In a concrete building known as "the bunker," researchers at PPG, a $24 billion company that makes paints, aimed torches at steel panels covered in a gray coating. Paul Fenton, a PPG chemist and engineer, held up one panel after it had been blasted with flames. The paint had swelled from a millimeter thick into a black crust nearly 10 millimeters tall, meaning the coating had done its job by keeping fire from reaching and softening the underlying steel. "Just like a toasted marshmallow likes to expand," said Mr. Fenton. The trapped air, he said, "keeps everything cold."
The paint Mr. Fenton showed off, called Steelguard 951, has become one of PPG's flagship products for data centers, and its sales have boomed. As Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other tech giants have raced to build the computing sites powering the artificial intelligence frenzy, PPG's business has soared. The Pittsburgh company said it expected its paint sales for data centers to triple this year from last year. That would far outpace the company as a whole, whose total sales grew 7 percent to $4.5 billion in the most recent quarter. "I've never seen a boom as big as this," said Jenn Solcz, PPG's vice president of protective and marine coatings for the Americas.
The A.I. surge, which has minted fortunes for chipmakers like Nvidia and A.I. labs like Open AI and Anthropic, has now reached ordinary goods. As data centers sprout everywhere, they are boosting sales of gravel, wires and cables as well as paint. In the paint industry, the effect has been acute. Sherwin-Williams, PPG's biggest rival, said its paints go into nearly every corner of data centers, from steel beams to server racks. In July, Heidi Petz, Sherwin-Williams's chief executive, said sales in its protective and marine business had risen by a midteens percentage from a year earlier. "Speed matters," Ms. Petz said.
Matthew Giddings of the commercial real estate firm JLL said paint is particularly important at data centers because it helps with fireproofing in electrical rooms and reduces static electricity. Coatings can total $3 million to $8 million for a single building, though that is a sliver of construction costs. The paints are not glamorous, however. Most are simply different shades of gray. Data centers are mostly filled with machines, not people, Ms. Solcz said, so aesthetics are "not really top of mind" for customers.
PPG was founded in 1883 as the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company and later grew into one of the world's biggest paint companies. In 2024, it sold its U.S. and Canadian paint-store business, including Glidden, and now mostly serves other businesses, coating cars, airplanes and beverage cans.
Quelle: New York Times Top Stories · Zusammengefasst von HeadlinesBriefing