Utah-based Novva Data Centers and its Investment Partner, CIM Group, Land $2 Billion Loan to Complete a 175MW State-of-the-Art AI Data Center in West Jordan, Utah

If there was any doubt that Wes Swenson is hyper-serious about the data center marketplace, such notions were disabused yesterday morning when his firm, Novva Data Centers, dropped a news release with this bombshell headline:

CIM Group and Novva Data Centers Announce $2 Billion in New Financing to Accelerate Growth in Delivering Sustainable, Efficient Data Centers Across the Western U.S.

Two-billion-freaking-dollars?!?!?! 🤯 🤯 🤯 Yup!!!

Swenson is CEO and Co-Founder of Novva, a firm launched in June 2020 by him and Novva's management team with the backing of Los Angeles, California-based CIM Group, a 30-year-old "... real estate and infrastructure owner, operator, lender and developer ..." with over $60 billion in historical assets under its belt.

According to yesterday's funding release, Novva and CIM landed "... $2 billion in financing from J.P. Morgan and Starwood Property Trust to complete the build-out of Novva’s flagship 175MW ... data center (in southwestern Salt Lake County)."

When Novva officially announced its existence in July 2020, it explained that it planned to spend over $1 billion in West Jordan, Utah to build "Utah's largest hyperscale data center campus ..." over four phases, with over 1.5-million-square-feet of facilities located on 100 acres of land.

Phase 1 was completed in 2023 and is a purpose-built, air-cooled, data center of 318,000-square-feet.

The Phase 2 buildout began in December 2023, while Phase 3 construction began in January 2024.

Both of these new facilities will also come-in at 318,000-square-feet, and Novva's total capacity when all four phases are completed of the 1-million-square-foot West Jordan campus is 175 megawatts (175MW).

As Swenson explained in yesterday's news release,

“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 .... (This) campus offers our clients some of the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry in a strategic location that offers

• "low-cost power,
• "low disaster risk,
• "low latency,
• "dense long-haul fiber,
• "proximity to an international airport,
• "no sales tax on equipment purchases and
• "a high-altitude cold desert climate."

And according to yesterday's news release, Novva's West Jordan "... campus was fully leased in 2023 to a leading global tech company."

Novva — A Contextual Perspective

Since its mid-2020 launch, Novva has either acquired, built/completed, or is building six separate AI-focused data centers /data center campuses in the western United States.

As noted in our August 2024 Utah Money Watch article titled "Led by Utah Tech OG, Wes Swenson, Utah-based Novva Data Centers Will Spend $3.0 Billion to Build a 300MW Data Center in Arizona, its Sixth Since its July 2020 Launch," these projects include

1. The West Jordan, Utah campus (noted above);
2. A Colorado Springs, Colorado facility (the 6MW facility was acquired in August 2021 for $38.5 million but with plans to invest over $200 million to expand it to 30MW);
3. A North Las Vegas, Nevada campus (a new 100MW data center campus that was announced in September 2022 at a cost of $400 million);
4. A Reno, Nevada area facility (a new 60MW campus was announced in May 2023, but the cost was not disclosed);
5. A San Francisco, California facility (a new 28MW critical load facility with a cost of $500 to build-out); and, of course,
6. A Mesa, Arizona data center campus that was announced in August 2024 (a 300MW campus expected to cost $3.0 billion).

According to our research, Novva has raised over $450 million in equity funding since its formal launch in mid-2020.

[UPDATE: CEO Wes Swenson clarified via text message this morning that Novva has actually raised $1.2 billion in equity funding so far, an amount not previously disclosed by the company.]

Additionally, it has also received over $7.1 billion in debt funding or debt commitments, including the $2 billion in funding the firm announced yesterday.

Swenson has worked in and around data, data transport, data security, and data storage for 31 years of his 36-year-career, including 

• 6+ years with Novell in sales;
• 2+ years with SonicWALL/Phobos as CFO/COO (acquired for $268 million in 2000); 
• 6 years with Forum Systems as President and CEO;
• 11+ years with C7 Data Centers as its CEO (acquired by DataBank, transaction terms not disclosed); and now
• nearly 6 years with Novva.

To me, this $2 billion funding adds an exclamation point to a pretty stellar career.

It also easily lands Wes Swenson in Utah's Tech OG category, if he wasn't there already.

So major props to Swenson and Team Novva!!! 🔥 🔥 🔥

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