Equinix Invests AU$240 Million in Data Centre Expansion To Support AI Adoption in Australia

To support the rising need for high-density power, advanced cooling and interconnection as demand for digital infrastructure accelerates including artificial intelligence (AI), Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company®, invested AU$240 million (approx. US$160 million) to add a total of 4,175 cabinets to two of its International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centres – SY5 in Sydney and ME2 in Melbourne.

A recent CSIRO report shows that 68% of Australian businesses have already implemented AI technologies and a further 23% are planning to implement in the next 12 months. However, to effectively harness the power of AI they require infrastructure that can support the needs of higher power density, advanced cooling and connectivity. Private AI is becoming a preferred choice for enterprises as it offers the control, privacy and security they need while satisfying requirements for data governance, performance and predictable costs.

Guy Danskine, Managing Director, Equinix Australia, said, “The expansion of SY5 and ME2 ensures we have the capacity in place so customers can continue to take advantage of the thriving Australian digital economy with minimal friction. Since Private AI is emerging as the preferred model of adoption, access to high performance digital infrastructure is essential. This provides organisations with low-latency connectivity to multiple cloud providers, as well as private infrastructure enabling them to leverage best of breed AI models while maintaining localisation and control of their data. Sustainability and efficiency remain a core focus to ensure we deliver this increasingly energy-intensive digital infrastructure in a responsible way.”

Built upon a multi-cloud foundation, Equinix’s distributed platform architecture brings AI directly to where the data resides along with providing high speed connectivity to an ecosystem of providers and partners. This enables enterprises to maintain ownership over their data and comply with data sovereignty and regulatory requirements. Equinix also provides easy access to dedicated and managed infrastructure, making it simple for organisations to develop, deploy and manage AI applications while maintaining predictable costs and performance.

To address compute-intensive AI workloads, Equinix plans to expand support for advanced liquid cooling technologies—like direct-to-chip—in Australia from early 2H 2024. This expansion will enable more businesses to use the most performant cooling technologies for the powerful, high-density hardware that supports them in leveraging AI.

Equinix has implemented a wide range of sustainable construction initiatives in both SY5 and ME2 data centers. These initiatives aim to minimize waste and maximize the use of recycled materials during the building process. Notably, Equinix has achieved a remarkable 95% recycling rate for all waste on-site, including copper, steel, and cardboard.

Additionally, by adopting a digital twin approach using 3D building information modelling (BIM), Equinix has successfully reduced waste from services such as electrical cabling, ductwork and fire pipes by 25%. These locally deployed initiatives are part of Equinix’s global Future First sustainability program, focused on delivering the highest value to its customers while minimizing environmental and social impact in communities where the company operates.

Highlights/Key Facts

· Located in the suburb of Alexandria in Sydney, SY5 phase 3 provides 2,675 additional cabinets, bringing the total number of cabinets at full build out to 9,675. In Sydney, Equinix is the only provider with native on-ramps to all six leading cloud service providers.

· ME2 is in Fisherman’s Bend in Port Melbourne. ME2 phase 3 is expected to provide 1,500 additional cabinets of capacity when the expansion is complete in Q3, which will bring the total number of cabinets to approximately 3,000. As the only location in Victoria with direct access to the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC), Equinix’s Melbourne campus offers connectivity to a broad range of more than 50 network service providers.

· Both expansions reinforce the importance of Sydney and Melbourne as growth metros. According to the Equinix Global Interconnection Index (GXI) 2024, Melbourne is the world’s fastest growing edge metro for interconnection bandwidth, with a 45% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and set to reach 102 Tbps by 2026. Sydney is forecast to reach 1,141 Tbps by 2026, growing at a 34% CAGR, making it the fourth-largest metro in the region.

· In February this year, Equinix signed a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) in Australia with TagEnergy. Equinix is purchasing 151 megawatts of renewable energy from Golden Plains Wind Farm – East in Victoria. Once operational in 2029, this will supply enough energy to the grid to cover Equinix’s 17 IBX data centres across the country and help achieve the company’s 100% global renewable energy coverage target.

· This January, Equinix announced a fully managed private cloud service that enables enterprises to easily acquire and manage their own NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputing infrastructure for building and running custom generative AI models in key IBX data centres globally.