Salute has agreed to buy T5 Operations, while T5 Construction has launched independently as EverOn Data Center Services. The September 1 announcements separate the construction business from the proposed operations combination; they do not announce a completed acquisition. Salute's release says closing remains subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals.
For data-centre customers, the useful distinction is between the business delivering a facility and the team maintaining it after handover. Here is what the companies have disclosed, and how to read their figures.
Who builds, and who operates?
EverOn's launch announcement dates its independence to September 1, 2026. The former T5 Construction business is led by president and CEO Tom Mertz, previously T5 Services' COO and president. Its work includes new campuses, fit-outs, retrofits, equipment procurement and commissioning oversight.
T5 Operations is the facilities-management business covered by Salute's agreement. The construction company is outside that deal. Salute says Pete Marin will join its board and David Mettler will join its executive leadership team as part of the acquisition.
| Business | Role in the announcements | How to read the scope |
|---|---|---|
| EverOn DCS | Independent construction company | Builds facilities for customers; its construction record is not a portfolio of owned data centres. |
| T5 Operations | Business Salute has agreed to acquire | Provides operations services; the agreement is subject to closing conditions. |
| Salute after completion | Expanded operations platform | Projected managed capacity describes service coverage, not newly built AI capacity. |
Construction revenue and managed gigawatts measure different things
EverOn reports that its predecessor construction business generated $1.7 billion in 2025, compared with $87 million in 2021. Third-party projects supplied 83% of the 2025 revenue. It also attributes more than 260 completed projects and over 12 million square feet of delivered US data-centre space to its team's experience.
Those are historical business and delivery figures. They should not be read as work completed by a newly launched independent company since September 1, or as a disclosure of current GPU capacity.
Salute projects a combined footprint exceeding 15 GW under management, spanning 150-plus markets with 3,800-plus employees, once the transaction closes. The announcement does not turn that managed footprint into an ownership figure or an AI-only capacity total.
Our reading is that a direct size ranking between the companies would be misleading: annual construction revenue, cumulative delivered floor space and capacity under an operations contract answer different questions. Customers evaluating a provider need the measure relevant to their own contract.
The AI infrastructure connection is at handover
EverOn identifies liquid cooling, high-density AI infrastructure and work inside operating facilities as areas of experience. Salute describes its own direct-to-chip cooling operations capabilities. These are company statements about services, not independently measured improvements from the transaction.
The companies also describe future collaboration between construction and operations. Salute's FAQ calls the EverOn partnership proposed; the releases do not establish that every EverOn project will automatically receive Salute operations services. Claims that the arrangement has already shortened schedules or improved uptime would go beyond the evidence reviewed here.
For readers assessing an AI facility, our suggested questions are practical: who owns commissioning acceptance, who maintains the cooling equipment after handover, and which responsibilities appear in the contract? Our GB300-class liquid-cooling explainer provides background on the systems involved.
The next useful evidence would be a closing announcement and specific customer deployments showing how the proposed collaboration works. Until then, the supported story is a construction-company launch and an agreed operations acquisition, with projected benefits still to be demonstrated.
Cover: AI-generated conceptual illustration, not a photograph of a company facility.
Sources
This article was researched and fact-checked against the following sources:
- Salute continues acquisition-led growth as it buys T5 Operations (datacentrereview.com)
- T5 Services Announces Next Phase of Strategic Evolution with Launch of EverOn Data Center Services and Operations Transition to Salute - AccessNorthGA (accessnorthga.com)
- Salute announces agreement to acquire T5 Operations - Salute (salute.com)
- Salute announces agreement to acquire T5 Operations (prnewswire.com)
- Salute announces agreement to acquire T5 Operations | Middletown Life (lifestyle.middletownlifemagazine.com)
- T5 Services announces EverOn launch and Operations transition to Salute (everondcs.com)
