Equinix Opens 8MW SG6 Data Center As Singapore's First Under Green Rules

Equinix opened SG6, its sixth data center in Singapore, on Nov. 6 with 8MW of capacity in its first phase, the company announced. Equinix investFeatured: High-resolution exterior photograph of Equinix SG6 in Singapore following its official commercial opening.ed about $290 million in the nine-story building at Jalan Tukang in western Singapore.

SG6 is the first data center in Singapore built under the country's stricter green rules for new capacity, The Straits Times reported.

Capacity and timeline

The first phase delivers about 1,550 cabinets. At full build-out, Equinix SG6 will offer up to 20MW of IT capacity.

The building opened ahead of plan. When Equinix announced SG6 in November 2024, it set an initial budget of $260 million and targeted an opening in the first quarter of 2027. Baxtel covered that announcement at the time.

Equinix said it already has AI customers at SG6. It declined to name them, citing business confidentiality, according to the Straits Times.

Chosen on efficiency, not speed

Singapore halted new data center development in 2019 and lifted the moratorium in 2022. It then allocated new capacity through a competitive pilot, the Data Centre Call for Application (DC-CFA).

In July 2023, the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) selected four proposals for about 80MW of new capacity. The 80MW pilot went to Equinix, GDS, Microsoft and a consortium of AirTrunk and ByteDance. The agencies judged bids on sustainability, strategic contribution and economic value, not on speed or scale.

> Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information, was guest of honor at the opening. *"Singapore's ambition is not maximum compute; it is maximum value from compute,"* he said. > > \#\# Efficiency targets

Equinix designed SG6 for a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.2, below the pilot's 1.3 ceiling. The building operates at about 27 degrees Celsius, compared with around 25 degrees at typical data centers. Warmer set points cut the energy spent on cooling, per the Straits Times.

SG6 supports liquid cooling for power-intensive GPU infrastructure. Rooftop and facade solar panels, rainwater harvesting and lower-embodied-carbon materials are part of the design, which targets Green Mark Platinum certification.

Equinix in Singapore

Equinix entered Singapore in 2002 and has grown from one facility to six. Its Singapore sites connect to more than 17 subsea cable systems, the company said.

"Singapore sits at the intersection of global commerce, digital technology and sustainable development," said Adaire Fox-Martin, Chief Executive Officer and President at Equinix.

Equinix plans to open a Co-Innovation Facility at SG6 in 2027 with the National University of Singapore's Energy Solutions Hub. Researchers and companies will trial liquid cooling, digital twins and battery energy storage inside a working data center.

Why it matters

Singapore is rationing new capacity. Two allocation rounds since the moratorium total about 280MW. The 2023 pilot awarded 80MW, and in August EDB and IMDA provisionally allocated 200MW under a second round, DC-CFA2. That is about a fifth of the 1,354MW Baxtel tracks in Singapore, the largest market in Asia-Pacific.

Each round raises the bar. DC-CFA2 requires a PUE of 1.25 or better at full IT load, tighter than the pilot's 1.3. SG6's 1.2 design already clears it. Winners must also run at least half their capacity on green energy such as biomethane or low-carbon hydrogen. Equinix won one of the four 50MW allocations, all slated for Jurong Island, DCD reported.

The rules now reach the tenant. Customer servers at SG6 must hold a recognized energy-efficiency certification under Singapore's SS 715:2025 standard, or prove equivalent efficiency, EDB said. DC-CFA2 builds the same standard into the second round. Buyers taking new Singapore capacity now have to qualify their hardware, not just their power draw.

The volume goes next door. Singapore does not aim "to compete for every megawatt," Tan said at the opening. Large builds are landing in Johor, where DayOne added $3.67 billion in bank financing in October. They are also landing in Batam, where Meta signed for GPU capacity at Firmus' planned AI factories. Singapore keeps what Tan called "workloads that benefit from being in Singapore."