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Scotland’s AI zone gets £300 million datacenter boost
DataVita secured £300 million to expand its Lanarkshire campus, adding 80MW of capacity already leased to CoreWeave for 15 years.
Source: The register
The Register reports that DataVita has secured £300 million ($406 million) to expand its datacenter campus in Scotland’s Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone. The financing will expand the company’s existing DV1 facility in Airdrie and fund construction of a second nearby site, DV3.
The debt facility comes from ING, ABN AMRO, Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services. The UK’s National Wealth Fund is supporting the package with a £202 million guarantee.
Once completed, DV1 and DV3 will each provide 40MW of capacity. CoreWeave has already leased the capacity of both facilities for 15 years. The AI cloud provider supplies infrastructure to several leading model developers.
Construction is already underway. DataVita began expanding DV1 in December 2025, followed by work on DV3 in April 2026. The DV1 extension is expected to be finished by the end of 2026, while DV3 is scheduled for completion in summer 2027.
The two projects are expected to support about 600 construction jobs and create roughly 100 permanent, highly skilled roles once operational. DataVita describes them as the first stage of a larger campus intended to make North Lanarkshire a hub for AI infrastructure.
“There is plenty of talk about AI infrastructure just now. This project is being delivered: work is well advanced on site, every megawatt is contracted, and the first facility completes this year.”
Dell’s Lanarkshire presence is an office
The Scottish government also announced that Dell Technologies would establish a base in the area. The company is moving into Mercury House at Lanarkshire’s AI Innovation Park, but the site will be an administrative office rather than a new datacenter.
Dell said its Scottish team includes customer-facing and business-support staff, as well as technical specialists who help customers develop and deploy technology solutions.
The AI Growth Zone was announced as part of the UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan at the start of 2025. The policy aims to encourage datacenter construction and use AI to drive economic growth, with access to sufficient power among the criteria for selecting sites.
DataVita says Lanarkshire’s position in Scotland’s electricity network and its low-carbon energy mix mean the facilities' power needs will be met overwhelmingly by renewable energy. UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan said the investment would help keep Scotland at the forefront of AI development and create opportunities for local workers.
The immediate commercial signal is clearer: both 40MW facilities already have a long-term tenant, while DV1 is scheduled to begin completing before the end of 2026.
Enterprise Editor
Marcus follows the money. He covers enterprise software, cloud architecture, and the tectonic shifts in Big Tech strategy. He translates dense earnings calls and complex M&A activity into actionable insights about where the industry is actually heading. If a tech giant makes a silent pivot, Marcus is usually the first to notice.
