Equinix and GIC, SINGAPORE'S sovereign wealth fund, agreed to form a US$525 million joint venture to develop and operate two xScale data centers in Seoul, Korea. GIC will own an 80% equity interest in the joint venture, and Equinix will own the remaining 20% equity interest.
The two facilities under this joint venture, to be named SL2x and SL3x, are expected to provide more than 45 megawatts (MW) of power capacity to serve the unique core workload deployment needs of hyperscale companies, including the world's largest cloud service providers.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.
Charles Meyers, President and CEO, Equinix, commented, "More and more organizations are embracing a digital-first strategy to scale their operations, enhance the experiences of their customers, and unlock the value of technologies like 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Korea and the broader Asia-Pacific market are both enablers and beneficiaries as organizations prioritize digital transformation. To address demand for cloud and digital infrastructure, we have continued to invest in the region through the expansion of International Business ExchangeTM (IBX) capacity and locations, as well as the expansion of our hyperscale program, xScale, in Australia, and now Korea."