Public backlash against artificial intelligence data centers is real, but investors still like it when companies gain a toehold in the booming business.

The latest example comes from SLB, the oilfield services provider formerly known as Schlumberger whose stock jumped 2.5% on Monday after announcing its acquisition of thermal management company Kelvion. The deal is designed to build out SLB's data center solutions business.

The news follows deals SLB announced with Nvidia in March and Meta in its second quarter earnings release last month. SLB stock rose 11% after disclosing the Meta deal and is up more than 60% over the past year.

Now it's acquiring privately held Kelvion from funds managed by Apollo Global Management, the majority owner, and funds advised by Triton Partners, which has a minority interest, for $3.4 billion in cash. It's also taking on $700 million in debt.

"This transaction accelerates our ambition to become an industrial technology partner to the data center industry and help customers address the growing infrastructure complexity required to scale AI," SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch said in making the announcement.

The company, whose stock was a Barron's pick in May, is carving out its data center business by focusing on cooling systems that keep chips and servers from overheating, both by adapting pre-existing technology from its oilfield business and acquiring new capabilities from companies like Kelvion, which specializes in cooling hardware.

Le Peuch says the acquisition will more than double SLB's revenue opportunity per gigawatt of delivered capacity. The company also expects the deal to generate more than $2 billion in data center revenue and $300 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization on a pro forma basis in 2026.

To be clear, SLB's AI data center business is just a tiny part of its business, comprising just 2% of the $8.9 billion in revenue it reported in the second quarter. But it's growing fast, rising 33% over the first quarter and 80% from a year ago.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the growing data center backlash Monday, writing on Truth Social that they will make communities "successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place."

"let Data Reign," he added.