Digital infrastructure firm Vertiv is acquiring microgrid solutions provider UtilityInnovation Group (UIG) in what could be a $2.6 billion deal.

Westerville, Ohio-based Vertiv announced the deal today. Approximately $1.45 billion will be paid at the closing of the deal, with another $1.15 billion due if certain earnings goals are met over the next 12 to 24 months.

Vertiv positions the deal as improving its ability to accelerate speed to power for data center customers, something that’s increasingly important to an industry looking for ways to sidestep lengthy utility interconnection queues.

“For AI data center operators, competitive advantage increasingly depends on how quickly they can move from site selection to first token,” Gio Albertazzi, CEO of Vertiv, said in a statement. “Vertiv has the most complete power and cooling portfolio in the industry. With UIG, we anticipate extending that portfolio upstream to the utility interconnect and onsite power sources, creating a coordinated architecture from source to chip without tying customers to a single generation technology or supplier.”

Vertiv launched a 1-MW microgrid at its Delaware, Ohio, Customer Experience Center just north of Columbus in 2023. The facility is designed to show how microgrids and the firm’s infrastructure technologies can help data center operators meet their insatiable appetite for electricity.

Expanding microgrid capabilities

To improve speed to power, resiliency and flexibility, a growing number of data center operators, including Meta and Oracle, are implementing microgrids that seamlessly blend onsite generation, storage and backup power with grid power. To help facilitate collaboration with the energy industry, Data Center Frontier’s fourth annual Data Center Frontier Trends Summit will co-locate with the Microgrid Knowledge Conference in Glendale, Arizona next May.

UIG is a leading microgrid solutions company that provides advanced microgrid controls and behind-the-meter power architecture design for data centers. The global firm was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. It has offices in Dublin, Ireland and manufacturing facilities in North Carolina and New Jersey.

“UIG was founded to solve increasingly complex power challenges for data center operators through flexible, technology-agnostic architectures,” Sidney Hinton, founder and CEO of UIG, said in a statement. “Vertiv’s global scale, critical infrastructure portfolio and service capabilities make it a strong strategic fit for what we have built. We believe this combination can expand the reach of UIG’s microgrid controls and power architecture expertise and create greater value for customers as power becomes an increasingly critical constraint on data center growth.”

With the acquisition, the firms believe Vertiv will be better positioned to help customers design and deploy integrated power structures, achieve faster time to power and scale capacity beyond what the grid is capable of providing.

Assuming there are no issues with regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close later this year.