Equinix signs $3.9bn GIC deal to fund greater expansion

Equinix xScale data center in Paris (Image credit: Equinix)

Data center giant Equinix has announced the extension of its joint venture with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC to include an additional $3.9 billion pumped into the expansion of its data center portfolio.

Once the agreements are finalized, the deal will bring Equinix's xScaleTM data center portfolio's worth to greater than $6.9 billion covering 32 facilities across the globe.

These add to Equinix's global platform of more than 220 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers.

Data center build out

After deal closing and buildout, the xScale data center portfolio will span three regions: Europe, Asia-pacific and Americas.

With three additional sites expected to be announced at a future date, Charles Meyers, CEO of Equinix said: "For years, the world's largest cloud service providers, including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, have partnered with Equinix to leverage its global platform of more than 220 data centers to directly connect to their strategic business partners and customers.

"With our xScale program, these hyperscalers can continue to grow at Equinix while in close proximity to an ecosystem of 10,000 customers. The joint venture arrangement of xScale enables these large deployments to be structured in an off-balance sheet model that aims to preserve capital for investment in our traditional retail data center and digital infrastructure business and maintain our strategic and financial flexibility."

Equinix previously signed a joint venture worth more than $1 billion with GIC for the build out of three data centres in Japan.

Under the terms of the JV agreements, GIC will own an 80% equity interest in the future joint ventures and Equinix will own the remaining 20% equity interest.

The joint venture projects in today's announcement are expected to close in several waves over the course of 2021, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions.

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Via Reuters

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