Ascent has raised US$107m in debt financing to expand its wholesale data center business in the US, the company said Wednesday.

The announcement is yet another sign of wide availability of expansion funds for data center providers seen this year. A number of data center companies have raised nearly $1.5bn in debt in 2012.

Ascent CEO Phil Horstmann attributed the company’s success in raising funds to the company’s approach to building and leasing data center space.

“The success of our business model will allow us to attract future debt and equity capital to help fund the accelerated growth of our business into new markets,” he said.

Ascent will use the funds to finance further development of its second data center in the Chicago metro, as well as entry into new markets, Horstmann said.

Bank of America Merill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland and Cole Taylor Bank all pitched in to provide Ascent with expansion funding.

Ascent provides large data center halls to customers, ranging in size from 25,000 sq ft to beyond 250,000 sq ft. Tenants can chose to fit out custom-tailored suites themselves or opt for turn-key solutions.

The company leased its first Chicago-metro data center to Microsoft. Anchor tenant at the second Chicago facility is Comcast, but names of others (if any) have not been disclosed.

This has been a good year for data center providers to raise capital. Among the firms that announced success in attracting new capital are Vantage, Telx, RagingWire, QTS, DuPont Fabros and Digital Realty Trust.

About half of the $1.5bn raised so far went to Digital, which said today it had closed a new $750m loan.