Companies Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Deploying Private AI Infrastructure at Equinix

Equinix's Cloud Adjacency, Ecosystem Access and Global Reach Make It an Ideal Platform for Private AI Deployments—for Both Enterprises and Service Providers

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Dec. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- After working with customers on a variety of AI deployments over the past several years, Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world's digital infrastructure company®, is gaining traction as a preferred location for deploying private AI infrastructure. Both enterprises and service providers are finding that Platform Equinix's cloud adjacency, global reach, robust ecosystems and low-latency interconnection to the world's networks are critical components in private AI infrastructure.

As businesses increasingly leverage public AI models to harness knowledge and gain insights, they often need a non-public environment to retain control of confidential or sensitive information. Deploying private AI infrastructure at Equinix enables digital leaders to leverage public models while ensuring that an enterprise's most valuable business data does not enter the public domain. Private AI offers risk protection while delivering the benefits of trained AI models, enabling businesses to realize the full potential of AI.

Enterprises are directly utilizing Equinix for deploying their private AI infrastructure, and service providers are utilizing Equinix to provide private AI services for their customers. Both can benefit from the growing AI ecosystem at Equinix with a concentration of buyers and sellers operating in close proximity to major cloud on-ramps.

"As enterprises increasingly seek to harness AI for competitive advantage, they often need a non-public environment where they can retain full control over their sensitive and proprietary data," said Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services, IDC. "These same needs propelled the widespread adoption of private cloud years ago and are now driving demand for private AI. With its extensive global reach, network density and cloud adjacency, Equinix is well positioned to support businesses with the digital infrastructure needed for the emerging and growing demand for private AI."

"With private AI, businesses don't need to choose between the power of AI and data privacy, performance or predictable cost," said Jon Lin, EVP & General Manager, Data Center Services, Equinix. "Companies are turning to Equinix as 'the place where private AI happens,' as they locate compute resources in proximity to data and seamlessly leverage public cloud capabilities."

Customer Deployments: Enterprise

• i3D.net: European gaming company that leverages AI to maintain game integrity. By using Algorithmic Analysis of Player Statistics (AAPS), i3D.net enables the company to identify cheating by its players through analyzing screenshots in play. By deploying in over 35 Equinix locations, i3D.net protects its user data by taking advantage of its close proximity to users via a global presence and low-latency network connectivity.
  • Video Case Study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmrA6Uh0F24
• Continental AG: A multinational automotive parts manufacturer and leader in the autonomous driving intelligence space. Its Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) business unit began developing intelligent sensors and data-driven traffic safety solutions more than 20 years ago and has been working to increase the speed of development using deep learning and training artificial neural networks. The goal of Continental's Vision Zero project is to eliminate deaths by traffic accident through the development of ADAS technologies. The company leverages NVIDIA AI and IBM storage cluster at Equinix to ingest, process, assess and store terabytes of data from test fleet.
  • Case Study: https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/continental-automotive/
• Harrison.ai: Harrison.ai is tackling some of the biggest issues causing inequitable diagnosis and treatment today with rapidly developed AI products in chest X-rays and brain computed tomography scans, all with the aim of helping clinicians make the right diagnoses faster and treat patients sooner. To develop customized AI-enabled tools such as Annalise CXR, Harrison.ai deployed its DGX A100 systems on Platform Equinix® for data analytics, scientific computing and AI development, necessary to reduce model training time and speed up the machine learning development process, all while protecting confidential patient data.
  • Video Case Study: https://www.equinix.com/resources/videos/harrison-ai-success
• Tape Ark: A leading expert in tape-to-cloud migration whose clients include major Hollywood studios and research agencies, Tape Ark makes archival content accessible to modern technology to gain new insights from the data. The company's patent-pending AI ArchiveInsight tool allows companies with massive collections of data on physical, magnetic tape media to develop insights and analysis of that data using AI versus manual review. Leveraging deployments at Equinix IBX® data centers in Los Angeles and Montreal with global expansion in the pipeline, Tape Ark can benefit from having a secure digital infrastructure enabling it to process data anywhere in the world while working to maintain compliance with data sovereignty regulations.
  • Case Study: https://www.equinix.com/resources/videos/tape-ark

Customer Deployments: GPU aaS

• Crusoe Energy: Using otherwise wasted flared natural gas from oil production and other wasted, stranded and clean energy sources to sustainably power modular data centers providing high-density compute services, including the NVIDIA GPU stack. Crusoe has deployed multiple networking nodes at Equinix to leverage multicloud on-ramps and low-latency network connectivity across multiple metros.
   
• Juice Labs: Juice Labs provides GPU-over-IP software, enabling enterprises to remotely access GPU resources over standard networks. With Juice, applications can utilize GPUs from different locations, offering flexibility and efficiency, driving GPU utilization toward 100%. Juice leverages the extensive geographical footprint of Equinix to enable the low-latency interconnection of disparate GPU resources.
   
• Lambda: An AI cloud provider of enterprise-grade GPU-based cloud compute services with an open source AI software stack used by more than 50,000 ML teams. Equinix's cloud adjacency enables Lambda to spin up GPU services with speed and scale, enabling enterprises to consume those services securely in real time. Lambda also leverages Platform Equinix for expanded global connectivity, higher networking performance, security and scale to support its large language model and generative AI workloads.

Highlights/Key Facts

• According to IDC, by 2025, Global 2000 (G2000) organizations will allocate over 40% of their core IT spend to AI-related initiatives, leading to a double-digit increase in the rate of product and process innovations.¹
   
• Since 2021, Equinix and NVIDIA have collaborated on NVIDIA AI LaunchPad to give enterprises immediate access to NVIDIA-powered infrastructure and software to streamline the entire AI life cycle. The program provides NVIDIA-powered hybrid cloud solutions globally on Platform Equinix, allowing enterprises to access an entire spectrum of NVIDIA resources that support virtually every aspect of AI, from data center training and inference to full-scale deployment at the edge.
   
• Equinix has nearly 40% market share of the on-ramps to the major cloud service providers—key players in the AI ecosystem.

1.     "IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2024 Predictions," Doc #US50435423, October 25, 2023.

Quotes

• Rick Sloot, Chief Operating Officer, i3D.net
  "The gaming industry relies on a healthy network to remove any in-game lag. The development of AI requires us to analyze real-time data quickly and securely. With Equinix, we are able to take advantage of their global presence, allowing us to identify any foul play while maintaining an uninterrupted gaming experience anywhere in the world."

Additional Resources

• Create exceptional customer experiences with data, AI and edge [IDC white paper]
• What Is Private AI? [Equinix blog]
• To Get AI Right Tomorrow, Get Your Data Architecture Right Today [Equinix blog]

About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world's digital infrastructure company^®. Digital leaders harness Equinix's trusted platform to bring together and interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. Equinix enables organizations to access all the right places, partners and possibilities to scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value, while supporting their sustainability goals.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, risks to our business and operating results related to the COVID-19 pandemic; the current inflationary environment; foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; increased costs to procure power and the general volatility in the global energy market; the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX® and xScale® data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent and upcoming Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

SOURCE Equinix, Inc.