Technology and AI
A 1.7 billion dollar data centre builder is cut loose as its operations arm is sold
By Staff Writer | 5 September 2026
T5 Construction becomes EverOn Data Center Services, an independent contractor already taking 83 per cent of its revenue from third parties. T5 Operations goes to Salute, which will manage more than 15GW on completion.
T5 Data Centers has split its services business in two. The construction arm has been renamed EverOn Data Center Services and set up as an independent company building data centres for anyone who wants one. The operations arm, which runs and commissions finished facilities, is being sold to Salute under a definitive agreement announced on 1 September 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Terms were not disclosed.
The construction business reports revenue of 1.7 billion dollars in 2025 against 87 million dollars in 2021, which is close to twenty times in four years, and says 83 per cent of the later figure came from third party work rather than from its former parent's own estate. It puts its record at more than 260 completed construction projects and more than 12 million square feet of data centre space delivered in the United States.
On completion the acquirer will manage more than 15GW of data centre capacity across around 150 markets, with a worldwide headcount above 3,800. Founded in 2013, it supplies facility operations and management, quality assurance, technical commissioning and retrofit services to owners. New Mountain Capital took a majority stake in 2024 from LLR Partners, which keeps a minority holding, and three consulting and engineering businesses have been bought since.
Joining Salute creates an opportunity to build on what our Operations team has already established over 12 years
Pete Marin, Chief Executive Officer of T5 Data Centers
Why the split matters to anyone contracting for capacity
Build and operate have usually sat inside one company in this sector because the same client wanted both from the same place. Separating them puts a general contractor into the open market at a scale few dedicated data centre builders reach, and hands operations to a specialist that already carries other owners' sites. For a developer that is two contracts where there was one, and a new interface between construction completion and operational acceptance that now falls between two unrelated companies.
That interface is where commissioning disputes start. Where the builder and the operator are the same group, an integrated systems test failure gets absorbed. Where they are not, the testing and acceptance provisions decide who owns a defect found in the first month of live load, and the answer is usually whichever party drafted the handover schedule.
The practical drafting points are the ones that always get left late. Who witnesses level four and level five commissioning, and whose sign off ends the contractor's obligation. Whether the operator's acceptance is a condition of practical completion or a separate milestone. What happens to the defects period once a facility is at live load and cannot be taken down for rectification. Where liquidated damages sit if the delay is an incomplete commissioning script rather than an unfinished building.
Demand is the stated reason for all of it. Both companies point to artificial intelligence and high performance computing workloads as the source of the growth, and the construction figures make the point without adjectives: a business turning over 87 million dollars four years ago is now turning over 1.7 billion.
The number worth watching is not the 15GW. It is whether an independent contractor at this scale can hold its programme once the client no longer owns the company that has to run the building afterwards.