Equinix has added Australian sovereign AI provider SouthernCross AI (SCX) to its Fabric AI ecosystem, as the service provider looks to expand access to localised AI infrastructure across its platform. The move will see SCX deliver ASIC-powered AI inferencing capacity through Equinix Fabric, enabling enterprises and government agencies to connect directly to sovereign compute resources via private, low-latency links.
The deployment builds on SCX’s existing presence at Equinix’s SY5 facility in Sydney and is expected to expand into additional Equinix sites nationwide as part of a broader rollout. “SCX represents exactly the kind of innovative sovereign AI provider that enterprises and government agencies need to access through Equinix Fabric,” said Chris Johnston, interim managing director of Equinix Australia. “
Through the integration, organisations connected to Equinix Fabric will be able to access SCX’s inference nodes without routing data through public internet infrastructure or offshore cloud environments, reflecting growing demand for sovereign AI capabilities. SCX CEO and co-founder David Keane said the model was designed to keep data local while scaling access to advanced AI infrastructure. “This is how we scale Australian AI – not by moving data overseas, but by making world-class inference available where Australian data already lives,” he said.
National rollout backed by new AI hardware
The expansion will be supported by next-generation hardware from SambaNova Systems, with SCX confirming it will deploy the company’s SN50 Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit across its national network. The SN50 is designed for large-scale AI inference workloads, offering higher throughput and lower power consumption compared to GPU-based systems, and enabling deployment within existing data centre environments.
SCX said new nodes will be rolled out across multiple Equinix facilities in Australia through 2026 and 2027, forming a distributed network of sovereign AI capacity spanning Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and other locations.
SambaNova chief revenue officer Harry Ault said the partnership reflects growing regional demand for sovereign AI infrastructure. “Australia is at the forefront of that transformation,” he said. “The deployment of the SN50 across SCX’s national network will be a defining moment for Australian AI.”
The development highlights Equinix’s strategy of positioning its Fabric platform as an interconnection layer for emerging AI ecosystems, linking infrastructure providers, enterprises, and government users with low-latency access to compute.