Blackstone agrees to acquire Flow Control Holdings from Audax to expand AI data-centre cooling footprint

Deal structure and ownership

Blackstone has agreed to acquire Flow Control Holdings from Audax Private Equity, with funds managed by Blackstone Capital Partners and Blackstone Energy Transition Partners taking a majority stake in the Cincinnati-based business. Audax will retain a minority equity position. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and financial terms were not disclosed. William Blair is acting as financial advisor to Blackstone.

What Flow Control Holdings makes and where it operates

Flow Control Holdings specializes in highly engineered sanitary and high-purity flow components used in critical applications. Its high-performance liquid-cooling components are deployed in coolant distribution units, in-row manifolds and secondary fluid networks for original equipment manufacturers and hyperscale data-center operators. The company also serves food, beverage and pharmaceutical customers, providing an industrial revenue base outside the AI infrastructure market.

Why Blackstone is buying

Blackstone framed the deal as part of its AI infrastructure thesis, with Bilal Khan, senior managing director, and Mark Zhu, managing director, saying Flow Control Holdings "has enormous tailwinds for continued growth as the latest generations of high-performance AI infrastructure increasingly rely on liquid cooling technology for significantly improved energy and chip efficiency." Blackstone described the company as having "deep trust with their customers for some of the most demanding workloads across both the data centre and food, beverage, and pharmaceutical markets."

Background on the seller and Audax's track

Audax Private Equity, based in Boston with offices in San Francisco, New York, London and Hong Kong, had approximately $20 billion in assets under management as of July 2026 and focuses on investing across the North American middle market. Audax private equity partner Don Bramley called the sale "a tremendous outcome" for the Flow Control Holdings team and its investors. Flow Control Holdings chief executive Scott Kerns said that "over the past four years, we've invested significantly to develop a leading position in the data centre cooling market," citing Audax's support through team additions, new production and distribution facilities, and 10 acquisitions across data-center cooling, food, beverage and pharma.

Cooling technology and the AI demand backdrop

Conventional air cooling becomes progressively less efficient as processors consume more electricity and server racks grow denser, particularly in AI training and inference environments where high-performance accelerators generate substantially more heat than traditional computing equipment. Liquid cooling moves heat away from chips and racks more efficiently, potentially improving power-usage effectiveness and allowing operators to deploy greater computing density within existing physical footprints, making cooling infrastructure part of the capacity equation rather than a secondary mechanical system.

What remains uncertain

The transaction value has not been disclosed, and the deal remains subject to closing conditions ahead of the expected fourth-quarter 2026 completion.