Data Center Provider Equinix Buys San Jose Office Buildings

San Jose continues to attract interest in data centers as artificial intelligence and its associated computing needs continue to grow.

National data center provider Equinix, acting through an affiliate, bought six buildings in south San Jose for a total of $51 million, the Mercury News reported. Real estate investment firm Kennedy Wilson sold the properties at 6800 Santa Teresa Boulevard, 140 Great Oaks Boulevard and 6541 Via Del Oro. Kennedy Wilson bought the buildings in 2020 for $53.5 million.

Equinix is no stranger to the area and has been active in getting data centers online in recent months.

In January, an Equinix-owned data center at 123 Great Oaks Boulevard — across the street from the recently purchased 140 Great Oaks — added 20 megawatts of power, bringing the total electrical capacity there to 40 megawatts. That upgrade made the Equinix data data center the first project to beef up its energy capacity as part of a deal between the City of San Jose and Pacific Gas & Electric that is designed to guarantee power delivery for large-scale energy users such as data center operators.

Some property owners in San Jose are looking to convert some sites into data centers to meet the growing demand for computing power.

Late last year, an affiliate of Bay Area real estate firm Menlo Equities proposed turning an office and research building at 300 Holger Way into a nearly 100,000-square-foot data center. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company and maker of the semiconductor chips used in much AI computing, is leasing the building.

In October, a Goodman Group affiliate bought a business complex at 350 and 370 West Trimble Road from an LBA Realty affiliate in a $200 million all-cash deal. LBA originally proposed a mixed-use development at the 47-acre site before submitting a new permit early last year to build a 207,950-square-foot data center on the site.

The Bay Area remains a hotspot of AI and tech development that brings in investors from around the world. In 2024, nearly $70 billion of the world’s $134.6 billion in venture capital funding went to the Bay Area, according to a JLL report released last year. — Chris Malone Méndez