- Jason Waxman recently took the helm at leading liquid cooling vendor CoolIT
- He said the company is aiming to beat overall industry growth rates
- Customization for hyperscaler needs is a key part of its strategy
When Jason Waxman joined CoolIT as CEO in April, he stepped aboard a rocket ship. While it may not be a household name, the company is at the forefront of the liquid cooling revolution that is taking the data center industry by storm.
CoolIT was one of the top three liquid cooling vendors by revenue in 2023, according to Dell’Oro Group, and last year the company announced plans to ramp its manufacturing capacity by 25X ahead of an expected AI-fueled wave of demand. The rising tide has prompted Dell’Oro to increase its data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) forecast at least three times already as orders have continued to outpace expectations.
Now, Waxman said, the wave everyone watched build from afar is about to hit shore.
“We’ve been projecting that exponential increase and we’re now finally here,” he said. “I think with the shipping of some of Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell platforms it really is going to be unleashing the full demand.”
There’s just one problem: liquid cooling isn’t a one-size fits all kind of product. Waxman noted that not all data centers are piped for liquid cooling. Even in those that are, the companies (mostly hyperscalers and colocation providers) deploying it might have specific requirements.
Recipe for success
After a couple of decades spent in Intel’s data center business and another four at industrial test and measurement company Fluke Corporation, though, Waxman knows a thing or two about dealing with big, persnickety customers.
His answer to the problem?
“What I believe we need to do – this is the long term vision – is what is called mass customization, the ability to identify what is unique and optimal for each of those large deployments and be the best at doing it,” he said. “We want to operate with the nimbleness of small company but the scale of a large enterprise.”
Customization isn’t about making customers feel coddled and special, he added. It’s about money.
“You optimize for the workload, type of data center design, the type of silicon. Anything that’s not optimized at that scale is waste," said Waxman.
Long road to the top
The CEO told Fierce he thinks this strategy will help CoolIT get a leg up on the competition.
“I’ve seen stats that indicate the growth rate for the industry is going to be about 25% over the horizon, and I certainly expect that as a company that sees bigger competitors out there that we should be gaining share,” he said. “So, I’d like to substantially beat that growth rate.”
It seems Waxman will have his hands full for the foreseeable future – not just in his role at CoolIT but also at home in the Pacific Northwest, where he is father to six children in his blended family.
While he’s the big boss at work, Waxman joked that in his house he’s more of a bus driver and short order cook. And in the rare spare time he has, Waxman said he enjoys golfing and hiking. The latter helps keep him grounded and the views along trails around Portland and Seattle still take his breath away, he added.
Waxman recalled that the path to his current role has been a winding one, stating he originally dreamed of working on electric vehicles. He studied as a mechanical and industrial engineer for his degrees, but Waxman said his first job was actually as a factory manager in Kentucky.
From there he found his way to Intel, around the time it launched the first 64-bit processor. “That’s what kind of got me on this path of data centers,” he said.
Waxman worked at Intel from 1997 to 2020, before accepting a gig as President at Fluke Corporation in 2021.
During his time at Intel, Waxman said he learned a lot about being bold and relentless from the company’s former CEO Andrew Grove. He also called out Diane Bryant, the former head of Intel’s Data Center group, for modeling how team management and motivational skills. At Fluke, Waxman said former President Jim Lico taught him “discipline, logical thought and how to ask the right question.”
Now in the hot seat, Waxman said his core principles from hard earned lessons are “the importance of simplicity and laser focus.” That said, nothing trumps the people.
“If you can’t keep them safe and do well by them, there’s nothing,” he concluded.