In The Arena by TechArena - Equinix on the Reality Behind 2026 Data Centers

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

AI infrastructure is reshaping the global conversation around data centers, power, water usage, and digital growth. In this episode of In the Arena, Allyson Klein sits down with Jordan Singleton, Managing Director at Equinix, to separate fact from fiction surrounding the future of data centers in 2026.

Welcome to Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome in the arena. My name is Allison Klein. We've got a fantastic interview coming up today. We're going to be myth-busting the reality of 2026 data centers. And to do that, I bet Jordan Singleton of Equinix with me. Jordan, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Allison. So Jordan, this is your first time on in the arena. Why don't you just provide the audience a little bit about your background and what your role is at Equinix?

Sure. And again, thanks for having me. So my name is Jordan Singleton. I'm the managing director for Equinix covering the United States East. I've been with Equinix now 13 and a half years, most three on the sales side as an individual contributor, leading a sales team and now managing our East-Kittest operations and assets. If you're not familiar with Equinex, we are a Fortune 500 company. We operate over 260 plus IVXs or data centers globally. And we have been at this since 1998.

So data centers are not new to Equinix. We've been in this industry for quite a long time. I've been following the company for a long time. We've had other folks from Equinix on the program. And the foundational role you're playing in building out data centers, is pretty phenomenal. I think that when I was talking to you prior to the show about your role, what was interesting to me is how you play in the broader landscape of society trying

to grapple with data center buildout to meet this moment in compute. And can you talk a little bit more about your charter and how it relates to the decisions that go into where data centers are built and how broader communities are engaged in that process? Sure, we'd love to, Allison. So at Equinix, we're really putting the customer at the center of what we do, and these customers are also living in the communities that we operate in. So as I said before, we've been around since 1998.

We are looking for interconnected areas that are really the secret sauce for our company, right? We provide top-notch data center and operations. We've provided locations that our customers want to be at because it is closer to their people, the partners, and it's also closer to the routes that they use for network or cloud on ramps. And as you said before, there is a lot more noise in the data center space right now. I like to use my own mother as barometer. I would say three years ago, she still didn't have any idea what we did. Now I think everybody at least knows what a data center is.

In our day to day and in my day today in this rule, I will break it down into three things. It's what does the future look like for the East Coast at Equinix? So what are the markets that we're looking to expand in? Right. So where is available power? Where is their demands? And where is there the ability to connect to our existing metros potentially? Yeah.

Then we're also doing a lot more work when it comes to working in the communities that we operate in. So we've always done that. And I think we're continuing to do that. And as we grow and as we can, continuing to look into potential new markets or areas where we don't have a data center. We're doing a lot more of that as well. I think that I've been in data center since 2000, and I lived for a long time with nobody in my circle understanding what I do.

And I relate to your statement with AI coming into the forefront and just data centers taking on such an important role in society, even dating back to, you know, when we are going through the pandemic and people understanding how cloud services were, meeting needs in our lives. I think that people are understanding that this is foundational to every industry. I think that one of the things that we talked about before is that there are facts and myths driving this broader societal view of data centers and that some of the myths can be very impactful and sometimes in negative ways. Our job today is to bust some of these myths. So why don't you just start with what is the impact of myths for those who are running data centers or those who need the compute out of data centers to actually function as businesses.

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest one is what we actually do, right? So people think big tech, they think data centers. They probably most likely never been inside of a data center. They might not know what actually goes on inside of a data center. And so one thing I like to use is just bringing it back to everyday life, right? I think about maybe when my wife or I are going to pick up our son or daughter from school, we know that we have to get dinner ready.

We're actually going on to our phone. We are going into an app that is allowing us to preheat our oven and have that ready to go by the time we get home so that we can put dinner in and get dinner on the table at a reasonable time. And that is really going through a data center. So there's so many applications that we are all using in our everyday lives that are dependent on data centers. And when you hear of AI and the data center boom, that's very far-reaching and encompassing. I think of all of the good things that that's enabling, right? Drug discovery for cancer research, we have clients doing that.

We have clients that are providing entertainment, being able to watch your favorite sports league on your smartphone. And then I think of the example that I gave before of being able to preheat the oven while you're going to picket the children. There's a lot more that is going out there than just big monolithic companies. it's really enabling our everyday lives. Yeah, I love that. And I think that one of the things that I think about

is any time you use a device in this interconnected world, that data, that experience is flowing through at least one data. So there's that. They're very complex buildings. They require a lot of thought in terms of where you build them out. And I know that part of your purview is site selection for new data center projects.

Can you put some perspective on the selection of locations and data center sites and what's going on from a standpoint at the political landscape in this space. From one sense, they bring jobs, they bring new capabilities to environments, but they also have some demands from the local economy that need to be sorted out.

