Equinix executives outlined how artificial intelligence is reshaping the company’s business during a Barclays conference discussion. Arquelle Shaw, President of the Americas, described a significant shift in enterprise customer behavior, noting that companies which were previously cautious about AI adoption have moved toward developing and implementing comprehensive AI strategies. This transition has increased demand for data center capacity, with deployments expanding from smaller arrangements to megawatt-scale operations consuming substantially more power.
The company’s interconnection business, which connects data, cloud platforms, models and end users, expanded 9% this year. Equinix recently introduced two new offerings—Fabric One, designed to simplify connections across multiple locations while accommodating data sovereignty requirements, and Inference Exchange, intended to help customers access data supporting their operations. The interconnection service has become increasingly essential as AI workloads require greater connectivity flexibility and complexity due to data, computing resources and models residing across multiple locations.
Equinix is adapting its infrastructure to support higher-density AI deployments. The company announced the DA12 facility, expected to deliver approximately 67 megawatts with densities around 18 kVA per cabinet. The company is incorporating liquid cooling into newer properties rather than retrofitting older buildings, with liquid cooling already present in more than 100 properties. Management stated the company’s xScale offering focuses on bringing cloud providers closer to metro ecosystems rather than building gigawatt-scale data centers for AI training.
Regarding outlook, Ryan Burke, vice president of investor relations, stated that Equinix expects to continue generating mid-20% cash yields on development projects. The company’s long-term guidance projects 9% to 12% annual adjusted funds from operations per-share growth through 2029, with Burke noting that the previous high end of the company’s outlook is now the low end of its updated range. This reflects improving same-store revenue growth, capacity expansion and diversified demand across customers, workloads, products and services.
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