DataVita Secures £300M for Data Centre in Scotland’s AI Growth Zone

DataVita has secured a c.£300 million debt facility to expand and build two data centres in the North Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone, unlocked by a £202 million financial guarantee from the National Wealth Fund.

The facility has been raised with participation from a syndicate of lenders including ING (acting as advisor and coordinator), ABN AMRO, Santander (acting as agent), the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services through Siemens Bank.

The National Wealth Fund’s guarantee is provided against the £252.5m of lending delivered by ING, ABN AMRO and Santander equating to 80% of this tranche. The remaining portion provided by SNIB and Siemens Financial Services is uncovered.

The investment will expand DataVita’s existing DV1 data centre and fund the construction of a new data centre, DV3. The capacity of both is contracted to AI cloud firm CoreWeave, the infrastructure provider to many of the world’s leading AI labs, under a 15-year lease agreement.

The financing will enable the delivery of Scotland’s first AI data centres within a designated AI Growth Zone, strengthening sovereign AI capability and driving growth in the wider Glasgow City Region.

This development of DV1 and DV3 will act as the first step in a larger planned data centre campus in the area, helping to establish North Lanarkshire as a key location for AI infrastructure in the UK. The two developments financed by this facility will create around 600 jobs during construction as well as c.100 permanent high-skilled jobs once completed.

DataVita has been part of Scotland’s digital infrastructure for more than ten years and is the country’s largest independent data centre developer and operator.

The company delivers AI infrastructure end to end, utilising low carbon electricity, data centres, sovereign cloud and connectivity through to the AI platforms its customers run. Its customers include central government, local authorities and universities, which rely on DataVita to keep critical national workloads on sovereign UK infrastructure.

Earlier this year, DataVita’s North Lanarkshire site was awarded Scotland’s first AI Growth Zone designation, recognising the company’s role in building the next generation of UK AI infrastructure.

This project marks the National Wealth Fund’s first support for domestic compute capacity and supports both the Government’s Compute Roadmap and Scotland’s recently published five‑year AI strategy, which aims to grow the UK’s AI computing capacity through AI Growth Zones that attract investment in digital infrastructure and create high-skilled jobs across the country.

The UK Government estimates that, fully adopted, AI could be worth up to £47 billion a year to the UK economy over the next decade.

“AI is already helping scientists discover new medicines, supporting better public services and helping businesses get more done,” UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said.

“The countries that build the infrastructure behind this technology will be the ones that attract investment, create jobs and help shape the industries of the future.

“That’s why today’s announcements matter. They will help ensure Scotland is at the forefront of one of the biggest economic opportunities of our time, bringing investment, reindustrialisation and opportunities to communities like Lanarkshire.

“For local people, that means more than new buildings and technology. It means the chance to develop new skills, access new careers and benefit from the growth and investment that AI can bring.”

Danny Quinn, Managing Director at DataVita, said: “There is plenty of talk about AI infrastructure just now. This project is being delivered: work is well advanced on site, every megawatt is contracted, and the first facility completes this year.

“DataVita delivers AI infrastructure end to end, from the energy that powers it through to the applications that run on it. We have been doing this in Scotland for more than ten years. The UK needs its own AI capability, built here and run here, and we are grateful to the National Wealth Fund and our lenders for backing a project that is already delivering it.”

He added: “This type of investment in Scotland’s data centre infrastructure would have been unthinkable just two or three years ago. That is the impact AI is having. Scotland has all the right ingredients to take advantage of the AI revolution and make it a core part of its economy.”

Source: DIGIT