Equinix CEO Adaire Fox‑Martin said the company plans to add as much data-center capacity in the next five years as it did in the prior 27 years, signaling a massive infrastructure expansion to meet cloud, AI and research demand. Equinix operates more than 273 data centers in 36 countries and serves over 10,000 enterprise customers. For research universities, the forecast implies faster availability of colocated compute, networking and interconnection services but also tougher vendor negotiations as providers scale. Campus CIOs should evaluate hybrid-cloud strategies, data residency needs, and the cost trajectory of colocated compute versus building on-premises capacity. Grant offices and research computing groups must factor rising demand for low-latency, high-bandwidth infrastructure into budgeting for AI-enabled projects. The expansion offers partnership opportunities but will reshape how universities source mission-critical compute.