Equinix, GIC to invest $525M to build two xScale data centers in Seoul
Digital infrastructure company Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) has announced the signing of an agreement to form a US$525 million joint venture in the form of a limited liability partnership with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate two xScale data centers in Seoul, Korea.
This new joint venture will bring the global xScale data center portfolio to more than US$8 billion across 36 facilities, and an expected greater than 720 MW of power capacity when completed and fully constructed.
The two facilities under this joint venture, to be named SL2x and SL3x, are expected to provide more than 45 megawatts of power capacity to serve the unique core workload deployment needs of hyperscale companies, including the world’s largest cloud service providers. With more hyperscale providers expanding in Korea to support businesses’ digital infrastructure needs, the cloud computing market in the country is expected to flourish.
To date, seven xScale data centers have opened globally, with more currently under development. The establishment of xScale data centers in Korea will allow hyperscale providers to add core deployments to their existing access point footprints at Equinix, enabling their growth on a single platform that can immediately span 65 global metros and offer direct interconnection to their customers and strategic business partners.
Equinix entered the Korean market in 2019 with its first IBX, SL1. At the facility, customers can connect their corporate IT infrastructure to global hyperscale providers, including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Service, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, via Equinix Fabric, for a high-performance solution and enhanced user experience.
With this xScale expansion, these hyperscale providers can continue to grow at Equinix, in close proximity to an ecosystem of more than 10,000 customers on its growing platform of more than 235 data centers around the world.