Back in April 2024 Equinix pushed its global data center portfolio to over $8 billion with the announcement of a $600 million joint venture with PGIM Real Estate, the real estate investment and financing arm of PGIM, Prudential Financial’s global asset management business.
This was the second joint venture between the two companies, though it marked the first investment made through PGIM Real Estate’s dedicated global data center strategy, managed on behalf of third-party clients, to invest exclusively in hyperscale facilities.
This early 2024 investment took Equinix to more than 35 data centers globally and more than 725 MW of power capacity for its customers.
But this October’s announcement from Equinix on their latest joint venture makes April’s announcement look small, with the news of a joint venture (JV) agreement, subject to closing conditions, in the form of a limited liability partnership with GIC and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), and a plan to raise more than $15 billion (USD) in capital.
The plan is to take advantage of the artificial intelligence (A) market and demand for cloud data centers to add to the existing Equinix footprint. It is expected that the joint venture will nearly triple investment capital in the Equinix xScale program, providing interconnection and edge services that tie into the existing hyperscaler connections at Equinix facilities.
The long-term goal is to eventually add more than 1.5 GW of capacity by building multiple 100 MW+ campuses in the US to service the Equinix hyperscale customer. This would involve the purchase of new land for these campuses, not simply increasing capacity at existing sites.
As Adaire Fox-Martin, CEO and President of Equinix, stated in the JV announcement:
