interconnection
(7)
Digital Realty
The company you have probably never heard of owns the buildings your favorite apps actually live in. Here is how a REIT born from bankruptcy auctions became the landlord of the AI boom.
Illumine-i
Illumine-i is a power and design engineering firm that provides turnkey engineering support for solar PV, battery storage, EV charging, substations, and grid infrastructure. Founded in 2015 by former Tesla and Sunrun engineers, the company works with EPCs, developers, independent power producers, and lenders - handling everything from preliminary feasibility to construction-ready permit packages, plus independent and owner's engineering. It has engineered more than 3 GW of clean energy across 200,000+ projects and complements its solar roots with construction-focused BIM/VDC and MEPF design services.
Equinix
Equinix is a global digital infrastructure company that designs, builds and operates carrier-neutral colocation data centers - its International Business Exchange (IBX) centers - where enterprises, cloud providers, networks and financial institutions place equipment and interconnect directly with one another. Founded in 1998 on the principle of neutrality, Equinix has grown into the world's largest data center and interconnection platform, operating a programmable network of more than 270 data centers across roughly 75+ markets in 30+ countries. Structured as a real estate investment trust (REIT) since 2015, the company pairs physical colocation with software-defined services such as Equinix Fabric, Metal and Network Edge, positioning itself as the meeting place for hybrid multicloud and, increasingly, distributed AI workloads.
Evocative
Evocative is a Los Angeles-based digital infrastructure provider that delivers enterprise-grade colocation, bare metal servers, carrier-neutral network, and managed services. Built largely through acquisition, its footprint spans roughly 20 data centers and dozens of Points of Presence across strategically located North American, European, and Asian metros. Evocative positions itself as a carrier-neutral, edge-ready alternative to the largest colocation operators, giving enterprises and service providers full control over performance, connectivity, and scaling for workloads that increasingly include AI.
Orenda, Inc
Orenda, Inc is a Brooklyn-based renewable energy company that develops, builds, and operates standalone battery energy storage projects across densely populated Downstate New York. Founded in 2020, Orenda handles the full lifecycle - site diligence, permitting, interconnection, engineering, construction, financing, and ongoing asset management - and pairs it with an AI/ML software platform that forecasts energy prices and optimizes when its battery fleets charge and discharge. The company claims roughly a 34% market share in New York City with a development pipeline of about 920 MW / 2.7 GWh, and is co-developing roughly 675 MW of distributed storage with the New York Power Authority.
Bill Grinstead
Bill Grinstead is the co-founder and CEO of Orenda, a Brooklyn-based renewable energy company building standalone battery storage that keeps New York City's overloaded grid from buckling. A former finance professional who cut his teeth at Susquehanna International Group and the $7B private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners, Grinstead traded markets for megawatts in 2020. Under his lead, Orenda has grown into one of the largest energy storage developers in downstate New York, claiming roughly a 34% share of the NYC storage market and a development pipeline measured in the hundreds of megawatts, while handling everything from site origination and permitting to construction and live operations.
Adaire Fox-Martin
Adaire Fox-Martin is CEO and President of Equinix, the world's largest data-center company. A Trinity College Dublin graduate who once taught school in Ireland, she spent 18 years at Oracle, 14 at SAP, and three at Google Cloud before taking the top job at Equinix in 2024. She runs 280 data centers across 77 markets and calls the internet 'the fourth utility'.