American Equinix plans third data centre in Lisbon

US company Equinix plans to install a third data centre in Lisbon. The investment is planned for 2027, but the timetable is “flexible”. This is because the company is still completing the construction of its second data centre in Portugal, which is due to open in June, the company’s leader told ECO.

According to the managing director of Equinix Portugal, Carlos Paulino, the construction of Equinix’s second data centre in the country, located in Prior Velho, next to the first, is nearing completion, in an investment that will amount to 100 million euros if “all phases” are taken into account.

Named LS2 International Business Exchange, Equinix Portugal planned to open this new infrastructure in the first quarter of 2025, but the deadline will slip slightly, confirms the manager, pointing out that this centre will be ready for service in June this year.

“We started our operation in Lisbon in 2000, with our first building”, called LS1. “The truth is that we have the building complete. We’re reaching 100% occupancy, which is why, in 2018, we decided to start constructing the building next door, to continue our business”, he explains.

That said, “we’ve fulfilled the alignment we had and our current alignment already has the next development in Portugal in mind”, announces Carlos Paulino. “We’re already thinking” of leaving “the solution ready to start the next” data centre, an idea that hasn’t yet come to fruition, but which will “necessarily be in the Lisbon area”.

Asked how much is planned for this new data centre, which should be called LS3, Carlos Paulino says that the company does not yet have “an estimate of the value”.

The news of Equinix’s third data centre in Lisbon comes at a time when the country is trying to position itself to attract more investment in data centres, especially from abroad.

The country is seen as attractive for the installation of data centres due to the availability of land for construction, access to submarine cables that cross oceans and connect continents, the availability of renewable energy at affordable prices and its low propensity to extreme weather conditions.

Specifically in the Lisbon region, there are other investments underway in this sector. This is the case of AtlasEdge, which plans to build two data centres in Carnaxide, where it is expected to invest 500 million euros over the next few years. Merlin Properties is also building a new data centre in Vila Franca de Xira, together with Edged Energy, which is scheduled to be operational in 2027.

This week, on ECO’s Proof of the Future podcast, Microsoft Portugal’s chief technology officer, Manuel Dias, said that the technology company could eventually go ahead with the construction of a data centre in the country: “We would be very, very pleased to be able to do this in Portugal”, although there is no project planned at the moment.

Demand for this type of infrastructure has increased, especially in recent years, as more companies adopt the cloud, data traffic increases and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which require very high computing capacities, penetrate society.