Sarah: Equinix keeps finding money.
Sarah: The power fights are still waiting for an invitation.
Sarah: Before we get to today’s development: Equinix has been tapping investment-grade debt markets to fund property acquisitions
Sarah: development and AI-ready data-center capacity across its global footprint.
Sarah: The company had sought to raise at least $3 billion as part of its broader push for high-density AI infrastructure
Sarah: so its ability to finance that build is a real constraint on how fast it can move.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily.
Matt: Today: debt is getting done, planning approvals are moving, and we’re asking whether the wires, water, and ratepayers got the same memo.
Matt: Start with Cape Town.
Matt: This story isn't over: Equinix AI infrastructure financing.
Matt: Follow us wherever you're listening, and the next chapter comes to you.
Sarah: This one's from Towncrier Africa:
Quote: The Municipal Planning Tribunal approved applications connected to a proposed Equinix development at King Air Industria near Cape Town
Quote: International Airport.
Quote: The decision advances the project through a planning stage, but does not amount to full construction approval.
Quote: Detailed site-development plans
Quote: building approvals and other regulatory processes would still be required before any facility could be built.
Matt: Cape Town approved a land-use change near the airport for two proposed Equinix facilities.
Matt: Fine. But community groups are still asking about water, cooling, diesel backup, emissions, noise—the stuff people actually live next to.
Sarah: Keep the units straight: objectors cite up to 174 MVA, while some reporting turns that into megawatts.
Sarah: The Legal Resources Centre is right to flag that those are different units, not interchangeable headline garnish.
Matt: A Municipal Planning Tribunal approval gets you through one gate.
Matt: It doesn’t energize racks, secure water, approve a generator, or hand over a building permit.
Matt: King Air Industria still has a long runway ahead of it.
Sarah: There’s a real economic case for more African computing capacity.
Sarah: But “proposed” still matters: land use is approved, while construction still needs detailed site plans and further regulatory approvals.
Sarah: From Amit Chowdhry at Pulse2:
Quote: American Electric Power expects electricity demand from data centers hyperscalers
Quote: and industrial customers to provide up to $16 billion in cost offsets for residential customers as the utility expands its infrastructure to
Quote: support substantial load growth.
Quote: The projected offsets apply to residential customers served by AEP’s vertically integrated utilities and are supported by fully executed
Quote: take-or-pay electric service agreements.
Matt: AEP signed another 6 gigawatts in one quarter, mostly in Texas.
Matt: And for once, the $16 billion residential-offset claim has actual teeth: fully executed take-or-pay service agreements.
Sarah: The scale is huge: 69 gigawatts of contracted load through 2030
Sarah: against roughly 33 gigawatts of generation AEP owns or has contracted for today.
Sarah: AEP is planning $78 billion of investment from 2026 through 2030 to bridge that gap.
Matt: Good—put the large customer on the hook before the poles go in.
Matt: But five states have approved AEP’s large-load tariffs and three are still pending
Matt: so the ratepayer firewall depends on where you live and whether regulators keep it intact.
Sarah: “Up to” $16 billion is an upper-bound estimate, and it applies to AEP’s vertically integrated utilities.
Sarah: Still, take-or-pay contracts are a lot more concrete than a utility press release asking households to trust the spreadsheet.
Sarah: Cbonds has the details on this one.
Sarah: The planned at-least-$3 billion Equinix raise is now mapped out: four tranches
Sarah: with $850 million due in 2029
Sarah: $850 million in 2031
Sarah: then $650 million each in 2033 and 2036.
Sarah: Cbonds turns the financing headline into an actual maturity ladder.
Matt: Great—the debt is fully itemized out to 2036.
Matt: Meanwhile, as we just heard in Cape Town, the project-side questions are still water, backup generation, and permits.
Matt: Finance has excellent visibility; infrastructure, less so.
Sarah: It does establish the timeline.
Sarah: Equinix is matching long-lived debt to a multi-year build program
Sarah: instead of trying to carry the expansion on one short-dated note and a lot of optimism.
Matt: Fine. But every tranche needs cash flow from operating sites eventually.
Matt: A bond maturity schedule is concrete, but it doesn’t energize a megawatt or permit a generator.
Sarah: Data Centre Magazine, with Saffron Humphreys:
Quote: In Southeast Asia Equinix is responding by expanding Microsoft Azure connectivity across its data centre footprint in Kuala Lumpur
Quote: Malaysia and Jakarta
Quote: Indonesia. The move gives enterprises private access to Azure from Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres
Quote: supporting hybrid multicloud architectures and workloads that depend on low-latency connectivity.
Matt: Private Azure links in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta are useful—until somebody tells us what the power path looks like for the racks they’re
Matt: meant to fill. The two countries have different grid and permitting regimes.
Matt: What we got is a very polished connectivity announcement.
Sarah: Southeast Asia is where Equinix’s new four-tranche debt issue starts to land: KL2 in Cyberjaya is expected to exceed 2,200 cabinets
Sarah: while Azure private connectivity expands in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
Sarah: At least now the capital stack has an address.
Matt: An address and 2,200 planned cabinets are not an operating data hall.
Matt: We just covered Cape Town: financing and a planning win can sprint ahead while water
Matt: backup generation and actual power supply are stuck at the gate.
Sarah: Malaysia did book RM87.4 billion in approved digital investments during 2025, so the demand case is substantial.
Sarah: But Equinix’s Azure expansion is connectivity infrastructure; on its own, it doesn’t disclose a new energized megawatt.
Host: Have feedback, a story idea, or a correction for The Data Center Daily?
Host: Email us at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com.
Host: We’d love to hear from you.
Host: Links to every story are in the show notes, along with the sources behind today’s briefing.
Host: If something caught your attention, you can dig into the details at your own pace.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.