The Guarantee That Unlocked £300m: DataVita’s Funding Template for UK Data Centres
DataVita has closed a roughly £300m debt facility to expand one data centre and build another in North Lanarkshire, and the way it did it is the part worth studying. A £202m guarantee from the National Wealth Fund, covering 80% of the senior lending, gave commercial banks the confidence to fund the rest. Every megawatt across both buildings is already leased to AI cloud firm CoreWeave for 15 years. State guarantee plus contracted demand is a repeatable structure, and UK developers who have spent years talking about an investable pipeline now have a working example to copy.
Britain has no shortage of consented data centre schemes. What it has lacked is a reliable way to get them financed, because lenders have been wary of committing to buildings whose demand and returns felt speculative. DataVita’s deal, confirmed on 18 August, is interesting less for the megawatts and more for how the money was assembled.
The company secured about £300m to expand its existing DV1 site and build a new one, DV3, both inside North Lanarkshire’s AI Growth Zone. The headline that matters is not the total. It is the £202m guarantee sitting underneath it, provided by the National Wealth Fund, which is the mechanism that made private banks comfortable enough to lend.
For any UK developer trying to work out how their own project gets funded, this is a template rather than a one-off. It pairs a public guarantee with a signed anchor tenant, and between them they solve the two problems that usually stall a data centre financing.
What DataVita actually closed
A £300m facility, unlocked by a £202m state guarantee
The circa £300m debt facility funds the expansion of DataVita’s existing DV1 data centre and the construction of a new one, DV3, both in North Lanarkshire’s AI Growth Zone, Scotland’s first. It was raised through a syndicate of lenders including ING as advisor and coordinator, Santander as agent, ABN AMRO, 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 that tranche. The remaining portion, provided by the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services, is uncovered. It is the National Wealth Fund’s first backing of domestic compute capacity, and the two builds are expected to create around 600 construction jobs and roughly 100 permanent roles once live, with work already well advanced on site.
Why the structure is the story
The guarantee did what years of “investable pipeline” talk could not
The interesting move is in the capital stack, not the compute. A state guarantee covering 80% of the senior tranche changes the risk calculation for a commercial lender. A bank that might have balked at a data centre it viewed as speculative will lend against one where most of its downside is underwritten by the government. That single mechanism converts a hesitant lender into a participating one.
This is the gap UK developers have been circling for years. The constraint was rarely more consented sites; it was a route to make lenders comfortable enough to fund them. The National Wealth Fund framed the guarantee as doing exactly that, giving lenders the confidence to invest and laying the foundation for a wider zone. For a developer, the lesson is that the financing structure, not the planning permission, is often the piece that actually unlocks a build.
The other half: contracted demand
Every megawatt is already leased to CoreWeave
The guarantee does not work on its own. The full capacity of both DV1 and DV3 is contracted to AI cloud firm CoreWeave, an infrastructure provider to many of the world’s leading AI labs, under a 15-year lease. That long-term offtake removes the demand risk from the other side of the deal, so lenders are underwriting a building with a signed, creditworthy tenant rather than a bet on future occupancy.
Put the two together and the picture is clean. A public guarantee de-risks the debt, and a 15-year anchor lease de-risks the revenue. Neither alone would likely have carried the financing; together they make it bankable. It is the same logic driving the private-capital versions of this problem, where an asset manager owns the building and the operator is the anchor tenant, only here the public balance sheet supplies the missing confidence.
Every megawatt is contracted, and the first facility completes this year.Danny Quinn, Managing Director, DataVita
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The template, and its limits
What UK developers will copy, and what they cannot
The replicable ingredients are easy to name. A site inside a designated AI Growth Zone, a long-term anchor tenant contracting the full capacity, a state guarantee covering most of the senior debt, and a bank syndicate to provide it. Any UK developer looking at a stalled scheme will now point at this deal and ask for the same shape.
The honest caveat is that the guarantee is a scarce public resource. This was the National Wealth Fund’s first support for domestic compute, and it cannot underwrite every project that wants one. So the part most developers can actually replicate is the discipline around it: lock in the anchor tenant, secure a Growth Zone designation, and structure the debt so a guarantee, if it comes, does the most work. The deal also sets a precedent, and expect a queue of developers making the case that their project deserves the same treatment.
| Sovereign-guarantee model (DataVita) | Private-capital model (Meta / BlackRock) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who de-risks the debt | National Wealth Fund guarantee | Asset manager equity plus leverage |
| Anchor demand | CoreWeave, 15-year lease | Operator as sole long-term tenant |
| Ownership | DataVita retains and operates | Asset manager owns the majority |
| What unlocks it | Public guarantee plus offtake | Institutional capital plus offtake |
| Replicable by others? | Limited by guarantee availability | Limited to the largest operators |
A debt facility of about £300m to expand its existing DV1 data centre and build a new one, DV3, both in North Lanarkshire’s AI Growth Zone. The facility was unlocked by a £202m guarantee from the National Wealth Fund and raised through a syndicate including ING, ABN AMRO, Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services. (Source)
The £202m guarantee is provided against £252.5m of senior lending from ING, ABN AMRO and Santander, equating to 80% of that tranche. The remaining portion, from the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services, is not covered. It is the National Wealth Fund’s first support for domestic compute capacity. (Source)
It changes the risk calculus for commercial lenders. By underwriting 80% of the senior debt, the guarantee lets private banks fund a project they might otherwise have viewed as too speculative. The National Wealth Fund described it as addressing a financing gap and giving lenders the confidence to invest, which is the problem that has stalled many UK schemes despite planning approval. (Source)
CoreWeave is an AI cloud provider that supplies infrastructure to many of the world’s leading AI labs. It has contracted the full capacity of both DV1 and DV3 under a 15-year lease. That long-term, creditworthy offtake removes demand risk from the deal, so lenders are backing a building with a signed tenant rather than speculative occupancy. It is the demand half of what makes the financing work. (Source)
Partly. The shape is repeatable: a Growth Zone site, a long-term anchor tenant, a state guarantee on the senior debt, and a bank syndicate. But the guarantee is a scarce public resource, and this was the National Wealth Fund’s first for compute, so not every project will get one. What most developers can replicate is the discipline around it, particularly locking in the anchor tenant before seeking finance. (Source)
The two builds are expected to create around 600 construction jobs and roughly 100 permanent roles. The wider North Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone is forecast by the Scottish Government at more than 3,400 jobs and over £8bn of private investment, with DataVita’s two facilities the first step in a larger planned campus. (Source)
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