The Overlooked AI Data Center Opportunity: Packaging & Logistics

Everyone is talking about the AI data center boom. Almost nobody is talking about the packaging.

Matt Saunders, December 4, 2025

As a VC investing in packaging and supply chain technologies, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the “unsexy” infrastructure behind the AI boom and data center buildout.

One of the most overlooked pieces: the packaging that gets ultra-expensive hardware safely into data centers, again and again, for years.

A few numbers to frame the scale of what’s happening:

The global data center market is already in the mid-hundreds of billions of dollars today and is projected to roughly double by 2030.
McKinsey estimates that keeping up with AI and compute demand could require about $6.7 trillion in data center investment by 2030, with capacity roughly tripling over the decade.
One recent estimate has the big cloud players alone on track to spend ~$400–440B on infrastructure this year.
Within that, the data center server market is already around $80B annually and heading toward ~$150B+ over the next decade.

Inside of that spend is millions of hardware components. Every one of those GPUs, racks, networking systems, and power modules arrives at a loading dock inside some kind of packaging.

If you read one thing, let it be this:

The investment opportunity in

no-fail packaging for data center components,

in circularity around hardware recycling, and

in reusable installation systems

is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity – and it will long outlast the current data center boom given the useful life of the hardware components.

Packaging in data centers has a no-fail mission

For a lot of fast-moving consumer goods, packaging failure is annoying. For data centers, packaging failure is catastrophic.

We’re talking about single racks or crates that can easily contain hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of hardware, plus the implied cost of downtime or delayed go-live. The job isn’t just “protect against drops.” It’s:

Survive multi-leg global freight, often under time pressure
Maintain ESD protection and precise environmental tolerances
Interface cleanly with material-handling systems at both the integrator and the data center
Be traceable for warranty, compliance, and chain-of-custody purposes

This is a mission-critical reliability problem disguised as a wooden crate or corrugated box.

It’s not a one-time spike. It’s a long tail.

The obvious story is the front-loaded buildout: new campuses, greenfield sites, “AI regions” springing up around the world.

But data centers are not set-and-forget assets. They are constantly:

Refreshing servers on 3–5 year cycles
Adding new GPU nodes and high-density racks
Swapping out storage, networking, and power systems

That means a recurring, long-tail flow of high-value hardware into these facilities. If you believe that data center server and accelerator spend will keep compounding, then packaging for this vertical is not a one-off capex play – it’s a durable, growing annuity of shipments.

Even with conservative assumptions – say packaging is only 1–2% of the value of shipped hardware – you quickly end up with a multi-billion-dollar annual packaging market tied specifically to data center infrastructure. And that’s before you factor in specialized solutions for AI-class GPUs and ultra-dense systems.

Beyond the box: closed loops and installation efficiency

The really interesting opportunity, in my view, isn’t just better foam or heavier-duty crates.

It’s systems thinking across the entire data center hardware lifecycle:

Closed-loop packaging pools
Reusable crates, pallets, and dunnage that circulate between OEMs, integrators, and data centers – tracked, refurbished, and redeployed instead of scrapped.
Kitted installation
Packaging designed so that what leaves the dock matches how technicians actually install hardware: pre-labeled, sequenced, and oriented for minimal touch and minimal time in the cold aisle.
Reverse logistics and decommissioning
When servers are retired or GPUs are redeployed, the packaging problem runs in reverse. Safe, efficient outbound flows are just as critical as inbound.
Software and automation as the glue
None of this scales on spreadsheets. There’s room for:
- Software layers that track durable packaging assets like a fleet
- Digital twins of data center installs, tied back to packaging configurations
- Integrated workflows with warehouse automation, robotics, and yard management

I think about it as “packaging as part of the installation stack” rather than a cost line item on a BOM. The winners here will look as much like supply chain and data infrastructure companies as “packaging” companies.

Where this goes next

If you zoom out, the AI compute race is effectively a giant, multi-trillion-dollar logistics project. Hardware needs to move from fabs and contract manufacturers to integrators to data centers on every continent, reliably and repeatably, for decades.

That creates a quiet but very real opportunity:

For founders building smarter, safer packaging systems tailored to high-value IT hardware
For software and automation teams stitching together closed loops across OEMs, 3PLs, and operators
For data center operators and hyperscalers who want to reduce waste, shrink install timelines, and derisk their supply chains

If you’re working on packaging, software, or automation that touches the data center supply chain, NEV would love to connect with you and learn what you’re seeing on the ground.

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