New contract model has Equinix cover full costs of transmission and power infrastructure, backed by a 20-year take-or-pay agreement for the Hampton, Ga. project

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company® and regional, not-for-profit utility cooperative Central Georgia Electric Membership Corporation (CGEMC) announced a new partnership to protect Hampton, Ga. ratepayers and surrounding communities. In keeping with the company’s commitment to President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, Equinix will cover all grid infrastructure improvements and fund new transmission and power capacity needed to support growth and improve regional grid reliability and affordability for decades to come.

“The United States needs bold infrastructure investment, and we’re proud to support efforts to drive economic growth and cutting-edge innovation while protecting ratepayers every step of the way,” said Equinix Senior Vice President of Global Energy Adrian Anderson. “Our investment in Georgia shows the power of this idea in action. We’ve covered costs through an agreement that is locked in for more than 20 years, giving the community the certainty they can count on.”

The agreement outlines that Equinix will cover any financial obligations CGEMC takes on for grid upgrades and new generation supply for the Hampton project, including unforeseen or shifting costs, guaranteeing that ratepayers are never left to pay costs associated with the project. Equinix will also supply up-front payments for the initial grid upgrade costs, covering a new high-voltage substation and two new high-voltage transmission lines, and early site assessments, modeling and engineering work. To lock in these provisions, Equinix and CGEMC have entered a 20-year “take-or-pay” style contract, meaning Equinix will pay 100% of CGEMC’s costs for serving the contracted demand of the Hampton facility.

“This agreement with Equinix is a model for how utilities and data centers can come together to meet new power requests responsibly and fulfill President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” said CGEMC President & CEO George L. Weaver. “With this agreement in place, CGEMC can improve the reliability of our system, deliver economic opportunity to the region, and ensure large new customers are paying their fair share.”

Equinix has been part of the metro Atlanta community for more than 15 years. Through the Hampton project, it will contribute up to $20 million annually in property tax revenue to the community, funding schools and emergency services, and will create more than 990 jobs from across the local economy. In 2023 alone, its presence contributed $23 million to household incomes in Atlanta from employment and value chain spend. The project will also extend Equinix’s Pathways to Tech program to the region, which educates local students about careers in the data center industry. In 2025, Equinix hosted more than 60 data center tours and education sessions to engage over 1,800 students across 32 locations.

“Companies like Equinix are helping our state and nation stay at the forefront of innovative technology,” said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. “By partnering with Central Georgia EMC in this way, they are making key investments in the local community and protecting ratepayers at the same time.”

“Hampton is proud to welcome this kind of responsible, long-term investment in our community,” said Mayor Ann Tarpley. “Equinix’s commitment to covering these infrastructure costs upfront means our residents and local businesses get the benefits of growth, new jobs, stronger schools, and a more reliable grid, without carrying the financial burden. This is exactly the kind of partnership that helps a city like ours grow the right way.”

This agreement builds off Equinix’s partnerships with PG&E in San Jose, Calif. and ComEd in Northern Illinois and can serve as a model for other projects across the country. 

Additional Resources

Equinix Together: Our five principles of community investmentBlog: We’re not just building data centers. We’re building communities.

About Equinix
Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) shortens the path to boundless connectivity anywhere in the world. Its digital infrastructure, data center footprint and interconnected ecosystems empower innovations that enhance our work, life and planet. Equinix connects economies, countries, organizations and communities, delivering seamless digital experiences and cutting-edge AI—quickly, efficiently and everywhere.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, risks to our business and operating results related to the current inflationary environment; foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; stock price fluctuations; increased costs to procure power and the general volatility in the global energy market; the challenges of building and operating IBX® and xScale® data centers, including those related to sourcing suitable power and land, and any supply chain constraints or increased costs of supplies; the challenges of developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT; risks related to regulatory inquiries or litigation; and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent and upcoming Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

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SOURCE Equinix, Inc.

On Disruption Interruption, Sean Reel explains why accelerators that focus on capital and training can miss the assumptions driving business failure. Ignite Bermuda uses enablement, minimum viable product (MVP) testing, and human-centered AI tools to help entrepreneurs identify barriers and learn faster.

TAMPA BAY, Fla., Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Only 57.3% of U.S. business establishments born in 2018 were still operating five years later, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet many accelerator models still treat failure as a normal cost of entrepreneurship instead of asking why businesses with capital, skills, and training continue to collapse. On this episode of Disruption Interruption, host Karla Jo Helms (KJ) speaks with Sean Reel, Executive Director of Ignite Bermuda, about why capital and training cannot rescue a company based on untested assumptions. Reel argues that founders need more than funding and education; they need a way to identify barriers before they spend valuable resources. “If you gave them the skills and the money, they would still fail,” Reel says.

The Accelerator Model Misses the Real Problem

For Reel, the broken part of the accelerator model is not education. Many programs provide training, tools, capital, and access, but still fail to change the founders’ underlying assumptions. The result is that entrepreneurs may become better prepared to execute a plan that was flawed from the start.

That problem does not stop with startups. Reel argues that midmarket and large companies are now facing the same pressure to rethink how they test ideas, protect resources, and respond to disruption. “What do we need to do today to innovate faster than we’ve ever innovated before?” he says. In his view, the lesson is to “take everybody on an entrepreneurial journey,” where failure is not treated as collapse, but as the place where learning happens.

Too many companies still spend heavily before they know whether the market will support the idea. Reel points to the minimum viable product (MVP), as a way to challenge that habit. “MVPs are about taking the smallest amount of money, smallest amount of time, and testing an assumption,” he says.

