AHEAD opens new facility in Libertyville

AHEAD, a leading provider of advanced enterprise AI infrastructure, recently opened a new air- and liquid-cooled rack integration facility at its Libertyville campus.

Purpose-built for high-density AI and high-performance computing workloads, the facility helps enterprises move from AI strategy to operational reality by enabling them to build, validate and deploy production-ready infrastructure faster and with less risk, according to a company news release.

“This facility is about helping our clients move from AI strategy to AI execution,” said Dan Adamany, CEO and founder of AHEAD. “The technology is powerful, but deploying it at scale is where many enterprises stall. We built this facility to help clients turn AI plans into production-ready infrastructure faster, with greater confidence and less risk.”

The new building expands AHEAD’s Libertyville campus to more than 350,000 square feet dedicated to server and rack integration, warehousing, and global logistics. At the heart of the facility is a scalable 10 megawatt integration environment built to support increasingly dense AI infrastructure, with individual racks already exceeding 100 kilowatt and quickly advancing toward 250 kilowatt and beyond. Repurposed from a former plastic injection molding facility, the site increases AHEAD’s integration capacity without requiring new construction or additional power, the release said.

Unlike traditional deployment models where hardware arrives unconfigured and must be assembled on-site, the facility enables full rack-scale integration prior to delivery. Systems are installed, cabled, configured, and rigorously tested before shipping, reducing client deployment timelines from months to weeks, the release said.

The facility also supports a range of cooling approaches, including air cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, and single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling. By transferring heat directly from high-powered components to liquid coolant, these systems enable more efficient and reliable operation of next-generation infrastructure. The facility is designed with a closed-loop cooling approach and engineered to operate within local sound requirements.

The site also features an expanded Innovation Lab with deployment-grade digital twins built on NVIDIA Omniverse, allowing clients to benchmark and optimize infrastructure across compute, storage, networking and AI workloads. The lab is designed as a real-world proving ground where organizations can design, build, test, and validate next-generation infrastructure before deploying it in their own environments.

“The biggest bottleneck in enterprise AI today isn't the model — it's the six months of infrastructure chaos that happens before it ever runs,” said Eric Kaplan, CTO of AHEAD. “We built this facility so that our clients can find out what breaks in our building, not theirs. That’s how organizations get from pilot to production faster, and without a lengthy trial and error phase.”

Beyond its technical capabilities, the facility reinforces Libertyville’s role as a growing hub for advanced technology and engineering.

“Libertyville has been a strong partner for AHEAD, and this facility reflects the talent, infrastructure and community we’ve found here,” Adamany said. “This is a facility built in Libertyville to serve enterprises everywhere.”