Data Center Startup Novva Launches With $1 Billion Investment

‘We can offer our clients some of the lowest TCO in the industry, located in a strategic part of the U.S. for both hub and edge compute, while offering unparalleled service,’ says Novva co-founder and Wes Swenson.

A new data center colocation and wholesale provider has entered the market with a $1 billion investment and backing from real estate investment firm CIM Group, with construction already under way on a massive data center campus in Utah.

Novva launched out of stealth this week led by data center veteran and co-founder Wes Swenson, who was previously CEO of C7 Data Centers, which was acquired by DataBank in 2017.

“We can offer our clients some of the lowest TCO in the industry, located in a strategic part of the U.S. for both hub and edge compute, while offering unparalleled service,” said Swenson in a statement.

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Novva is investing more than $1 billion to build a hyperscale data center campus totaling over 1.5 million square feet of data center space in West Jordan, Utah, dubbing it as the state’s largest multitenant campus for enterprise clients.

Construction is already under way on Novva’s new data center campus, which will include a 300,000-square-foot Data Center Hall and 80,000 square feet for Novva’s headquarters. The new facility will accommodate clients needing 30kW to larger enterprises needing 250kW. The data center is expecting to be available for clients in early 2021.

The data center startup enters the colocation and wholesale market as the coronavirus pandemic hits many IT segments hard, with IT research firm Gartner predicting a global IT spending drop of 8 percent to $3.46 trillion in 2020 due to COVID-19. However, COVID-19 isn’t slowing down spending or demand for hyperscale data centers, with public cloud infrastructure spending unscathed by the pandemic.

Novva said its data centers will allow for autonomous client bespoke suites, optional turnkey and secure multitenant services. Another market differentiation is that Novva has designed and engineered its facilities to operate without water year-round to utilize solar energy and cool with air. The startup’s data centers allow for short cycle demand builds, flexible power designs and a downward flow hot air containment system, the company said.

Swenson is bullish about demand for Novva’s new hyperscale data center as well as its future home in Utah.

“We believe Utah is a hidden gem for one of the largest wholesale colocation campuses in the United States,” Swenson said. “Some of its attributes include low-cost power, low disaster risk, low latency, dense longhaul fiber, high altitude cold desert, central Western U.S. location, an expanding international airport, and no sales tax on equipment purchases.”