Building People Who Build Businesses

Instead of a traditional coaching model that tells founders what to do, Ignite Bermuda uses an enablement model that helps entrepreneurs reach the answers themselves. “I won’t tell you what to do,” he says. “I’ll guide you to the self-awareness where you can make your own decisions.”

That approach has helped the company defy the standard failure curve. Reel says the organization has reached an 80% success rate while supporting 600 businesses, creating 250 jobs, and adding about $10 million to Bermuda’s local gross domestic product each year. In one case, he describes working with an entrepreneur who believed she needed to grow from $7,000 to $10,000 a month before leaving her job. After being asked what problem she was solving and for whom, she repositioned the business and generated $70,000 in seven days.

The accelerator is applying the same logic to Spark AI, a small language model built around Bermuda-specific knowledge and the organization’s enablement model. The goal is not to let AI tell founders what to do, but to help them ask better questions. “It’s not AI. It’s not artificial,” Reel says. “It’s just another tool, but if you don’t put the human factor in, good luck.”

Ignite Bermuda’s mission is broader than startup formation. Reel says the organization has helped build companies, save struggling businesses, and support entrepreneurs solving local problems, from health monitoring to affordable funerals. But the core output is human capability. “We’re not building great businesses,” he says. “We’re building great people who will build great businesses.”

Links

Disrupting the AI Hype: Building Tech for Real-World Economic Survival with Sean Reel

Disruption Interruption is the podcast where you will hear from today’s biggest Industry Disruptors. Learn what motivated them to bring about innovation and how they overcame opposition to adoption.

https://omny.fm/shows/disruption-interruption/disrupting-the-ai-hype-building-tech-for-real-world-economic-survival-with-sean-reel

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanreeluk 
Company Website: http://www.ignitebermuda.com 

About Disruption Interruption™
Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries — MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping, logistics, and more — and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more. But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”? Time to Disrupt and Interrupt with host Karla Jo “KJ” Helms, veteran communications disruptor. KJ interviews bad asses who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. She delves into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that uncover common traits — and not-so-common — that are changing our economic markets… and lives. Visit the world’s key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs at www.disruption-interruption.com.

About Sean Reel
Sean Reel is the executive director of Ignite Bermuda, an entrepreneurship ecosystem and accelerator focused on helping founders build stronger businesses through mindset, enablement and practical testing. Over seven years, he has helped Ignite support 600 businesses, create 250 jobs and contribute about $10 million annually to Bermuda’s local economy. Reel is also an entrepreneur working on ventures including Spark AI and Smart Hydration, and his work centers on helping founders, companies and communities use limited time, money and resources more effectively.

About Karla Jo Helms
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR® Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected. Being an alumnus of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill into the good graces of public opinion — Karla Jo operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way, and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

References

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Business Employment Dynamics twentieth anniversary! bls.gov/spotlight/2024/business-employment-dynamics-twentieth-anniversary/U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024, March 4). 1-year survival rates for new business establishments by year and location. bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/1-year-survival-rates-for-new-business-establishments-by-year-and-location.htm

Media Inquiries:
Karla Jo Helms
JOTO PR™
727-777-4629

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SOURCE Disruption Interruption

New 60-191 family combines high-current power switching and low-current sense switching in a compact 4U form factor

TEWKSBURY, Mass., Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Pickering Interfaces, a leading supplier of modular signal switching and simulation solutions for electronic test and verification, has introduced the 60-191 LXI high current & sense SPST switching family. The company’s highest-current switching products to date, the new family can switch signals up to 80 A and 300 V while simplifying distribution, sequencing, and management of multiple high-current power supplies in automated test systems.

The 60-191 family is available in four standard configurations, combining up to twenty 40 A and four 80 A hermetically sealed SPST-NO contactors with a complementary number of 1 A SPST relays for sense lines. High-current and sense-line connections are via standard front-panel screw-terminal connections. Custom relay combinations and alternative connector options may be requested.

Installed between multiple high-current power supply units (PSUs) and a device or system under test, each unit can programmatically connect and disconnect each PSU’s positive and negative outputs and their associated high- and low-sense lines. Engineers can control every relay independently or operate two high-current and two low-current relays as a group with a single command, simplifying the switching of the four connections commonly used by a PSU.

“High-current switching in automated test systems is often implemented as a custom assembly using contactors and digital output modules,” said Steven Edwards, Head of Product Management at Pickering. “The 60-191 family provides fully tested, easily maintainable LXI alternatives in standard 4U enclosures, with the switching capacity, control features, and software support needed to integrate high-current supplies more quickly.”

Each unit includes a sequencing service that can store up to 5,000 predefined switching sequences and execute them through software or configurable hardware triggers. By storing sequences within the LXI controller, the units can reduce host transactions and system latency. Front-panel LEDs indicate switch status to simplify programming and debugging, while relay cycle counting supports preventive maintenance and balances usage across available paths.

The 60-191 units are controlled through an LXI 1.5-compliant 1000Base-T Ethernet interface using an API or built-in soft front panel. IVI and direct I/O drivers support Windows and Linux and common development environments, including LabVIEW, Python, C/C++, C#, MATLAB, and Simulink.

Typical applications include EV battery and high-drain automotive electronics testing, fuel-cell and hydrogen-electrolysis research, solar inverter and energy-storage testing, aerospace development, and functional or production testing of high-current power supplies.

All four standard configurations include a three-year warranty and Pickering’s guaranteed long-term product support. For product details, availability and local sales contacts, visit www.pickeringtest.com.

About Pickering Interfaces
Pickering Interfaces designs and manufactures modular signal switching and simulation products for electronic test and verification. Its PXI, LXI, and PCI solutions are used in test systems worldwide across automotive, aerospace and defense, energy, industrial, communications, medical, and semiconductor applications. 

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SOURCE Pickering Interfaces