Digital infrastructure company Equinix has invested A$240 million (US$160 million) to add a total of 4,175 cabinets to two of its Australian data centres – SY5 in Sydney and ME2 in Melbourne – to support the rising need for high-density power, advanced cooling and interconnection as demand for digital infrastructure, including artificial intelligence (AI), accelerates.

To address compute-intensive AI workloads, Equinix plans to expand support for advanced liquid cooling technologies – like direct-to-chip – in Australia from early 2H 2024. This expansion will enable more businesses to use the most performant cooling technologies for the powerful, high-density hardware that supports them in leveraging AI.

Notably, 68% of Australian businesses have already implemented AI technologies, according to a recent CSIRO report, and a further 23% are planning to implement them in the next 12 months. However, to effectively harness the power of AI they require infrastructure that can support the needs of higher power density, advanced cooling and connectivity. 

Private AI, Equinix notes, is becoming a preferred choice for enterprises as it offers the control, privacy and security they need while satisfying requirements for data governance, performance and predictable costs.

Built upon a multi-cloud foundation, the company’s distributed platform architecture brings AI directly to where the data resides, the company shares, along with providing high-speed connectivity to an ecosystem of providers and partners. This enables enterprises to maintain ownership over their data and comply with data sovereignty and regulatory requirements.

“The expansion of SY5 and ME2 ensures we have the capacity in place so customers can continue to take advantage of the thriving Australian digital economy with minimal friction,” says Guy Danskine, Equinix Australia’s managing director. “Since private AI is emerging as the preferred model of adoption, access to high-performance digital infrastructure is essential.

“This provides organizations with low-latency connectivity to multiple cloud providers, as well as private infrastructure enabling them to leverage best of breed AI models while maintaining localization and control of their data. Sustainability and efficiency remain a core focus to ensure we deliver this increasingly energy-intensive digital infrastructure in a responsible way.”