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 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 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 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 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.