A Utah data center has secured a $2 billion investment — the second largest of its kind — to build the remainder of its West Jordan campus.
When it’s done, Novva’s 100-acre campus will be “one of the largest superclusters” of servers in the United States, said CEO Wes Swenson, powering 175 megawatts to data servers around the world.
Novva built the first stage of its Utah campus in 2020 and the $2 billion investment from JPMorgan Chase and Starwood Property Group will help the company finish the two remaining buildings, Swensen said.
It also is the second $2 billion loan awarded to a data center this year, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Most data construction loans before January were less than $1 billion. Swenson said he is glad this investment is happening in Utah.
“I have a super high conviction to the Utah market, our employees and community,” said Swenson, who lives in Utah County.
Utah is high ...
Utah is well positioned to house massive data centers like Novva, the chief executive said. Up at altitude — Novva sits at roughly 4,000 feet above sea level — the air is cooler. Data centers need to keep servers cool. Most use evaporative cooling to keep temperatures low — Novva can literally pull from the air to cool its cooling liquid most of the year, Swenson said.
The Beehive State also doesn’t have to worry about intense natural disasters, Swenson said — though he does have a precise seismograph to monitor for any earthquake activity.
There are 39 data centers in Utah, according to the Data Center Map. Twenty-six of them are in the Salt Lake metro area.
Utah’s business-friendly ecosystem also helps incentivize data centers in the state, said Jim Buie, CEO of ValorC3 Data Centers (formerly Tonaquint). Valor has been around since 2008 and has capitalized on Utah’s “good growth trajectory” — tax incentives, low-cost power and fiber optic connectivity.
“Those are all wonderful ingredients for not just tech, but certainly the data center business,” Buie said.
... and dry
The need for data centers has exploded in recent years as AI has become an everyday tool for internet users. The amount of new data center construction in the top eight markets more than doubled in 2024 compared to the year prior, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Buie said he and other industry analysts expect generation to quadruple over the next four years — “both the quantity [of centers] and the amount of power that data centers use.” If Utah can keep up with the electricity demand — a big focus in the legislative session and Gov. Spencer Cox’s budget this year — it’s poised to lead the nation in “driving the digital economy,” Buie said.
But one of Utah’s scarcest resources is also the most critical to many data centers: water.
Most centers cool their servers through evaporative cooling, which can use millions of gallons of water each month.
Novva uses coolant, not water, to cool its servers, Swenson said — meaning that roughly 100,000 gallons of the campus’s million-gallon annual water consumption are used in Novva’s closed-loop cooling system. The remaining 90%, he said, is for plumbing, like toilets, sinks, and drinking fountains.
“It’s equal to about three homes annually,” Swenson said. “We’re considered a zero-water footprint.”
Not all centers are so water-conscious, Buie said, although they will likely have to be in order to succeed. Valor also uses a closed-loop cooling system, Buie said, which saves water from evaporation.
Novva’s brand-new campus buildings should both be done by mid-2026, Swenson said. The servers that will fill them are already leased.
“They have to be built somewhere,” Swenson said of large data centers. “This is as good a place as any as long as we’re good stewards.”
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
