Thompson Street Capital Partners (TSCP) and Cequel III, two private equity firms based in St. Louis, announced today that they have taken a controlling stake in DDC Cabinet Technology (DDC), a global provider of innovative data center cabinet and cooling solutions.

DDC’s co-founders, Chris Orlando and Mark Ortenzi, will remain as minority investors. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

DDC specializes in patented cooling solutions for high-density GPU clusters that power artificial intelligence (AI) and other compute-intensive applications. DDC products combine water cooling and air cooling with a proprietary software offering, allowing companies to rack IT servers and equipment as usual, while scaling up to higher power densities without direct liquid cooling.

TSCP and Cequel III said they were excited to invest in DDC, which they see as a dominant technology provider in a fast-growing market for AI-based computing environments. They also said they would provide growth capital to help DDC expand its operations and customer base.

As part of the transaction, Keith Markley, a former executive at TierPoint, a leading IT infrastructure provider and a major DDC customer, will become the CEO of DDC, effective February 5. Markley will work with Orlando and Ortenzi, who will lead strategy and product innovation, respectively, as the company scales to meet the increasing demand for high-density cooling solutions in the data center industry.

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