LG Electronics is looking to expand its data center cooling business.

As discussed at LGE's Investors Forum in Seoul, the company is looking to expand its production to cash in on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.

The company said in its Investors Forum write-up that "in the HVAC sector, LG leads the high-efficiency market with its advanced inverter and heat pump technologies, and it is actively targeting the cooling systems market for AI data centers, where demand is surging."

The company expands on this, adding that the LGE chiller business is on track to become a unicorn (a privately owned startup company that has a valuation of over $1 billion and is not listed on the stock market) in three years, having seen new opportunities in the data center sector.

"Over the past three years, LG’s chiller business has achieved an average annual growth rate of over 15 percent, with overseas sales more than doubling during the same period," the company said, adding: "LG plans to leverage its extensive experience in supplying chillers to power plants, data centers, and other facilities, along with its high-efficiency core technologies, to actively target the data center cooling market.

"In addition, LG is preparing to commercialize new solutions, such as liquid immersion cooling, which are gaining traction in the market."

In May 2024, LGE announced that it would be supplying a large-scale cooling system using chillers to a "major data center complex under construction in the US," though did not name the client. That deal was said to involve more than 100 chillers and be valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

Jae-Sung Lee, air solutions business unit leader, spoke of the company's HVAC evolution during the forum, noting that in the 1990s it solely focused on residential air conditioners, growing to include commercial businesses since 2000, and then entering industrial areas in 2010.

LG acquired an air conditioning division from LS Mtron Ltd in 2011.

LG CNS, also part of LG Corp., signed an agreement with Igis Asset Management in September 2023 to develop data centers.

LG's technology and telecoms arms operate multiple data centers across South Korea. LG Uplus, LG’s telecoms unit, currently operates four colocation data centers — three in southern Seoul and one in Anyang, to the south of the capital.