SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) - Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC is establishing a US$525 million (S$707 million) joint venture (JV) with Equinix that will see both parties develop and operate two data centres in Seoul, South Korea.

The Nasdaq-listed US data centre firm said on Thursday (Jan 27) that its new JV will be in the form of a limited liability partnership with GIC, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.

GIC will own an 80 per cent equity interest in the JV, with Equinix holding the remaining 20 per cent.

According to Equinix, the two new xScale data centres are expected to provide over 45 MW of power capacity to serve the "unique core workload deployment needs" of hyperscale companies, including some of the world's largest cloud service providers.

This will bring Equinix's xScale data centre portfolio to more than US$8 billion across 36 facilities, and more than 720 megawatts (MW) of power capacity, it said.

xScale is the hyperscale data centre programme of Equinix.

Data centres under the xScale moniker offer access to Equnix's suite of interconnection and digital services that tie into hyperscale companies' existing access points at Equinix, thus providing a higher speed of connectivity to their enterprise customers.

The company first entered the Korean market in 2019 with its International Business Exchange facility, SL1.

Equinix said its upcoming xScale data centres in Seoul - to be named SL2x and SL3x - is an expansion that will allow hyperscale providers to continue to grow at Equinix.

"The establishment of xScale data centres in Korea will allow hyperscale providers to add core deployments to their existing access point footprints at Equinix, enabling their growth on a single platform that can immediately span 65 global metros and offer direct interconnection to their customers and strategic business partners," added the company.