DataVita has secured a £300m financing package to expand its North Lanarkshire data centre infrastructure, backed by a £202m guarantee from the National Wealth Fund.
The funding will support expansion of DataVita’s existing DV1 facility and construction of a second data centre within the Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone, adding capacity to one of the UK Government’s flagship artificial-intelligence infrastructure projects.
The financing has been provided through ING, ABN AMRO, Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank, and Siemens Financial Services, with the National Wealth Fund guarantee helping to reduce risk for private lenders.
Dell Technologies has separately confirmed that its Scottish team will move to Mercury House at the AI Innovation Park, adding an established global technology company to the developing cluster.
The wider Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone is expected by government to support more than 3,400 jobs across technology, engineering, construction, and associated services. Scottish ministers have put prospective private investment connected with the wider development at more than £8bn.
DataVita managing director Danny Quinn said work was already well advanced, adding that “every megawatt is contracted” and that the first facility is due to complete this year.
The financing takes the project into a more capital-intensive phase at a point when access to funding has become a material constraint on AI infrastructure expansion. Data centres require substantial upfront investment in land, buildings, power, cooling, networking, security, and computing equipment before they begin generating operating returns.
That capital intensity is increasing as AI workloads demand denser computing environments. The financing model increasingly resembles large infrastructure development rather than conventional enterprise IT spending, with long construction periods, contracted capacity, power requirements, and institutional lenders becoming central to project viability.
The National Wealth Fund guarantee does not represent the whole £300m investment, but is intended to give commercial lenders greater confidence in financing infrastructure where scale, technology requirements, and development risk might otherwise restrict available capital.
The arrangement also illustrates how industrial policy and private finance are becoming more closely connected around AI. Government wants additional domestic computing capacity and regional investment, while developers need long-term funding and credible access to energy. Lenders require greater certainty that new facilities will secure customers and operate within infrastructure constraints.
Power remains one of the hardest constraints across the data centre sector. High-performance computing requires very large, reliable electricity supplies, while grid-connection queues and the need for low-carbon generation are affecting proposed developments across Britain.
Lanarkshire’s economic challenge extends beyond constructing data halls. The longer-term value of the Growth Zone will depend on whether infrastructure spending produces durable technology employment, supplier activity, training, and investment beyond the physical facilities themselves.
Dell’s decision to locate its Scottish team at the park provides an early example of that wider cluster effect. The company will sit alongside infrastructure operators and other businesses expected to use the site, increasing the potential for technical partnerships and skills development.
The employment profile will also matter. Data centre construction creates substantial short-term demand across civil engineering, electrical systems, mechanical services, and specialist installation, while permanent operational employment is typically more technical and less labour-intensive once facilities are running.
That distinction makes training and local supply-chain development important if the projected 3,400 jobs are to extend beyond the construction phase. Government has linked the Growth Zone with skills programmes intended to help local people enter technology and engineering careers, although employment outcomes will ultimately depend on the pace and scale of individual projects.
The financing package arrives as competition for AI infrastructure investment intensifies internationally. Governments in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia are seeking additional computing capacity, while hyperscale operators negotiate around power availability, planning, incentives, and access to skilled workers.
Scotland offers renewable-energy resources, engineering capability, land, and an established technology sector, but those strengths still have to be converted into deliverable power and infrastructure at the scale demanded by new AI workloads.
The £300m facility gives DataVita considerably more financial capacity to progress that build. With lenders committed, Dell moving into the innovation park, and construction under way, attention will increasingly focus on power, delivery schedules, customer demand, and the proportion of investment that reaches the surrounding regional economy.
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