Can you provide a facts-based view here? Yeah, so I think for us, when you talk about site selection, we're looking to see where there is a bill of power. For us, interconnection is super important. We have to have access to network routes. And that most of the time, we're looking to build somewhere where we can, within a reasonable amount of time or latency, connect back to our other metros

via some of our products, our equity experiment product. As far as the political landscape, I think that as we're seeing just an explosive amount of growth, I would say that not all data centers are the same. We're a multi-tinent data center. we're not looking to build giant mega campuses that you might see where you're seeing some of that push back. I think that local communities that may not be familiar with data centers are maybe getting their information from social media or other sources where it might not be completely faxed based. So the amount of water that the data center is going to use, right? So on average, we're using in a closed-loose system around 500 to 600,000 gallons annually,

which may sound like a lot. But in comparison, that's about five to six households. If you're looking at a golf course, you're talking about $3 billion plus gallons of water. Yeah, you know where the water is being concerned. Yes. When you look at that location site, can you talk a little bit about, are there particular places around the country just to level set folks where data centers tend to be located? And what is the tradeoff between water availability, power availability, heat in the area, that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I can speak to how we select sites. You know, for us, again, it needs to be high in our connection, available power on the grid, and the availability of water source, which we're able to find. If you're looking at the industry as a whole, some of the larger campuses that you're seeing a lot of growth in places like Texas, right? So you've seen a lot of available power there. For us, it's really in locations that are closer to that interconnection, which is why we're looking at the sites that we're building into. I was recently at the OCP Summit and in the conversations with folks there around what is the top priority for data center operators in 2026. It's power availability, power delivery, and can the industry do anything to operate data centers in a way that would make the demand from the power grid a little bit less?

Can you power down every once in a while? You know, can you do other esoteric things with power infrastructure? When you look at the power densities that are flowing into AI data centers today, that really challenge some of the notions about traditional buildouts, how do you view the power landscape as one of the largest data center suppliers in the industry? and where do you see this going? What gives you hope? Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot more around policy. I think permitting process easier to get more available power on the grid. I think for us and many in the industry, we're looking to pay our full usage.

We for the improvements that would need to be made to the grid, paying for our substations, doing all the things that we need to do to not pass that cost onto consumers, but to take that on ourselves. And if we do that correctly, I think a stronger grain will benefit everyone, right? Across the board, as we become more dependent on energy and electricity in our everyday lives for all the uses that we spoke a little bit about before, we're committed to doing that. We also use off-grid and behind-the-meter type of power solutions. So Bloomfield energy cells are one that we're using.

There's a whole host of others that we're using now we're looking into for future, usage and then really back to your point about giving power back to the grid or what our customers depend on and do that in emergencies, but for the SLAs that we provide and what customers are depending on us for their critical workloads. That's something that I think when we're talking about busting myths, running on fuel generators, give power back to the grid is not something you want to do for an extended period of time. It's horrible for the environment. They're not built to run for that long. I think as technology improves and as we're looking at different ways to do that, we're open to that.

But right now, I just don't see us being there. Now, yeah, you mentioned water too. And I did want to talk to you about this. Obviously, I'm sitting in the Pacific Northwest where I'm like, water, why is that a problem? We have so much. But that's not the case in all of our geographies. How do you approach both water from a standpoint of availability? in the environment, but also utilization and reuse and mindful delivery of water back into the

waste system. How should we view this dynamic from a data center perspective and what's the tax-based approach? Yeah, I mean, we're looking to use reclaimed water and all data centers that it's available. First and foremost, where we're looking to go. That in itself has become a challenge in some the areas that we do business. And so working with the local municipality to ensure that's available priority for us. And our water usage will be dependent on the types of cooling systems that we would install, right? So for instance, if we're looking to do business in an area where there might be more water constraints, then we could build that data center in a way that would require less water in the cooling system.

I'm not an expert on building those out, but I would say is there's different types of technologies that allow for less water or more water depending on what's available and with keeping the sustainability goals of Equinix in mind. Now, water and power, two of the primary issues and they get the most of the headlines for sure in terms of site selection and things that can thwart a new data center deployment. But I know that there are other issues. What other myths are you seeing that are thwarting IT advancement? Yeah, it's a great question, Allison. I would say that one thing that I've heard a lot of are data centers don't bring jobs. Again, it goes back to the difference between the different types of data centers. So as a multi-tenant data center, actually have potentially hundreds of different customers

within the four walls of one of our IBXs is our international business exchanges. That's so complex. What we call our data center because there are such business being transacted within the four walls. And so what I mean by that is there's hundreds of customers that are in the data center. Each one of them brings their own teams. Each one of them is serviced by their own vendors. We have our own vendors that are servicing. There's hundreds of construction jobs in the initial deployment of the data center.

