Chennai, India, September 19, 2025- Equinix, a global leader in digital infrastructure, officially inaugurated its CN1 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Chennai, India, with a USD 69 million investment. The launch marks Equinix’s first facility in the city and strengthens its presence in a country where demand for AI, cloud, and interconnection services is accelerating at a record pace.
Located on nearly six acres of SIPCOT land in Siruseri, about 28 kilometres from Chennai’s central business district, CN1 is a four-story site designed for high-density workloads. When fully developed, it will offer capacity for 4,950 cabinets, equivalent to 25 megawatts of power. The initial phase brings 850 cabinets and 3.24 MW online, with scalability built in.
Strategically situated near Chennai’s anticipated submarine cable landing stations, CN1 provides low-latency connectivity to international networks and directly interconnects with Equinix’s three Mumbai data centers, including the newly opened MB4. This dual-city redundancy positions enterprises, hyperscalers, fintech firms, and startups to build resilient digital infrastructure across India.
The facility has been engineered with sustainability in focus, supporting liquid cooling expansion and targeting LEED Silver certification. Equinix has pledged that CN1, alongside its broader Indian portfolio, will transition to 100% renewable energy as capacity grows, aligning with the company’s global climate-neutrality target for 2030.
Equinix India Managing Director Manoj Paul highlighted the strategic logic of the expansion at the launch event: “Chennai made sense, its thriving tech landscape, proximity to subsea cables, and government incentives position it as a natural extension of our Mumbai hub.”
The opening underscores Chennai’s emergence as a major digital hub, complementing Mumbai and contributing to India’s USD 1 trillion digital economy ambitions by 2027–28. Analysts expect Chennai to capture around 20% of India’s data center market growth, projected to reach USD 10 billion by 2027.
Equinix entered India in 2021 through its acquisition of GPX Global Systems and now operates 260 data centers worldwide, including 56 active projects in Asia-Pacific. CN1 was first announced in June 2024 with a USD 65 million commitment and slated for a Q4 2024 opening, but construction was completed ahead of schedule, leading to today’s launch.
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