Carrier Global is the world's largest HVAC and refrigeration equipment manufacturer by revenue, tracing its lineage to Willis Carrier's invention of modern air conditioning in July 1902. The company makes heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration systems for residential, commercial, and industrial customers under the Carrier brand, and heat pumps and heating systems in Europe under the Viessmann brand. It employs roughly 53,000 people across more than 160 countries.
Carrier spent most of its history inside United Technologies Corporation, which acquired it in 1979. UTC spun Carrier off as a standalone public company in April 2020 alongside Otis Elevator, distributing shares to UTC stockholders. In its first five years as an independent company, Carrier executed a complete portfolio overhaul: it shed its Fire & Security and Commercial Refrigeration businesses for more than $10 billion in proceeds and used that capital to acquire Viessmann Climate Solutions for €12 billion, transforming itself from a diversified industrial conglomerate into a pure-play climate equipment and services company.
In April 2023, Carrier announced the transformation simultaneously: it would acquire Viessmann Climate Solutions from Germany's Viessmann Group and divest its Fire & Security and Commercial Refrigeration segments. The logic was to concentrate the portfolio on the highest-growth climate markets — heat pumps and building electrification in Europe, commercial HVAC in North America and Asia, and data center cooling globally — while exiting businesses where Carrier held weaker competitive positions.
The divestitures closed across 2024. The Commercial & Residential Fire segment went to Lone Star Funds for approximately $3 billion. The Global Access Solutions security business was sold to Honeywell. Commercial Refrigeration went to Haier for $775 million (enterprise value). Combined with the Industrial Fire divestiture, Carrier generated more than $10 billion in proceeds by end of 2024.
The Viessmann acquisition closed January 2, 2024. Viessmann Climate Solutions is Germany's leading heat pump, gas boiler, and home energy systems company, with roughly 70% of its revenue coming from heat pumps, solar PV, batteries, and associated services. The acquisition gave Carrier a dominant position in the European residential heat pump market at the moment European governments are mandating the phase-out of fossil fuel heating systems.
The largest segment covers residential and commercial HVAC across North and South America under the Carrier brand. Residential HVAC (split systems, heat pumps, furnaces, and related equipment sold through contractors and distributors) has faced headwinds from housing market softness and channel destocking, but commercial HVAC — particularly large chillers, rooftop units, and precision cooling for commercial buildings and data centers — has grown at a double-digit rate for five consecutive years. Q4 2025 commercial HVAC orders were up nearly 50%, driven by data center wins.
This segment is largely the Viessmann business, plus Carrier's pre-existing European commercial HVAC operations. Viessmann's residential heat pump and home energy systems are the segment's growth engine, though the business has faced near-term headwinds from a slowdown in European residential heat pump demand as installation subsidies in Germany were cut in late 2023 and consumer confidence softened. The segment is viewed as a long-cycle growth position: European building decarbonization mandates require heating system replacements at scale over the next two decades, and Viessmann holds the leading brand in this market.
Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa covers commercial and residential HVAC across high-growth emerging markets. The Transportation segment is Carrier Transicold, which makes refrigeration systems for trucks, trailers, and shipping containers — a business Carrier retained from the Fire & Security divestitures because it is mechanically adjacent to HVAC and carries strong aftermarket economics. Transportation revenue fell 17% in FY2025 as fleet customers deferred equipment purchases.
AI GPU clusters generate significantly more heat per rack than conventional server infrastructure, and the cooling systems designed for prior generations of data centers are inadequate at the power densities involved. Carrier has invested in high-capacity chillers and liquid cooling infrastructure — direct liquid cooling loops, rear-door heat exchangers, and immersion cooling systems — that can handle the thermal loads of modern GPU-dense racks.
Carrier targeted approximately $1 billion in data center revenue for 2025 and planned to double data center deployments in 2026. Q4 2025 data center orders were described in the earnings call as up roughly 400% year over year, and commercial HVAC orders broadly were up nearly 50% in the quarter. The company's aftermarket business — service contracts, parts, and controls for installed equipment — has grown at double-digit rates for five consecutive years and is a particularly attractive attachment on data center installations given the criticality of uptime.
FY2025 net sales were $21.75 billion, down 3% reported and 1% organically from 2024. The reported decline reflects the Riello divestiture (a European boiler brand sold as part of the portfolio cleanup) and currency effects; underlying demand in commercial HVAC offset weakness in residential and transportation. Adjusted operating margin was 15.1% and adjusted EPS was $2.59. Free cash flow was $2.12 billion.
Carrier returned approximately $3.7 billion to shareholders in FY2025: roughly $0.8 billion in dividends and $2.9 billion in share repurchases. The company has used divestiture proceeds primarily for buybacks, reducing its share count significantly since 2023. The 2026 guidance calls for approximately $22 billion in sales (flat to low-single-digit organic growth), adjusted operating profit of approximately $3.4 billion, adjusted EPS of approximately $2.80, and free cash flow of approximately $2 billion. An additional $1.5 billion of share repurchases is planned in 2026. A roughly $350 million sales headwind from the Riello divestiture is embedded in the 2026 outlook.
Primary competitors are Trane Technologies (formerly Ingersoll Rand's climate business), Johnson Controls, Daikin, and Lennox International. Carrier and Trane are the two largest commercial HVAC companies in North America; Viessmann and Bosch Thermotechnik are the two largest residential heat pump brands in Germany.