Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of AVK Capital, our dedicated funding entity that will finance and own on-site power infrastructure and deliver it to our customers as a service. AVK Capital houses the investment secured from Partners Group in August 2026 and gives developers a route to a powered site without carrying the capital cost of the power infrastructure on their own balance sheet.
Artificial intelligence has created a surge in power demand that the grid was not built to absorb, a structural shift rather than a temporary spike. Access to power has become the primary constraint on data centre development across the UK and Europe. Grid connection queues, constrained capacity and the long timescales attached to transmission upgrades hold projects back, and the upfront cost of building on-site generation is a second barrier that sits behind the first. Under the old model, developers have carried the full cost of standby and generation infrastructure on their own balance sheet, and tenants have grown reluctant to commit without confirmed power, a combination that has stalled projects across the market. AVK Capital is designed to remove both, funding and owning the infrastructure a site needs while AVK designs, delivers, commissions, operates and maintains it.
Under the model, we select and engineer the right power solution for the site, drawing on microgrids, AVK PowerPods, fuel cells, renewables integration and standby systems. AVK Capital funds and owns the resulting infrastructure, and the customer secures power through a long-term Power Purchase Agreement, treating energy as an operating cost rather than a capital investment. One team remains accountable for delivery, commissioning, operation and maintenance across the lifetime of the asset.
Ben Pritchard, our Chief Executive Officer at AVK, said:
Access to power is the single biggest constraint on data centre development in Europe, and the cost of solving it is the second. AVK Capital takes both off the table. We already design, build, operate and maintain on-site power at commercial scale, and being able to fund and own it as well means a developer can contract for power in the same way they contract for any other service. That is what Speed to Power means in practice, and it is what the market has been asking for. No other business can bring the funding, the technology and the delivery together under one roof the way AVK can. This is an addition to what AVK does rather than a change of direction. Core AVK carries on delivering the standby, prime and modular power our customers rely on, exactly as it always has. AVK Capital sits alongside that business and gives customers a clear choice. If they want to fund a project themselves, we will build it. If they would rather we funded, owned and operated it, we can now do that too.
The launch builds on extensive delivery experience that we have accumulated across the entire power chain. Owning the infrastructure over its full operating life gives AVK Capital the flexibility to evolve and optimise the technology behind it. As the commercial case for direct renewables, alternative fuels and fuel cells continues to strengthen, decisions on power sources sit with the party that funds, owns and maintains the assets, which allows sustainability improvements to be made across the lifetime of the site rather than fixed at the point of design.
Bob Downing, our VP of Sales at AVK, said:
Customers have been clear that the funding conversation and the engineering conversation cannot sit in separate rooms. Bringing them together is what shortens a project. We can sit down with a developer, agree what the site needs, agree how it is paid for, and then go and build it, without a chain of handovers in between.
Excitingly, AVK Capital is being introduced to the market this month. We’re excited to see what progress this unlocks, and encourage data centre developers to extend interest in this new concept.