On the desk today · Equinix
The more tenants move in, the more valuable the building gets. That's not a real estate thesis. It's a network effect.
| NASDAQ · EQIX |
ACTION REQUESTED BY DECEMBER 8th
Consider this your notice.
Here's what's happening.
I believe 1,806,000 Americans are going to be millionaires in the coming years from this.
Almost nobody knows about this yet.
Elon buried his next move in a government filing and said nothing.
I found it and I believe it's his biggest play yet, and I'll show you the whole thing…
Why he's hiding it, and what to do before the 8th.
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The clock's already running. Don't let it run out.
The Room Where
Every Network Meets
In 1998, two engineers named Al Avery and Jay Adelson had an idea that the rest of the internet industry had overlooked. The backbone of the internet — the physical networks that carry data across the country — was owned by competing companies. AT&T, Sprint, Level 3, and dozens of others each ran their own infrastructure. But the data on one network needed to reach users on another. Somewhere, physically, those networks had to connect. Avery and Adelson built the meeting point. They called it Equinix — a name combining “equality,” “interconnection,” and “exchange.”
The idea was simple. Build a building. Make it neutral — no single carrier or cloud provider owns it. Invite every network to connect inside. Charge a monthly fee for the space and a separate fee for each physical connection between tenants. The more networks that move in, the more connections become possible — and the more valuable the building becomes for everyone inside it.
I was talking to a friend who runs network operations at a financial services firm. I asked him where his company’s data actually connects to the cloud. He said a building in Ashburn, Virginia — specifically, an Equinix IBX data center. Inside that building, his company’s servers sit in one cage. Amazon Web Services sits in another. A direct fiber cable — called a cross-connect — runs between them. No public internet. No hops. Just a physical wire from one rack to another, inside the same room. He pays Equinix for the cage. He pays Equinix for the cross-connect. And he can’t move — because every other network he needs to reach is also in that building.
That is the meet me room. And Equinix owns more of them than anyone else on earth.
Equinix went public on the Nasdaq in 2000, converted to a REIT in 2015, and has delivered more than 22 consecutive years of quarterly revenue growth. Today, it operates 280 data centers across 77 markets on six continents. Those buildings hold more than 500,000 physical interconnections — direct fiber links between tenants. The company’s name for its data centers — International Business Exchange, or IBX — captures the thesis: not a warehouse for servers, but an exchange where businesses meet.
Adaire Fox-Martin became CEO in 2024. In fiscal 2025, Equinix reported $9.2 billion in revenue — up 8% on a normalized and constant-currency basis. Monthly recurring revenue growth accelerated each quarter throughout the year. AFFO grew 12%. Record annualized gross bookings reached $1.6 billion — up 27% from the prior year. Interconnection revenue alone grew 10%, driven partly by a 57% increase in Equinix Fabric bookings — the company’s software-defined interconnection product that lets tenants spin up virtual connections between networks in minutes.
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That 500,000 interconnection number is the moat. Each interconnection is a physical fiber link between two tenants inside the same Equinix building. When a company plugs into the meet me room, every other tenant becomes a potential connection. If you’re a cloud provider, you want to be in the building where the most enterprises connect. If you’re an enterprise, you want to be in the building where the most cloud providers live. Both sides pull each other in. The building gets fuller. The connections multiply. And leaving means unplugging from every partner, every carrier, and every cloud you’ve physically wired into.
The pricing power is layered. Equinix charges for cabinet space — the physical footprint inside the data center. It charges for power — the electricity that runs the servers and the cooling. And it charges for each cross-connect — the fiber link between tenants. When lease rates come up for renewal, Equinix raises them. In the third quarter of 2025, interconnection revenues hit $422 million — up 10% year over year. Customers absorbed the increase because the alternative — disconnecting from every partner in the building and rebuilding elsewhere — is operationally unthinkable.
Fox-Martin said it plainly in the Q3 2025 earnings release: “Our strong Q3 performance is a clear signal of accelerating momentum, for Q4 and into 2026.” At the June 2025 Analyst Day, Equinix guided for AFFO per share growth of 5% to 9% annually through 2029, with dividend per share growth of 8% or more each year — already the 10th consecutive year of dividend increases.
The flywheel is a network effect applied to physical infrastructure. Every new tenant adds potential connections for every existing tenant. In the third quarter of 2025, Equinix closed over 4,400 deals with more than 3,400 customers and added 6,200 net interconnections. Every new connection deepens the ecosystem. The deeper the ecosystem, the harder it is to leave — and the more attractive the building becomes to the next tenant. AI accelerates this: every company deploying AI models needs low-latency access to cloud providers, data sources, and network carriers. The meet me room is where those connections happen. And Equinix owns 280 of them.
WHY THIS WORKS
The network effect is the moat. More tenants attract more tenants. More connections make each tenant harder to leave. The building gets more valuable with every new customer — the opposite of most real estate, where more tenants just fill space.
500,000 interconnections create physical lock-in. Every cross-connect is a fiber cable the tenant would need to replicate elsewhere. Moving means disconnecting from every partner, carrier, and cloud provider in the building.
22+ consecutive years of quarterly revenue growth. Through the dot-com bust, the financial crisis, the pandemic, and every rate cycle since. Revenue has grown every single quarter since the early 2000s.
10 consecutive years of dividend increases, guided for 8%+ through 2029. AFFO growing 5-9% per year. Dividends growing 8%+ per year. The income compounds — and the company has committed to a five-year growth path.
In 1998, Al Avery and Jay Adelson built a building and made it neutral. Any network could connect. Any cloud could host. Any enterprise could meet any partner inside the same room. Twenty-eight years later, Equinix operates 280 of those buildings across 77 markets on six continents. More than 500,000 physical connections run between tenants. The internet — which feels like it lives everywhere and nowhere — actually lives in specific rooms, in specific buildings, in specific cities. And the company that owns those rooms charges a fee every time one network reaches across the aisle to connect with another. The meet me room doesn’t just house the internet. It is the internet — the physical point where the digital world touches down.
