Flex agrees $4.4bn EPC Power acquisition

Flex has agreed to acquire EPC Power in a $4.4 billion transaction, adding high-power conversion equipment to a business increasingly focused on the electrical infrastructure needed by AI data centres.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary conditions. EPC Power will join Flex’s Cloud and Power Infrastructure segment, which Flex plans to separate into an independent publicly traded company in the first quarter of 2027.

Founded in 2010 and based in California, EPC Power develops power-conversion systems for data centres, renewable generation, storage, and grid applications. Flex says its technology is being engineered for next-generation 800VDC data centre architectures, including rectifiers, DC-to-DC conversion, and planned solid-state transformer products.

The acquisition is therefore less about adding another server component than moving deeper into the electrical path between the grid and the rack. As AI systems push rack power upwards, operators are reassessing how many conversion stages are needed between utility supply and the processors themselves.

Higher-voltage direct-current distribution is one proposed response. Carrying power at a higher voltage can reduce current for a given power level and can therefore reduce some of the conductor size and conversion losses associated with very high rack densities. The architecture still has to satisfy protection, maintainability, redundancy, safety, and compatibility requirements across the wider facility.

EPC Power’s M System uses silicon-carbide power electronics and a modular design intended for both data centre and grid applications. The company describes configurations with multiple independent DC inputs and efficiency above 99% under specified operating conditions, alongside grid-forming controls intended to help manage rapidly changing loads.

Load volatility is becoming a more prominent electrical issue as large accelerator clusters move quickly between operating states. A data centre may have a stable contracted grid connection while the IT load inside it changes over much shorter timescales. Power-conversion equipment, energy storage, controls, and the upstream network all have to manage those changes without compromising power quality or resilience.

Flex says EPC has more than 15GW of equipment deployed across 62 countries and expects US manufacturing capacity to exceed 30GW in 2027. It forecasts approximately $800 million of EPC revenue in 2026, with around 40% organic growth and an EBITDA margin of about 30% in 2027.

Those figures help explain the $4.4 billion price: Flex is buying both technology and manufacturing capacity at a point when data centre electrical equipment has become one of the tighter parts of the build programme. Grid connections may dominate early site selection, but transformers, switchgear, UPS systems, busways, conversion equipment, and rack power all have to be procured before contracted megawatts become usable compute.

The deal also continues the consolidation of suppliers around larger integrated data centre platforms. Bringing EPC inside Flex gives the manufacturer more control over the conversion layer while it already supplies other parts of the infrastructure and hardware chain.

That integration does not make 800VDC a settled industry standard. Operators still have to compare architectures against installed equipment, redundancy philosophy, maintenance practice, capital cost, efficiency, and the requirements of successive accelerator generations.

What the acquisition does establish is the amount of capital now being attached to those choices. At $4.4 billion, power conversion is no longer a peripheral component discussion. It has become part of the commercial competition over who controls the electrical architecture of the next generation of high-density data centres.