TL;DR · 30-second read

The Short Version

Data centers, the buildings full of computers behind every app and website, get very hot. Giant cooling machines called chillers keep them running.

Swedish manufacturer SKF makes parts that let the spinning heart of those machines float on magnets, with no oil and no rubbing. It says this design can cut energy use by up to 30 to 40 percent compared with older designs.

The newer twist: SKF redesigned the part so factories can build it faster, because data center demand for these machines is growing.

SKF, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based bearing maker, announced on October 7, 2026 that it will launch its new MBx active magnetic bearing series for high-speed chillers at Chillventa 2026, the refrigeration and heat-pump trade fair in Nuremberg, Germany, running October 13–15. SKF says the MBx is designed to optimize cost while maintaining performance, using automatic winding and a modular design that enables semi-automated production, faster assembly, shorter lead times and more production capacity for its high-speed motors to meet growing demand from the data center chiller market.

SKF will also show its new CeraDrive hybrid ceramic bearings and a new Extreme super-precision bearing platform rated for speeds up to 120,000 rpm. The company says its broader magnetic-bearing drive offering delivers energy efficiency improvements of up to 30–40% compared with conventional technologies.

Executive Summary

SKF is pitching three bearing technologies at compressor and chiller manufacturers, the companies that build the large cooling machines used in data centers and heat pumps. The headline product is MBx, a new active magnetic bearing, meaning a system that holds a spinning shaft in place with controlled magnetic fields so it never touches a surface and needs no lubricating oil.

What stands out is how SKF describes the MBx’s purpose. Its stated innovations are manufacturing ones: automatic winding, a modular design, semi-automated production and faster assembly, aimed explicitly at reducing lead times and expanding capacity for the data center chiller market. The efficiency figure in the release, up to 30–40%, describes SKF’s integrated oil-free drive offering against unspecified conventional technologies rather than a new gain from MBx itself.

For data center operators and the chiller makers that supply them, that framing matters. It suggests SKF sees the near-term opportunity in its customers’ ability to get enough oil-free drivetrains, quickly and at the right cost, not only in squeezing out further efficiency.

The New Part Is a Manufacturing Story

Read closely, the MBx announcement is less about a performance breakthrough than about production. SKF says the bearing is “designed to optimize cost while maintaining performance” and lists its innovations as automatic winding (machine-wound electromagnet coils rather than more labour-intensive methods) and a modular design that enables semi-automated production and faster assembly. The company states the purpose directly: to help reduce lead times and expand production capacity of SKF high-speed motors “to meet growing demand from the data center chiller market.”

That is a meaningful signal about where SKF thinks friction lies in this market, in the commercial sense rather than the mechanical one. A centrifugal chiller, the type of large cooling machine common in big data center plants, is built around its compressor, and an oil-free compressor is built around its motor and bearing system. If that drivetrain is slow to source or expensive to produce, it constrains how many oil-free chillers a manufacturer can ship. And a data center cannot bring capacity online without the cooling plant to support it. SKF has not said its lead times are currently a problem for customers, but it has chosen to make shortening them the headline benefit of its new product.

The people most directly affected are chiller and compressor manufacturers deciding whose magnetic-bearing systems to design around. Downstream, data center developers and their engineering contractors care about two outcomes: whether oil-free chillers become cheaper relative to conventional units, and whether delivery schedules for cooling equipment get shorter. SKF’s release claims progress on the inputs to both, without yet quantifying either.

Why Oil-Free Matters in a Data Center Chiller

Conventional compressor bearings are rolling or sliding contacts that need oil, and that oil has to be pumped, filtered, monitored and eventually replaced. In a refrigeration circuit, oil can also migrate into heat exchangers, where it can degrade heat transfer. Magnetic bearings remove the contact and the oil entirely: the shaft is levitated, sensors track its position thousands of times a second, and a digital controller adjusts the magnetic fields to keep it centred.

