Verne Global secures $98 million in Series D funding

Verne Global, a UK-based developer of energy efficient data centres, has secured US$98M of equity funding, led by Stefnir, an Icelandic asset management and private equity firm that is working with several of the largest Icelandic pension funds. Existing investors – the Wellcome Trust, Novator Partners and General Catalyst – also participated in the round.

Verne Global will use the funds to further expand its wholesale and colocation service offerings, as well as to design and develop high-density, flexible resiliency data centre space. This investment round ensures that Verne Global can deliver the infrastructure capacity to serve the rapid growth in demand it is seeing from new and existing customers around the world.

“The unprecedented amount of new data created and processed by companies each day is forcing the industry to re-evaluate where that data resides,” said Jeff Monroe, Verne Global’s CEO. “In order to succeed in a data driven economy, power capacity, reliability of the power grid and low-cost power are imperatives for delivery. All of these factors point to Iceland as the logical choice for computing.”

Since opening in 2012, world-class companies such as BMW, RMS, CCP Games, Datapipe, COLT, RVX Studios and others have selected Verne Global’s award-winning campus to lower the operational and power costs of scaling their data centre requirements. Verne Global’s access to Iceland’s highly reliable and high capacity power infrastructure has made it an appealing, low-risk decision for companies who understand that access to power will be fundamental in the face of rising electricity costs and aging, unreliable power grids around the world.

“Through this investment, Stefnir and its co-investors are supporting Verne Global in the continued growth of the Icelandic data centre industry and in creating added value from Iceland’s valuable energy resources,” said Arnar Ragnarsson of Stefnir. “The team at Verne Global has successfully executed a compelling business plan that we believe will only increase in relevance as companies worldwide look to address the on-going data centre power demands.”

“Verne Global’s success in attracting top tier enterprise clients and raising significant capital from blue chip investors shows strong market validation for our energy-optimised data centre solutions," said Isaac Kato, CFO of Verne Global.