Equinix Opens $69M First Phase of Chennai Data Centre as India Network Grows

Equinix has opened its first data centre in Chennai, giving the US giant a fourth operational asset in India to complement its existing facilities in Mumbai.

With an initial investment of $69 million, CN1 will provide 800 cabinets in the first phase and 4,250 cabinets at full buildout, Equinix said late last week in a release. The campus in the southern tech hub’s Siruseri suburb sits on 6 acres (2.4 hectares) of land acquired from the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu.

The AI-ready Chennai facility will link up with three IBX data centres at the Mumbai campus and support high-density, compute-intensive workloads, according to Silicon Valley-based Equinix, the world’s biggest digital infrastructure REIT.

“Our success in building the most interconnected ecosystem for cloud, carrier, content and enterprises in Mumbai will now be extended to customers in Tamil Nadu,” said Manoj Paul, managing director for India at Equinix. “This milestone highlights our commitment to empowering India’s position as a global technology hub while ensuring sustainability and innovation remain at the core of our operations.”

24MW at Full Strength

CN1 is set to provide 3.2 megawatts of IT capacity in the first phase and more than 24MW when fully built, per an Equinix fact sheet. The four-storey building is 28 kilometres (17.4 miles) from Chennai’s central business district and close to planned submarine cable landing sites.

NASDAQ-listed Equinix has a market capitalisation of over $77 billion and operates more than 270 data centres in 36 countries. The company plans to open a fourth Mumbai data centre in 2026 as its fifth facility in India.

The Asia Pacific portfolio includes a $260 million project under construction in Singapore as Equinix’s sixth data centre in the city-state. The nine-storey data centre is expected to open in the first quarter of 2027 and provide 20MW of IT capacity when fully built.

Last October, the company unveiled its entry into Thailand as its fifth Southeast Asian market, with plans to invest $500 million in the kingdom’s digital infrastructure over the next decade. The news came three months after Equinix declared that it was buying three facilities in the Philippines from tech firm Total Information Management as its first assets in that market.

Equinix also plans an expansion in Japan from its current footprint of 17 facilities, the company’s country boss told Nikkei Asia in July of this year.

Rising Digital Power

The opening of CN1 comes as India’s operational data centre capacity reached 1.3GW in the first half of 2025, vying with mainland China (4.6GW), Japan (1.5GW) and Australia (1.3GW) as one of Asia Pacific’s biggest digital infrastructure markets, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Mumbai led India’s cities with 594MW in operation, followed by the Delhi National Capital Region with 146MW, the consultancy said in its APAC data centre update.

Total operational capacity in APAC stood at 12.7GW at the end of June, with 3.2GW under construction and a further 13.3GW in the planning stages, the report said.