Equinix has announced an initial joint venture with GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to develop and operate xScale data centres in Europe.

Worth over $1.0bn, this joint venture comes in the form of a limited liability partnership.

The initial facilities in the joint venture will serve the unique core workload deployment needs of a targeted group of hyperscale companies, including the world’s largest cloud service providers.

The facilities, on or proximate to some of Equinix’s existing IBX campuses, will allow these key enablers of digital transformation to streamline their continued growth, while strengthening Equinix’s leadership position in the cloud ecosystem, as enterprises increasingly embrace hybrid multi-cloud as the IT architecture of choice.

For years, hyperscale operators, including Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Google Cloud, have partnered with Equinix to leverage its global platform of 200 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres to directly connect to their strategic business partners and customers.

Today, Platform Equinix offers the most access points — the “on- and off-ramps to the cloud” — to the top global cloud service providers.

In addition to these customer access points, hyperscale companies are investing in large-scale data centre deployments to accommodate their rapidly growing core workload needs.

With xScale data centres, hyperscale companies will now be able to add core deployments at Equinix to their existing access point footprints, enabling their growth on a single platform that spans more than 50 global metros and offers direct interconnection — within a vibrant set of ecosystems — to their customers and strategic business partners.

As hyperscale companies scale their operations at Equinix through xScale data centres and further leverage direct access to the business ecosystems of Equinix’s global platform, the “network effect” will also benefit other companies operating at Equinix, including companies with existing direct connections to hyperscale access points at Equinix.

The deployment of core hyperscale infrastructure at Equinix through xScale data centres will serve as a magnet, attracting additional partners, application developers and other hyperscale vendors to Equinix’s ecosystem, increasing the choice and innovation opportunities for current Equinix customers.