Oct 17 (Reuters) - Schneider Electric will pay

about $850 million for a controlling stake in Motivair Corp, a

specialist in liquid cooling for high-performance computing, the

French firm said on Thursday, beefing up offerings for

rapidly-growing data centres.

The all-cash deal, expected to close in the coming quarters,

will give Schneider a stake of 75% in U.S.-based Motivair, with

plans to buy the rest by 2028.

The deal strengthens Schneider's offering of direct-to-chip

liquid cooling and high-capacity thermal systems, the company

said in a statement.

The boom in use of generative-AI and large language models

such as Chat-GPT calls for more efficient cooling solutions in

data centres, particularly liquid cooling as traditional air

cooling cannot disperse the greater heat, the company added.

Motivair, based in Buffalo in New York state, makes units

that pump the coolant at very high pressure close to the chips,

cooling servers in an efficient way, said Peter Herweck,

Schneider's chief executive.

The data centre and networks market accounted for 21% of

Schneider's 2023 orders, or about 8 billion euros ($8.7

billion)worth of sales, Herweck added, and is seeing double

digit growth this year.

In the U.S. market, data centre power use is expected to

roughly triple between 2023 and 2030, requiring about 47

gigawatts of new generation capacity, Goldman Sachs estimates.

The U.S. is the largest market but demand for data centres

is growing elsewhere too.

Shares in Schneider are up 31% this year, helped by its

strong market position.

Herweck said Schneider was not actively looking at further

deals for its data centre offering.

"(Movair) has really comprehensively, for the moment,

completed our portfolio," he said, adding that it could still

consider opportunities that arose.

"We continue to be agile and we have a strong balance

sheet," he said.

Schneider Electric ended without agreement talks this year

for a potential deal with U.S. engineering software maker

Bentley Systems.

($1=0.9213 euros)