There is a moment when a company’s transformation stops being a story and starts being a scoreboard. For Carrier Global (NYSE:CARR), that moment may have arrived in Q4 2025.
On the company’s February earnings call, CEO David Gitlin didn’t bury the lead. “Our data center orders in North America were up 400% in the fourth quarter.” That’s a business being reshaped by the AI infrastructure boom in real time.
The Data Center Engine
Carrier’s commercial HVAC business now represents 40% of its portfolio, and it has become the company’s clearest growth engine. Gitlin laid out the trajectory plainly: “Our commercial HVAC business, and our aftermarket business both have grown double digits for five years in a row, and we’re going to grow double digits again this year.”
That kind of consistency is rare in industrials. Even rarer is the catalyst behind it. Hyperscalers and colocation operators are racing to build AI compute capacity, and every rack of GPUs needs cooling. Carrier has positioned itself directly in that path.
Gitlin confirmed the company is working closely with the industry’s biggest names. “We actually have been very, very fortunate to work very closely with NVIDIA. Our team was meeting with NVIDIA. We’ve been working together on a number of climate optimized reference designs and thinking very closely about the chilling requirements for their future chip, the Vera Rubin.”
The data center business reached approximately $1 billion in revenue in 2025, up from near-zero at spin. Carrier is guiding for that to reach approximately $1.5 billion in 2026, with data center orders expected to be up about 50% for the year. Q1 order trends are expected to remain strong, with backlog continuing to build.
Carrier also introduced its AquaEdge 30CF air-cooled centrifugal chiller in late February, designed specifically for mission-critical data center environments, capable of operating across extreme temperatures and restoring full cooling capacity within minutes of a power interruption.
The Other Side of the Ledger
The residential business is a real drag. Climate Solutions Americas revenue fell 17% year over year, with residential volumes down 38%. That’s the weight Carrier is carrying while its commercial side surges.
Full-year 2026 guidance calls for approximately $22 billion in sales and adjusted EPS of approximately $2.80. The analyst community remains constructive, with an average price target of $70.60 to $70.82 against a current price of $61.17.
The residential headwinds are real, but Carrier’s commercial HVAC segment has posted measurable growth driven by AI infrastructure demand. If the data center buildout continues at its current pace — prediction markets currently price a regulatory moratorium at only 33.5% probability — the commercial HVAC segment may increasingly represent a larger share of overall revenue.
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