UK data center firm Stellanor has acquired a facility outside London from semiconductor firm Imagination.

Stellanor this week announced it had bought a purpose-built data center in Hemel Hempstead from Imagination Technologies.

Under the sale-and-service-back arrangement, Imagination will continue operating from the facility as a fully managed client of Stellanor. Terms of the deal were not shared.

Full details weren’t shared, but a 2025 sales brochure for an Imagination Technologies’ data center lists a facility along Boundary Way in the Hertfordshire town’s Maylands Business Park. Set on just over an acre, the 28,255 sq ft (2,625 sqm) facility was previously on the market for £9.5 million ($12.77m) on a sale-leaseback basis. The site offers around 116 racks and 3MW of capacity across two data halls.

An online customer case study suggests Imagination has occupied the Hemel Hempstead data center since around 2013.

According to the sales brochure, Imagination was seeking to lease the site back for 15 years for around £635,000 ($855,250) annually.

The deal takes Stellanor’s portfolio to 11 facilities and 39MW of capacity.

“This acquisition demonstrates the quality of infrastructure and tenants we’re attracting,” said Michael Tobin, chairman of the board, Stellanor. “Imagination Technologies is exactly the type of blue-chip technology company we are looking to serve – enterprises with demanding digital infrastructure requirements – from AI and high-performance computing to core enterprise applications and business-critical workloads – that need urban proximity and institutional-grade infrastructure. Their decision to continue operating from this facility as a Stellanor client reiterates our strategy to combine investment in growth and improvement of facilities with operational excellence to serve organizations where they actually operate.”

Founded as VideoLogic in 1985 and now owned by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, Imagination provides chip design software and services, including for its PowerVR GPU technology.

“As a global semiconductor IP company, our focus is on delivering high-performance, power-efficient GPU and AI technologies that enable our partners to build next-generation products,” says Markus Mosen, Imagination Technologies CEO. “At the same time, maintaining operational resilience across our infrastructure is critical to supporting continuous innovation. Our partnership with Stellanor strengthens this foundation, ensuring we have the robust, scalable environments needed to support our teams while enabling us to remain agile and focused on advancing our core technologies.”

Stellanor was launched last year by German investment firm DWS. The company was seeded with two UK data centers in London, acquired from Colt Technology Services. Colt had acquired the sites when it bought Lumen’s EMEA operations in November 2022, which included a number of former CenturyLink/Level 3 locations.

Stellanor then acquired the data centers of UK managed services provider Redcentric. That portfolio comprised eight facilities totaling 41MW across sites in London (x2 – Shoreditch and Hounslow), Woking, Gatwick, Byfleet, Reading, Cambridge, and Elland in West Yorkshire.

Redcentric had built up its portfolio of facilities via the acquisition of UK colocation provider 4D Data Centre in 2022, as well as the acquisition of three Sungard data centers in the UK the same year.

“This acquisition sits at the intersection of two powerful trends: evolving AI growth and enduring demand for urban proximity,” said Aparna Narain, partner at DWS. “It adds proven infrastructure serving a blue-chip technology tenant to Stellanor. We’re creating a differentiated category in the UK market – combining urban focus with the scale and financial capability to deliver high-performance, AI-ready infrastructure that supports the full range of enterprise requirements – from core IT to evolving digital and cloud workloads.”

Founded in 1956 and formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management, DWS is a German asset management company. It previously operated as part of Deutsche Bank until 2018, when it was listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Deutsche Bank retains a majority stake in the firm.

DWS has also invested in Mediterra, a data center firm focused on southern Europe that launched last year. The investment firm recently sold European operator NorthC to Antin Infrastructure Partners.

NTT operates several data centers around Hemel Hempstead, including in the Maylands park. Last year, real estate investor Northtree Investment filed to redevelop a self-storage site into a data center in the business park. Amazon is also present in the area and recently filed to develop a tape library facility in the town.