Equinix has formed a joint venture to develop a hyperscale data center in Silicon Valley, California.
The company is forming a $600 million joint venture with PGIM Real Estate, the real estate investment and financing arm of Prudential Financial’s global asset management business, to expand its xScale hyperscale platform into the country.
The two-story facility, which will be known as SV12x, will be built in two phases and is expected to provide 28MW of IT capacity at full build-out. The first phase is scheduled to be completed in Q2 2024.
The facility will be located at Equinix’s Great Oaks campus, alongside the company’s four existing Silicon Valley data centers.
Under the terms of the agreement, PGIM will control an 80 percent equity in the joint venture, with the remainder belonging to Equinix.
The two companies have previously partnered in a $575 million joint venture to bring the xScale data center program to Sydney, Australia.
Equinix also has several other joint ventures spanning Europe and Asia. The company said this new venture will bring the global xScale data center portfolio to more than $8 billion across more than 35 facilities with an expected 725MW of capacity at full build-out.
Equinix partnered with Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund in October 2019 to develop hyperscale facilities under the xScale label, and the two companies have since announced plans to open more than 32 facilities globally in the next few years.
During the company's most recent quarterly earnings, outgoing Equinix CEO Charles Meyers confirmed that the company was looking at bringing its xScale facilities to the US.
“We are absolutely working on how we're going to continue to be more aggressive in this market,” he said. While he said there was "opportunity," he declined to provide more details, simply saying we would hear more "in the near future.”
He also added that any US hyperscale expansion would primarily be focused on organic growth, rather than acquisitions.
Earlier this year, Equinix launched internal investigations after short seller Hindenburg research accused the company of manipulating accounts and overselling power supply.
