Commercial impact
What an anchor tenant changes for your project
Securing a foundational customer commitment transforms how lenders, investors and utilities treat a development scheme:
Development and construction finance:
Infrastructure lenders and debt funds underwrite project finance and forward funding against contracted cashflows and tenant covenant strength. A signed pre-let or customer offtake agreement moves a site from speculative development to a bankable asset.Joint ventures and equity partnerships:
Institutional co-investors and development JV partners price powered land and consented schemes on a different basis once an anchor tenant has committed to phase-one IT load. Explore Capital & Partnerships.Engineering and phasing certainty:
Locking in an anchor customer before breaking ground allows you to engineer substation phasing, rack density and liquid-cooling plant around a committed technical specification rather than building speculative M&E infrastructure.
Buyer requirements
What a customer needs to see before it commits
Capacity buyers committing to an unbuilt facility weigh delivery certainty alongside technical design. Before entering heads of terms on a pre-let, an anchor customer will look for clear evidence across these areas:
MW by phase:
Initial IT load available at phase-one handover, plus the expansion ramp across subsequent data halls or buildings.Power basis and energisation date:
Confirmed grid import capacity, utility connection offer status, substation works programme and firm energisation milestones.Density and cooling:
Supported kW per rack, floor loading, and whether the plant is designed for air cooling, chilled water or direct-to-chip liquid cooling.Location and latency:
Proximity to metro availability zones, internet exchanges or high-capacity transmission routes, alongside planning permission and zoning status.Fibre:
Diverse dark-fibre routes, carrier neutrality, meet-me room architecture and point-of-entry redundancy.Delivery date:
Credible programme dates for shell completion, M&E commissioning, integrated systems testing and ready-for-service handover.Structure:
Whether the scheme is offered as a turnkey wholesale lease, a powered shell lease where the tenant completes M&E fit-out, or a build-to-suit campus.
Demand side
Customers we introduce
We connect data centre developments and powered sites across Australia, the UK, the US and Canada with four groups of capacity buyers:
- AI and cloud clients: Hyperscale cloud platforms and AI infrastructure buyers acquiring contiguous multi-megawatt halls or dedicated campuses with firm power delivery dates.
- Neoclouds: Specialist GPU cloud operators scaling high-density liquid-cooled clusters who require committed MW on rapid delivery schedules.
- Enterprise buyers: Financial institutions, digital platforms, research organisations and corporate infrastructure teams consolidating regional workloads into long-term wholesale space.
- Operators pre-letting: Established colocation and wholesale operators taking powered shells or build-to-suit facilities to serve their own customer demand.
Transaction terms
Anchor tenant, pre-let and offtake: how they differ
While the three terms often appear together in development funding discussions, each describes a distinct part of the deal:
- Anchor tenant: The lead customer whose commitment justifies building a new facility or campus phase. An anchor typically contracts a major share of phase-one IT load or a whole building on a long-term lease, establishing the credit profile for the asset.
- Pre-let (UK and Australia) or pre-lease (US): The legal and timing structure of the commitment. The customer signs a binding lease or agreement for lease ahead of practical completion, with rent commencement tied to ready-for-service delivery milestones.
- Customer offtake: A long-term contract to take and pay for a defined volume of data centre capacity, measured in MW of IT load, used by sponsors and lenders to underwrite project debt. It is separate from a power offtake agreement or power purchase agreement (PPA), where an energy generator sells electricity to a buyer.
From site to heads of terms
How a commitment is staged
Stage one:
Project profile: You share your site location, power allocation, energisation schedule, planning status and preferred lease structure.Stage two:
Customer matching and introduction: We match your project’s MW scale, delivery window and cooling design against customer requirements in our network and introduce you directly to relevant buyers.Stage three:
Technical due diligence and heads of terms: You and the prospective customer take the conversation forward to review grid connection documentation, campus layouts and delivery programmes, progressing to heads of terms and an agreement for lease.