SKF argues this reduces wear, maintenance and unplanned downtime, and that is the point that resonates with data center operators. Cooling is one of the few systems whose failure can force IT equipment to throttle or shut down, so operators design chiller plants with redundancy and treat maintenance windows carefully. Fewer wearing parts and no oil system mean fewer things that can fail and fewer reasons to take a unit offline.

SKF positions itself as a full-stack supplier here: high-speed motors levitated on magnetic bearings, the bearings themselves, digital controllers, variable-speed drives (electronics that let the compressor run at whatever speed the cooling load requires), condition monitoring and engineering services. For a chiller maker, buying an integrated drivetrain can shorten its own development time; the trade-off is deeper dependence on a single supplier.

Reading the 30–40% Efficiency Claim

The release’s most quotable number is that SKF’s integrated magnetic-bearing offering delivers “energy efficiency improvements of up to 30–40% compared with conventional technologies.” Two qualifiers matter. “Up to” marks the top of a range, not a typical result. And the baseline, “conventional technologies,” is not defined: the gain from replacing an older fixed-speed, oil-lubricated compressor would be expected to be larger than the gain over a modern variable-speed unit.

Efficiency at the chiller also does not translate one-for-one into data center energy savings. Chillers are one component of a cooling plant that includes pumps, cooling towers, air handlers and, in many climates, free-cooling modes that bypass the compressor for part of the year. The real-world benefit depends on the site’s climate, load profile and plant design.

SKF’s broader framing, that around 20 percent of the world’s energy consumption goes to overcoming friction, is a company claim offered as context for its business rather than a specific figure for cooling. It is a reasonable reminder that rotating machinery is everywhere in infrastructure, but it should not be read as an estimate of savings available in data centers.

Ceramics and Extreme Speeds Fill Out the Portfolio

SKF is not betting only on magnetic levitation. It will also show hybrid ceramic bearings, including a new optimized CeraDrive series, for chillers, heat pumps, steam compressors, motors, fans and pumps. Ceramic rolling elements are electrically insulating, which matters in motors fed by variable-speed drives, where stray electrical currents can pass through and pit conventional steel bearings. SKF also says the ceramics support high-speed operation when lubrication conditions are demanding.

The new Extreme super-precision platform targets high-speed centrifugal compressors in chillers, heat pumps and mechanical vapour recompression systems (which compress steam to reuse its heat). SKF quotes capabilities of up to 120,000 rpm, a speed factor of 2.4 million ndm (a bearing-industry measure combining diameter and rotation speed), ring contact pressure up to 2.8 GPa and turbine-side temperatures up to 200°C.

Offering both magnetic and advanced rolling-element bearings lets SKF serve compressor designers whichever architecture they choose, from premium oil-free machines to cost-sensitive designs that still need high speed. Commercially, that hedges SKF against any single design winning out across the cooling market.

Background

SKF is a Gothenburg-based industrial group known primarily for bearings, the components that let shafts rotate smoothly in everything from cars to factory machinery. It describes its core business as reducing friction in rotating systems and claims that around 20 percent of the world’s energy consumption goes to overcoming friction. Beyond conventional bearings, SKF sells high-speed motors levitated on magnetic bearings, active magnetic bearings, digital controllers, variable-speed drives, condition monitoring and engineering services.

Data center growth has turned cooling into a strategic concern for operators. SKF notes that as data center capacity expands, cooling places increasing demands on energy systems, pushing chiller and compressor makers to deliver more cooling capacity while limiting energy use, maintenance and complexity. Oil-free centrifugal compressors built on magnetic bearings are one way manufacturers have addressed that, and suppliers of their drivetrains, including SKF, are now competing on cost and production capacity as well as performance.

Sources

Source: SKF to showcase new technologies for energy-efficient and reliable cooling at Chillventa 2026, SKF’s announcement of its MBx magnetic bearing series, CeraDrive hybrid ceramic bearings and Extreme super-precision bearing platform, distributed via PR Newswire on October 7, 2026.