nVent Electric will pay $1.75 billion for Maverick Power, a maker of switchgear and power distribution equipment aimed squarely at data center operators. The deal is nVent's biggest bet yet on the AI infrastructure buildout, and it pushes the company deeper into the electrical backbone that hyperscalers now spend tens of billions of dollars a year to secure.
Maverick Power builds the medium- and low-voltage switchgear, busway, and integrated power distribution units that sit between the utility feed and the server racks. It is the least glamorous slice of a data center, and one of the hardest to source. Lead times for switchgear have stretched past 12 months industry-wide as AI campuses have absorbed capacity that used to serve factories, hospitals, and office towers.
For nVent, the logic is straightforward. The company already sells enclosures, cabling, thermal management, and liquid cooling components into data centers. Adding Maverick's power distribution catalog lets nVent sell a fuller electrical stack to the same customers, at a moment when those customers are writing the largest checks in the industry's history.
Key facts
- 01nVent Electric agreed to buy Maverick Power for $1.75 billion in cash.
- 02The deal targets expansion of nVent's data center power distribution portfolio.
- 03Maverick Power builds switchgear and electrical distribution gear used in hyperscale facilities.
- 04The acquisition lands as AI data center capex is driving record demand for power equipment.
The $1.75 billion price tag reflects that scarcity premium. Power equipment specialists have traded at rich multiples all year as buyers like Eaton, Schneider Electric, ABB, and Vertiv have raced to lock in capacity and capability. nVent, historically a mid-cap electrical connection and protection supplier, is signaling it wants to be counted in that group rather than left behind by it.
The strategic backdrop is the sheer scale of AI capex. Nvidia has lifted AI server prices more than 15% as memory costs surge, and hyperscalers including Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon are collectively committing north of $300 billion in 2026 to data center capacity. Every megawatt of that build requires switchgear, transformers, busway, and distribution units — the exact catalog Maverick sells.
Maverick is based in Texas, which sits at the center of the current data center land rush. Ulanqab may be emerging as China's biggest AI data center hub with 12.5GW pledged, but Texas and the broader ERCOT grid have absorbed a comparable wave of hyperscale announcements, with power availability rather than land or cooling now setting the ceiling on new builds. Owning a domestic switchgear supplier with Texas roots gives nVent a direct line into that pipeline.
The deal also fits a pattern of consolidation in electrical infrastructure. Eaton acquired Resilient Power Systems earlier this cycle, Schneider bought Motivair for liquid cooling, and Vertiv has been rolling up specialist vendors across cooling and power. Independent switchgear makers with hyperscale customer relationships are among the most sought-after assets in industrial M&A, and $1.75 billion is roughly the going rate for one with real scale.
For customers, the concern with any consolidation of this kind is that fewer independent suppliers means less pricing pressure and longer queues for smaller buyers. Colocation providers and enterprise data center operators already report being deprioritized behind hyperscale orders. A larger nVent with Maverick tucked inside will not fix that dynamic, and may sharpen it if the combined company allocates its expanded output to its biggest accounts first.
There is also execution risk. nVent has never absorbed a business this large, and switchgear manufacturing is a different operating discipline from the enclosures and cable management the company grew up on. Integration missteps in the power equipment space tend to show up as slipped delivery dates, and slipped delivery dates in a market this tight are how customers get lost to competitors.
The read for the AI market is that the infrastructure trade keeps broadening. It started with Nvidia and the chip supply chain, moved through hyperscaler capex, and is now reshaping the industrial companies that make the physical plant AI runs on. A $1.75 billion deal for a switchgear specialist would have looked expensive two years ago; today it looks like nVent buying a seat at the table before the table gets any smaller. Expect more deals in the same shape, at similar multiples, before the buildout peaks.
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