[Edaily Reporter SOYEON KIM ] Lee Jae-sung, President and Head of the ES Business Division at LGELECTRONICS, who oversees the company’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) business, visited Indonesia earlier this month to discuss cooperation on artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure with Sinarmas, the country’s third-largest conglomerate. This strategy aims to expand the company’s business-to-business (B2B) footprint, centered on HVAC, in Indonesia, where investment in data centers is growing rapidly due to the expansion of the AI and cloud industries. In particular, the company is accelerating its efforts to secure a leading position in the “Global South” market by offering integrated thermal management solutions—ranging from chillers to liquid cooling and data center cooling management—that go beyond the simple supply of cooling equipment.

According to industry sources on the 11th, President Lee Jae-sung met with Helson Suinda, CEO of Sinarmas’ Data Center Division, to hold a high-level management meeting (TMM) focused on advanced thermal management solutions for AI data centers.

This meeting was arranged to expand business synergies between the two companies and establish a long-term cooperative relationship in the Indonesian data center market, which is emerging as a key digital hub in Southeast Asia. This move is seen as a strategic step toward expanding HVAC business opportunities in the Global South region, including Indonesia, in the future.

The two companies reportedly discussed strategic cooperation plans in the field of thermal management solutions—including chillers and air conditioning infrastructure—targeted at the Indonesian AI data center market. AI data centers operate large-scale advanced semiconductors, such as high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), consuming significantly more power and generating more heat than conventional data centers. Consequently, cooling technology—which determines the stable operation and power efficiency of data centers—is emerging as a core infrastructure component.

It is reported that during this meeting, LGELECTRONICS proposed an integrated thermal management solution encompassing high-efficiency chillers, cooling water distribution units (CDUs), liquid cooling, and data center cooling management (DCCM).

As the performance of advanced semiconductors installed in AI servers has recently improved, power density and heat generation per server rack are also increasing rapidly. LGELECTRONICS’ CDU is a “Direct-to-Chip (DTC)” liquid cooling solution that circulates cooling water through cold plates mounted on the chips of high-density AI servers to directly recover heat generated by the chips. By combining this method—which absorbs heat directly from the chips, the source of heat generation—with conventional air cooling that cools the entire data center, the solution is designed to handle highly dense AI servers.

This visit to Indonesia aligns with LGELECTRONICS’ strategy to expand its HVAC business beyond traditional commercial and industrial air conditioning into high-value-added infrastructure sectors, including AI data centers. Data center cooling is not merely a business involving the sale of air conditioners or chillers; it is considered a B2B business capable of generating stable, long-term revenue, as it is closely linked to power efficiency, server stability, and facility operations.

This is why LGELECTRONICS is focusing its efforts on the Global South, including Indonesia. In emerging markets where population growth, industrialization, and digital transformation are occurring simultaneously, investment in infrastructure—including data centers—is expanding.

The company has set a goal to achieve 20 trillion won in revenue by 2030 by cultivating its HVAC business as a future growth engine. In fact, revenue for the ES Business Division, which oversees the HVAC business, reached 2.7261 trillion won in the second quarter of this year, a 3.0% increase compared to the same period last year. In the AI data center cooling solutions business, the company secured orders worth approximately 600 billion won in the first half of this year. LGELECTRONICS aims to secure additional orders totaling several trillion won by the end of the year.

LGELECTRONICS plans to highlight the competitiveness of its next-generation AI data center cooling solutions at “Data Center World Asia (DCWA) 2026,” Asia’s largest data center exhibition, to be held in Singapore in September.