Hundreds of Calgary-based employees at CoolIT Systems are set to receive substantial cash payouts following the company’s USD $4.75 billion acquisition by Ecolab, marking one of the most significant employee liquidity events in the city’s tech sector.
Under a broad-based ownership program introduced when private equity firm KKR acquired CoolIT in 2023, all 650 employees became shareholders in the business. With the sale, payouts are expected to range from approximately one year of annual salary to more than eight years’ worth of pay, alongside access to financial coaching and tax preparation support.
The outcome represents a rare and meaningful wealth creation moment for Calgary’s tech workforce, reinforcing the impact of equity participation in scaling high-growth companies.
KKR announced this week that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell CoolIT, a global leader in liquid cooling for data centres, to Ecolab in a transaction valued at $4.75 billion. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
Founded in Calgary, CoolIT has spent more than 25 years developing advanced liquid cooling technologies that are increasingly essential to modern data centre infrastructure. As artificial intelligence drives a surge in high-density computing, traditional air-cooled systems are struggling to keep pace, with cooling accounting for up to half of a facility’s energy use. CoolIT’s liquid cooling systems can reduce cooling energy consumption by 30% to 40% while also lowering water usage through closed-loop designs.
Today, the company’s technology is deployed across more than 300 data centres globally, supporting hyperscalers and enterprise operators seeking to scale AI workloads efficiently. In 2025 alone, CoolIT’s solutions delivered an estimated 2.18 billion kWh in energy savings—enough to power roughly 200,000 homes for a year.
The transaction also represents a remarkable return for KKR, generating approximately 15 times its original equity investment in just over two years. Since acquiring the company, the firm supported rapid expansion across the business, including doubling CoolIT’s workforce, growing its manufacturing footprint to more than 300,000 square feet, and increasing production capacity significantly.
Leadership continuity is expected following the acquisition, with CEO Jason Waxman and the existing management team set to continue operating the business under the CoolIT name as part of Ecolab.
Beyond the headline valuation, the broader significance of the deal may lie in its local impact. Large-scale employee payouts of this nature often seed the next generation of founders, operators, and angel investors—recycling capital and experience back into the ecosystem.
For Calgary, the CoolIT exit underscores the city’s growing role in the global AI infrastructure stack. As demand for compute accelerates, so too does the need for efficient, scalable cooling solutions—and companies like CoolIT are increasingly central to that equation.
This milestone not only highlights the strength of Calgary-built technology on the global stage, but also demonstrates how value creation, when broadly shared, can reshape a local innovation economy.
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