Telehouse Deploys Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling in Toronto Data Centers, Taps Waste Heat for District Heating
May 13, 2026
Telehouse Deploys Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling in Toronto Data Centers, Taps Waste Heat for District Heating
Telehouse Canada, a subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications giant KDDI, has introduced direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology at its downtown Toronto data center facilities, marking a significant step in high-density infrastructure deployment within Canadian carrier hotels. The announcement, made this week, comes as demand for AI workloads continues to strain traditional air-cooled data center designs, pushing operators toward more efficient thermal management solutions.
The deployment supports rack densities of up to 120kW, enabling organizations to run advanced AI and high-performance computing workloads. While full technical details of the installation have not been disclosed, Telehouse described the initiative as the first of its kind in Canadian carrier hotel environments. “As demand for AI continues to grow, organizations need data center infrastructure that can support increasingly complex workloads at scale,” said Atsushi Kubo, president and CEO of Telehouse Canada. “This upgrade strengthens our ability to meet those needs while continuing to deliver the performance and reliability our customers expect.”
In a notable sustainability move, the excess heat captured from the liquid-cooled equipment will be transferred to Enwave’s closed-loop district energy system. Through a fully isolated process, the waste heat will be repurposed to help heat Toronto’s municipal drinking water, integrating the data center into the city’s broader energy ecosystem. This approach aligns with growing industry trends toward waste heat reuse, particularly in urban data center environments.
Telehouse, established in 1988 and owned by KDDI, operates in 15 cities globally, including the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and Japan. The company entered the Canadian market in 2024 after acquiring three data centers in Toronto from Allied Properties REIT. The three facilities—151 Front St. West, 250 Front St. West, and 905 King St.—offer a combined 356,000 square feet of IT space and 40MW of capacity. Customers across these sites include major industry players such as Digital Realty, Equinix, and Cologix.
The 151 and 250 Front St. data centers are already cooled primarily through Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling System, which harnesses the cold temperature at the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool nearly 190 buildings in the area, including hospitals, educational campuses, and other data centers. The addition of liquid cooling at these sites further diversifies Telehouse’s thermal management capabilities and positions the company to meet the escalating power density requirements of next-generation AI infrastructure. This development also underscores a broader industry shift: as AI adoption accelerates, data center operators are increasingly turning to liquid cooling and waste heat recovery to balance performance demands with environmental responsibility.
Source: datacenterdynamics
