The IT Nerd

Equinix, Inc. today announced a significant expansion of its longtime collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver Equinix^® Inference Exchange, a distributed AI inference program for global enterprises, alongside a new collaboration with Together AI.

As AI scales across models, providers and geographies, where inference runs is a strategic imperative that determines performance, cost and governance. Equinix Inference Exchange will give enterprises a faster path from AI experimentation to production, with secure, low-latency connectivity to the data, users and ecosystem they depend on.

This collaboration brings together NVIDIA’s validated Enterprise Reference Architectures with Together AI’s inference platform, supporting more than 200 open-source models. Delivered through Equinix’s global data centers, it will provide connectivity to clouds, networks and AI providers through Equinix Fabric^®.

The solution will be announced today at Equinix Horizon, the company’s inaugural customer and partner event, alongside Equinix^® Fabric One™, which will make it easier for enterprises to connect across globally distributed AI environments.

Where Inference Runs Matters

The pace of enterprise AI adoption is outrunning the infrastructure needed to support it. As enterprise AI moves from experimentation to production, inference increasingly needs to run closer to the users, data and applications it serves across clouds, models, providers and geographies. This shift requires enterprises to determine not only how to deploy AI infrastructure, but where it should run and how it connects to the data, applications and workloads it depends on.

Managing these distributed inference deployments introduces significant operational complexity at precisely the moment enterprises need greater control and visibility.

Equinix brings unmatched scale and ecosystem density to this challenge, with more than 280 data centers across 77 metros, 230 cloud on-ramps and over 10,500 businesses interconnected on its neutral exchange. Eight of the top 10 AI model providers and nine of the top 10 AI clouds are deployed with Equinix, underscoring the company’s position at the center of the AI ecosystem.

Built for Choice and Flexibility

Together AI is the latest addition to Equinix’s expansive AI ecosystem, bringing open-model flexibility and choice to enterprises deploying AI at scale. The solution combines three complementary layers designed to simplify distributed AI inference:

• Equinix provides the infrastructure foundation, including power, advanced cooling and day-two operations, connected through Equinix Fabric to the clouds, networks and AI providers that inference depends on.
• NVIDIA anchors the build with its Enterprise Reference Architectures and AI infrastructure purpose-built to maximize AI factory throughput and minimize token cost.  
• Together AI runs the platform on top, supporting both multitenant deployments for shared efficiency and dedicated single-tenant environments for workloads that require dedicated capacity.

Built on Equinix Fabric, the solution will connect to inference providers across major metros worldwide, cutting time-to-first-token. It also will connect to an expansive ecosystem of clouds, networks and AI providers, reducing deployment complexity.

Designed for Modern Enterprise Inference

The solution aims to support a broad range of enterprise inference scenarios, including:

• Metro edge inference: For organizations that need inference running closer to users and data, enabling lower-latency AI experiences while leveraging the security, operational scale and global reach of Equinix.
• Open model migration: For enterprises moving workloads from closed, proprietary models to open-source alternatives to control cost and avoid lock-in, the solution will provide a direct, low-friction path to run that migration in production, with Together AI’s open-model platform reachable over the same interconnected fabric enterprises already use to reach their other providers.
• Sovereign AI: For enterprises operating in regulated industries or specific geographies, the solution will enable AI workloads to run in locations that support data residency and sovereignty requirements, providing a simpler path to deploying AI at scale while maintaining control over where data and inference are processed.

Equinix Inference Exchange will be available starting in Q1 2027.

atNorth, the leading Nordic high-density colocation and built-to-suit data center provider, today announced that Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company®, have completed the acquisition of atNorth.

atNorth’s footprint spans across all five Nordic countries, with eight operational data centers and several new projects underway across the territory. This includes sites under development in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, alongside expansions to existing sites and a strong portfolio of additional development projects.

Together, the operating portfolio and development pipeline provide atNorth with significant capacity to serve growing demand from global enterprise and hyperscale customers across AI, cloud and high-performance computing workloads, supported by advanced cooling technologies, renewable energy integration and heat reuse solutions.

The US$4 billion acquisition, by CPP Investments and Equinix, builds on CPP Investments’ global experience in data center investing and underscores the strategic importance of the Nordics as a leading hub for AI-ready digital infrastructure. atNorth will continue to operate independently under its existing brand, with the backing of its shareholders to accelerate development of its pipeline and expand capacity across the Nordics. Equinix brings complementary digital infrastructure expertise and global customer relationships to support atNorth’s continued growth.

Given the strength of the opportunity and confidence in the partnership since the initial announcement, Partners Group, on behalf of its clients, has elected to re-invest and acquire a 10% stake in atNorth. As a result, CPP Investments will hold a c. 51% controlling stake committing US$1.3 billion, alongside Equinix’s c. 34% committing US$895 million and Partners Group’s c. 10% committing $260 million. The remainder will be held by atNorth’s internal stakeholders, who have chosen to roll over a substantial portion of their equity. The transaction involves a financing package of US$4.1 billion (€3.6 billion), underwritten by a group of European and Canadian lenders to support atNorth’s continuous growth, fund the transaction, as well as the capital required to fund the expansion of the business.