Compass Datacenters, a Dallas-based newcomer to the US wholesale data center market, has raised US$45m in debt from Ohio’s KeyBank to finance its near-term growth plans, the company announced Tuesday. The credit facility is expandable up to $100m.

Chris Crosby, founder and CEO of Compass, said combined with equity the company has already raised, the funds will finance its initial phase of growth, which will consist of multiple construction projects in second-tier US markets that are underserved by traditional providers.

“With this huge untapped market, the solutions we offer are clearly resonating with customers not only because of our geographic flexibility, but also how we enable companies to connect and grow their data centers in bite-sized chunks,” he said.

Compass launched in April with a proposition to build modular data centers in second-tier markets that scale quickly and easily but do not require an upfront investment in large power and cooling infrastructure. One module is an entire data center, and Compass says it can build one, or more, anywhere.

Compass calls its standalone data center architecture “Truly Modular”. Its pitch rests on the promise of stand-alone data centers in places where large multi-tenant data center operators do not go.

The company is offering choice to customers that would like to have stand-alone data centers in places other than the Silicon Valley, New York, Chicago, etc.

Crossby used to be a member of the team that started Digital Realty Trust, one of the largest wholesale data center providers in the world. He left Digital in February 2011.