Equinix Boasts Strong Q1 With a Deep Pipeline as Tariff Uncertainty Mounts

Global demand for digital infrastructure catapulted data center giant Equinix — the fourth-largest real estate investment trust in the nation in terms of market cap — into a strong first quarter, despite economic uncertainty fostered by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff policies. 

The sheer level of activity from the REIT is evidence of that fact. Building on bookings momentum from the end of last year, Equinix closed 4,100 deals with more than 3,200 customers in the first quarter of 2025, according to its latest earnings presentation, pushing past its expectations. Bookings in April are likewise keeping pace, according to CEO Adaire Fox-Martin. 

On top of its 285 facilities worldwide, the REIT has 56 development projects underway across 24 countries. That includes 12 of its branded xScale facilities, specifically designed for large cloud service providers such as Amazon. Equinix’s xScale portfolio is 85 percent leased and pre-leased, Fox-Martin said. 

The REIT opened 10 new projects in the first quarter, in places such as Singapore, South Korea, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Lagos, Nigeria, and São Paulo, Brazil. It also added four new projects to its docket this past quarter, in Frankfurt, Germany, Mumbai, India, Miami and Washington, D.C. The latter project, dubbed DC17, is expected to be delivered in 2027.

The financial results of that activity are clear with a quarterly revenue of roughly $2.25 billion — an 8 percent increase year-over-year on a normalized basis — and operating income of $458 million for a 26 percent year-over-year boost. 

Although Equinix has so far seen “minimal impact” on its business from tariffs directly, Fox-Martin said the REIT is keeping close tabs on the situation due to the policies’ potential impact on its customer base.

“The tariffs are felt acutely among specific industries in which many of our customers operate, particularly in consumer goods, transportation, energy and materials,” Fox-Martin said. “Further, the uncertainty surrounding these tariffs, if protracted, can understandably lead to a wait-and-see investment posture amongst customers across all industries. Whilst we are tempering our optimism with prudent caution, we believe that demand for our digital infrastructure will persist through varying business cycles and economic policies.”

Indeed, this past quarter brought two key business developments for Equinix via partnerships with two industry-leading tech firms. Computer chip and software behemoth NVIDIA announced in March its latest line of ultra-high performance chips, DGX GB300 and DGX B300, via its NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD infrastructure. Both are specifically designed for AI development, and Equinix will be the first to offer those systems at its data centers — which Nvidia refers to as “AI factories” — in 45 markets around the world. Equinix has also secured a deal with tech firm Groq, which focuses on AI inference technology, to vastly scale its high-performance data center infrastructure, Fox-Martin said. 

Both partnerships exemplify the universal takeover of AI infrastructure in the data center space in recent years. Of the REIT’s top 25 deals in the first quarter, half were AI-related, Fox-Martin said. 

“When I look at what’s making up that demand, I think we continue to see the service providers chasing capacity. … Whilst some of that is initially training-based, we’re definitely starting to see inference, with the Groq deal that closed in Q1 as a tremendous example of that,” Fox-Martin said. 

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.