Equinix is shutting down its bare metal IaaS platform
- Equinix Metal will no longer be sold as of June 30, 2026
- Until then, performance, security and stability updates will be prioritized
- Market dominance by established hyperscalers makes it difficult to compete
Equinix has confirmed that it will retire its bare-metal Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform from June 2026.
The decision to terminate Equinix Metal was communicated to customers in a letter from Chief Business Officer Jon Lin and Chief Sales Officer Mike Campbell, which provided a warning period of more than 18 months.
New features are no longer a priority for Equinix Metal, but the company promises to continue delivering performance, security, and stability features until they disappear.
Equinix’s bare-metal service is a fairly recent addition to the company’s portfolio. It came about after the company acquired a package from a hosting company for $100 million, but won’t be available for about six years until it shuts down on June 30, 2026.
In addition to continuing to provide relevant updates, Equinix also provides support to customers as they transition to alternative solutions, including collocation, managed services and third-party services.
The service was launched to allow companies to deploy x86 and Arm servers in Equinix’s data centers, but CFO Keith Taylor suggested that Metal only accounts for 1.25% of the company’s revenue, which ultimately led until the decision to end support for the product.
The company confirmed: “Equinix is nearing the end of life of our bare metal as a service product as we focus on growing and accelerating parts of our business such as colocation, interconnection and hyperscale.”
More broadly, Equinix signed a joint venture deal in October 2024 to raise $15 billion to build xScale data centers for hyperscaler customers, in a nod to rising demand for AI-driven workloads.
The decision to withdraw from the market is also a reflection of the highly competitive landscape, mainly dominated by hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
