Air cooling did not fail gradually. It hit a wall: above roughly 50 kW per rack, no realistic airflow keeps components in spec without absurd fan power.
Retrofit is harder than greenfield
A new facility designs for liquid from the floor slab up. An existing one has to find pumping capacity, leak detection, service clearance and a maintenance crew that has never done this.
The efficiency gain is real and it is not the main driver. Operators are moving because the hardware they want to buy will not run any other way.
Cooling used to be a facilities line item. It is now a procurement constraint.
Water use is the reasonable objection, and closed-loop designs answer most of it — but only if the design is actually closed-loop, which some are not.
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