And then as those 100 different customers and all their teams are visiting, and servicing their cage and their cabinets. They're also eating locally. They're staying locally. They're shopping locally. So the economic impact that a data center can have on a community when it's a multi-tenant data center, which is a large number of what we operate,

is hugely impactful to the bottom line of the local municipality. The other thing I would say, too, is we were talking a little bit before just about the advantage of the advantage of the local municipality. or some of the things that data centers bring, if you look at the long-term property tax, because of the tax revenue that a data center brings, we're seeing in certain counties that we do business in

for a long period of time, that their local property taxes are going down in a downward trend, which I would love to see here. I love to Brooklyn, New York. My property taxes are only going up. Yeah, I feel that. And that's something. something that I think would be so useful in a lot of communities in terms of an opportunity to

help the broader economic future. You talked about multi-tenancy, and this is something that's so fascinating to me about Equinix, is that you've got so many different folks into these multi-tenant data centers, which adds so much complexity on how you land infrastructure in these spaces, and what you need to do as a team to have the right data center environment to handle that heterogeneity. How do you work with customers to navigate this landscape and how does this relate to work with players across the value chain? And, you know, I know that Equinex is very involved across the value chain. I see showing up in a lot of conversations and are very deep in them. So how do you view that from a stewardship perspective? Yeah, and we spoke before, right? Interconnection

is really our secret sauce. And so our customers want to make sure that their partners, their own customers and their vendors that they depend on are also within the four walls of Equinix are accessible in the four walls of Equinix. And so as we're seeing unprecedented demand in the space, it's really about ensuring that we have availability for these customers to build where they want to be, which is closer to their people,

closer to their customers. And so we have to make sure that we're constantly ahead the game and providing that space and growth so that we can meet their needs. So when you look at one of our markets, you will have a cloud on ramp next to multiple network providers, next to a drug discovery workload that's using the cloud and offloading data into and out of the cloud. And right next to that can be, you know, another telecom media company. So they're all connecting with each other for data.

And now we're talking about the age of AI and the different uses for that data. We're just seen an explosion and interconnectivity in ways that maybe we wanted have thought before. So you're having a big hyperscaler that was connecting to another hyper scaler. You're having enterprise companies that are connecting into that and they're pulling that data to feed their models. So it's been a really interesting time. we just announced above 500,000 our connections globally. And that number is doing to grow because of what you just talked about, Allison,

is who are inside these data centers and what are the needs that we're helping them fill. No, with all this work across the value shade, I guess one question that I have for you, Jordan, is how do you see this conversation shifting? We've got so many things going on in terms of the requirements for data centers. The compute density is going up, which drive more power, more need for cooling, more real estate, for that matter. If you branch predict, if you go ahead into 2027,

what do you think are the myths in 2027? Are they going to be the same issues? Or are there some other things that are on the horizon that we should have our eye on? Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about what we can enable here at Equinex and the data center industry as a whole. So we're hearing so much about AI and big tech.

And data centers aren't only for AI and big tech. So I do think that it'll be more of shaping that demand and putting the right workloads in the right places. Densities are going up. They will continue to go up. It seems like every two months, Jensen's introducing something new from NVIDIA that requires more power. And so we will be attuned to that and be sure that we're providing the liquid cooling

that our customers are needing to support those workloads. For 2027, I think obviously we're going to continue to hear more and more about AI. I think we're going to be moving really fully into the age of entrance, which we're very well equipped to do that. I talked about 260 locations before. So being able to provide all of those locations for enthrines saying, I think it would be correct. So Jordan, you have described an incredible landscape. Equinix is doing so much work in this space. And I'm sure that we have people that are listening that either want to understand how to engage with you because they're part of the value chain and their infrastructure.

is going to show up in your data centers, or they're looking for a data center source like Equinix to build out their infrastructure. Where do we send folks who want to learn more about your solutions and engage your team? Yeah, I would say to check out our website, right? www.equinix.com slash resources. So that page will actually bring you to the landing site

that will give you more information that you probably ever needed to know about what we do, the different kind of workloads that we are enabling. There's a great white paper that you can highlight. I would encourage you to check it out. It's actually called high performance data centers for dummies.

So we actually put something together. Yeah, so you could go to the website under resources and then white papers and be able to find that and download there. And then I also wanted to put a plug for our latest sustainability report. So that was just released a couple of weeks back. And that's sustainability.ex.com. when we talk about the myth busting, that will give a lot of the stats around just how much we're doing in renewables, green energy, green bonds.

It'll give stats and beta to show what we're doing in those communities and how much power and what we're doing to get to our goal of 100% renewables by January. That's awesome. We will get those links to the documents that you referenced into our marketing of this interview. because I think they're fantastic resources. And of course, keep up the good work, Jordan. Our mothers know what we do now, in part, because of what you're doing at Equinix to build out such incredible data center capacity. I'd love to go on a tour some time of one of your data centers will go on the East Coast.

Please let me know when you're here. I would be happy to take you, Allison. Thank you again for happening today. Thanks for joining Tech Arena. Subscribe and engage at our website, Techorena.a.i. All content is covered. Copyright by techering.