Novva Data Centers is going national. The Utah-based developer plans to expand across the United States and deploy up to 1 gigawatt (1,000 megawatts) of data center capacity in strategic markets by 2027.
To support the expansion, Novva has lined up an additional $355 million equity investment from real estate investment firm CIM Group, bringing CIM’s commitment to Novva to $450 million in two years.
“This equity investment from CIM Group will allow Novva to continue delivering on our company vision of providing the best wholesale and multi-tenant colocation infrastructure services to clients at the lowest possible cost,” said Novva CEO Wes Swenson. “We’re thrilled to have a partner like CIM Group that shares the same vision of delivering a bespoke, premium data center experience to each and every client.”
Novva Data Centers launched in 2020 with the development of a 1.5 million square foot campus in a growing cloud cluster in West Jordan, Utah. The first of four planned buildings opened last November. Last year Novva added a second market with the acquisition of a data center campus in Colorado Springs, with an existing 190,000 SF facility and 37 acres of land.
Novva is among a group of new entrants in the fast-growing digital infrastructure arena that pair experienced executive leadership with a well-funded capital partner. Swenson built C7 Data Centers into Utah’s leading colocation player before selling the company to DataBank in 2017. CIM Group has previously worked with 1547 Realty to build a data center portfolio with facilities in in Chicago, Toronto, Cheyenne, and Orangeburg, N.Y., as well as a new data center build at 400 Paul Avenue in San Francisco.
“CIM Group is excited to continue to invest in Novva Data Centers’ growth strategy as Novva demonstrates it is among one of the most innovative data center developers and operators in the industry.” said Avi Shemesh, Co-Founder of CIM Group.
Novva says it focuses on a “wholocation” experience, combining wholesale and retail colocation to serve clients of any size and scalability needs — from those requiring 1 cabinet to 1,000+ cabinets. The company also offers build-to-suit options and employs renewable energy, high density capacity, and waterless cooling.
The carrier-neutral data center is designed to operate without water year-round, and can use solar energy and be cooled with ambient air, keeping sustainability at the forefront. The cooling design employs a hot aisle containment system in which warm exhaust air moves beneath a 5-foot raised floor. In many newer data center designs, server exhaust is evacuated to an overhead plenum to be returned to the cooling equipment.
Novva did not identify future locations for its expansion initiative.
Data Center Frontier is edited by Rich Miller, the data center industry’s most experienced journalist. For more than 20 years, Rich has profiled the key role played by data centers in the Internet revolution.
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