$2 billion financing secured to complete Novva Data Centers’ SLC facility

West Jordan-based Novva Data Centers has announced that it, along with its development partner, CIM Group, a Los Angeles real estate investment trust, have secured financing for the buildout of Novva’s Utah data center. The $2 billion financing package for the 175-megawatt installation will be funded by J.P. Morgan and Starwood Property Trust of Greenwich, Connecticut.

“This significant financing is further validation of the potential we saw in Novva’s proprietary data center design and its experienced and forward-thinking management team when we invested in the company five years ago,” said Avi Shemesh, co-founder and principal at CIM Group. “As demand for AI and data center capacity grows, we believe Novva continues to be strongly positioned as one of the most innovative and fastest-growing data center companies in the U.S. developing sustainable, highly efficient data centers at low cost.”

The new financing will allow Novva to complete the second and third phases of construction of its 100-acre data center campus located in West Jordan. Phase 2 of the project began construction in December 2023 and will feature the campus’s second 318,000-square-foot data center, which will have the capacity to produce 72 megawatts of IT load and is expected to be fully complete by 2026. Phase 3 started construction in January 2024 and will also feature a 318,000-square-foot data center with a 72-megawat capacity and is expected to be complete in 2026.

When completed, the Salt Lake City data center campus will span a total of 1 million square feet and feature 175 megawatts of capacity, making it one of the largest direct-to-chip cooled AI data centers in the world. The first phase of the campus began operations in 2023 and has become well-known for its design and engineering aspects, including the ability to operate without water year-round and cool with ambient air. The campus was fully leased in 2023 to a global tech company.

“Our Salt Lake City center is the first facility where we were able to fully showcase Novva’s vision for future-proof data center facilities that put sustainability, innovative technology and client needs first, and we’re proud to continue that legacy with this second and third phase of construction,” said Novva CEO Wes Swenson.

In addition to its Salt Lake City campus, Novva also operates data centers in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Las Vegas, and is in the process of building data centers in Reno, Nevada; San Francisco; and Mesa, Arizona. Novva employs renewable energy, high-density capacity, water-free cooling and innovative technologies like AI-powered robotic dogs for security and infrastructure monitoring in all its data centers. It has secured leases from top hyperscale AI and tech companies.