The Pulse
Equinix Raises Annual Data Center Spending Plan to $7 Billion
Equinix plans to spend $5 billion to $7 billion a year on data center expansion from 2027 through 2029. The company says stronger bookings, presales and demand for AI infrastructure are driving the increase.
AI.info Team ·
“Customer demand is broad-based and growing.”
Adaire Fox-Martin, CEO and president, Equinix
Equinix Doubles Down on Capacity
Equinix is raising its planned data center investment to between $5 billion and $7 billion a year from 2027 through 2029, nearly doubling its previous annual outlook of $3 billion to $4 billion. The company disclosed the new range on July 29, 2026, alongside its second-quarter results and an increase to its long-term financial forecast.
The spending will exclude future mergers and acquisitions, real estate purchases and Equinix’s investments in its xScale joint ventures. Management says the higher target reflects stronger bookings, presales activity, committed customer demand and confidence that new capacity can earn attractive returns.
“Customer demand is broad-based and growing,” Fox-Martin said in the company’s earnings release. She said Equinix is positioned to provide networking, cloud and AI infrastructure for enterprises operating across markets.
AI Demand Changes the Buildout
Equinix is not describing the plan as a dedicated AI construction budget. The company’s facilities support colocation, cloud connectivity and interconnection services across a range of workloads, while AI is increasing demand for higher-density deployments and faster links among data, models and end users.
The company expanded its collaboration with Cisco and NVIDIA during the quarter to support standardized AI factory architectures, secure infrastructure and testing environments across its global data center network. Equinix also announced Equinix Inference Exchange with NVIDIA and Together AI on September 2, a service designed to connect enterprise workloads with AI providers across multiple locations. The company says that product is scheduled to become available in the first quarter of 2027.
Equinix’s own earnings materials show the scale of the existing platform behind the plan. The company added a record 9,700 net interconnections in the second quarter, delivered $424 million in annualized gross bookings and had 52 capacity projects underway across 33 markets as of July 29.
More Than 80% Targets 25 Global Metros
Equinix expects more than 80% of the 2027-to-2029 expansion to focus on its 25 largest global metropolitan markets. The company says those locations offer established customer relationships, dense interconnection networks and clearer visibility into demand than speculative development sites.
The approach also limits the role of land and power projects that have no identified customer need. Equinix’s second-quarter release says the company is accelerating capacity expansion based on bookings, presales and committed requirements rather than building solely on long-range forecasts.
That concentration gives the spending plan a different profile from a broad push into new territories. Equinix is directing capital toward markets where it already operates data centers and where customers can connect to cloud providers, networks and business partners through the company’s existing infrastructure.
The 2026 Budget Already Reaches $5 Billion
Equinix also lifted its full-year 2026 capital expenditure forecast to between $5 billion and $6 billion. The revised range includes recurring capital spending of $290 million to $310 million and non-recurring spending of $4.71 billion to $5.69 billion, excluding xScale and real estate acquisitions.
The increase accompanies higher financial guidance. Equinix now expects 2026 revenue of $10.205 billion to $10.285 billion, representing growth of about 11% to 12%. It projects adjusted EBITDA of $5.21 billion to $5.27 billion and adjusted funds from operations of $4.24 billion to $4.30 billion.
For 2027 through 2029, the company lifted its expected annual revenue growth range from 7% to 10% to 10% to 13%. It also raised its 2029 adjusted EBITDA margin target from at least 52% to at least 53%, while increasing expected annual adjusted funds-from-operations-per-share growth from 5% to 9% to 9% to 12%.
Capacity Comes With Power and Financing Risks
The plan places Equinix among the largest infrastructure spenders benefiting from the growth of AI services, but the company still faces the practical limits of power availability, construction schedules and financing costs. Its filing lists higher costs for power, land and supplies, difficulty securing suitable sites and the need to obtain financing among the risks that could affect results.
Equinix operates as a real estate investment trust and expects dividend growth to approximate adjusted funds-from-operations-per-share growth under the new outlook. That means the company must expand its capacity while funding construction, maintaining its dividend and preserving access to debt and other sources of capital.
For now, management is tying the investment to measurable demand: record interconnection additions, higher bookings, presales and committed capacity. The spending plan runs through 2029, with the first step already reflected in Equinix’s $5 billion-to-$6 billion capital budget for 2026.