NVIDIA GTC 2025 | Lindsay Schulz, Equinix

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Lindsay Schulz

Global Principal Technologist

Equinix

play_circle_outline Trends in AI: training models, hybrid AI, agentic AI.

play_circle_outline Equinix's 2030 Pledge: Achieving Climate Neutrality Through Sustainable Liquid Cooling

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Lindsay Schulz, Equinix

Lindsay Schulz

Global Principal Technologist Equinix

Exploring Innovative Liquid Cooling Solutions at Nvidia GTC 2025 with Equinix

Lindsay Schulz, the sustainability lead at Equinix, shares insights from this year's Nvidia GTC event in San Jose, California, with theCUBE Research and video host Savannah Peterson. Schulz discusses Equinix's innovative liquid cooling strategies and their importance for sustainable data center evolution.

Schulz draws on their expertise in sustainable technology solutions and their role at Equinix to engage with hosts from theCUBE, exploring cutting-edge developmen... Read more

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What are the different areas of AI that Equinix is seeing in terms of customer usage and how is Equinix supporting these different use cases? add

What role does liquid cooling play in the overall sustainability mission of Equinix and their data centers? add

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Lindsay Schulz, Equinix

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon data fans and welcome back to San Jose, California. We are here at NVIDIA GTC with our exclusive coverage from the Equinix booth. My name's Savannah Peterson. Very excited to be joined by Lindsay Schulz for our next segment. Thanks for taking the time.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Thank you so much. Yeah, it's nice to meet you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Very nice to meet you. Such an exciting day for you all.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes. Very exciting.

Savannah Peterson

>> I am particularly excited that we get to talk about liquid cooling.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes, absolutely. It is the topic of the day.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, I mean, we talk about supercomputing, talk about computing, we talk about compute. None of this is possible if we don't cool it down.

Lindsay Schulz

>> So true.

Savannah Peterson

>> So break it down for me. What is so unique about the way that Equinix does liquid cooling?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Well, we've been in the data center business a long time, and our whole thing is ecosystem and interconnection. And now with AI, we want these GPUs to be able to get closer and closer together to be able to interconnect. But the way to do that, because they're so dense, right? So getting them closer together, we don't want to spread out the racks anymore. We want to make sure that the cabling lengths can go down. And so, with that, we're able to use liquid cooling, because liquid is 3000 times more efficient at cooling than air. And so, by-

Savannah Peterson

>> 3000 times?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes, 3000 times.

Savannah Peterson

>> I knew it was a lot, but I'm not sure. I did not realize it was 3000 times. Holy moly.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes, exactly. So it's much more efficient and many of our data centers are backed by chilled water today. So really it's just a matter of extending that infrastructure and leveraging it closer to the customer deployment, so that they can activate these GPUs.

Savannah Peterson

>> How are you able to do that? I mean, I know you're all over the world, something like 35 different countries, 74 metros, six continents. How do you continue to push closer to where that data is?

Lindsay Schulz

>> We have some of the top engineers working for our company, and so they're really taking a look at our existing data center design and infrastructure, and then looking at how we can extend that, so we can enable liquid cooling for our customers.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's pretty exciting. Speaking of customers, you are in the AI trenches and the infratrenches all day long. What are some of the trends that you're seeing? What are you hearing from your customers?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, we really see three different areas of AI. So there's the large training models oftentimes just need space and power. So, Equinix has a big build bolder strategy right now, building a lot more data centers, purpose-built for liquid cooling, so that we can support in that use case. Then we're also seeing customers who are leveraging more of the hybrid or private AI models, and those might leverage some of the large language model in the cloud, but then have their own GPU workloads for fine-tuning, things like that. And then, really with our ecosystem network, we have over 3000 cloud providers and 2000 plus-

Savannah Peterson

>> Just a couple.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yeah, just a little bit. 2000 plus network service providers in our portfolio, and so customers can come to Equinix, and interconnect with their cloud and network service provider partners, leverage a model they might be using in the cloud, and then fine tune it on-prem or at an Equinix data center, potentially leveraging liquid cooling. In addition, I know Jensen talked a lot about agentic AI today. That leverages inference, right? Inference, you'll need more nodes at the edge for your customer. And so, again, leveraging those network service providers and interconnection, and ecosystem at Equinix, you can leverage that use case as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, we know 50% of data is at the edge. Inference is what makes AI real. Everything you're talking about is exactly what I can imagine the world needs right now. Have you noticed any trends across different industry verticals, or is everyone running at this at the same velocity?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yeah, I'd say you're seeing some industries maybe take hold a little sooner than others, but I really think that enterprise in general is going to find a use case for AI in some way, shape or form. We might even find your typical data center workload with CPUs, storage, network, and then have a GPU workload right next to it as part of an enterprise deployment.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which is really cool and not something that was possible before.

Lindsay Schulz

>> No, no.

Savannah Peterson

>> Especially at scale like this.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Exactly, exactly. And so, that's why we're seeing liquid cooling down the road. If you want to be able to leverage these GPUs alongside your CPU workloads and you need liquid cooling to do it, that's why Equinix is looking at that, so we can leverage that for our customers moving forward.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that has always really impressed me about Equinix, and I got to hear some data earlier today from Kevin, is the commitment to sustainability. What role does liquid cooling play in the overall sustainability mission of Equinix and your data centers?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yeah. So liquid cooling is really more of an efficiency play, but when you focus on efficiency for your business, it can have long-term sustainability implications. And so, we really think that customers leveraging liquid cooling, they're going to get those efficiency gains out of their equipment, and that will have trickle effect to our facilities as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's going to feel really good to be able to innovate and know that it's going to be more efficient and longer-term, very sustainable and be a long-term solution that grows with your customer.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Exactly. Exactly. And we know AI and all these GPUs, they use a lot of power. So at Equinix, with our commitments to being a hundred percent renewable energy coverage by the year 2030, and to be climate neutral, you can know that when you bring your workloads to Equinix, the power that we're providing to you is coming from a sustainable source.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a nice feeling for the community all around.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes, exactly.

Savannah Peterson

>> Last question for you, Lindsey. If you could snap your fingers and tell everyone in the world or every potential customer, community member, something about Equinix and all the work that you're doing with your partners, and the exciting rollout and announcements even coming out this year for you overall, what do you wish everybody knew that they might not know?

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yeah, I guess I would say Equinix is the world's digital infrastructure company. AI is the future. It's really exciting. And in order to leverage AI in all its use cases, really you're going to need that interconnection. You're going to need those access to all your ecosystems, your partners, and you're going to need to do it in a really complex way. Leveraging this new technology is not easy, so by coming to Equinix, you can make sure you have access to all of those partners, and also let us do the complicated work for you, to help you leverage your GPUs.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's hard enough.

Lindsay Schulz

>> I know, it's hard enough.

Savannah Peterson

>> This transformation is hard enough.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Exactly, yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> You might as well have trusted partners. Lindsay, thank you so much for taking this time.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Thank you so much. Yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> This has been great and insightful.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes.

Savannah Peterson

>> We need more women talking about liquid tooling, is all I'm going to say.

Lindsay Schulz

>> Yes, we do. We do. Yeah. It's great to chat with another woman. Thank you.

Savannah Peterson

>> Absolutely. And thank all of you. I hope if you are excited about liquid cooling, you turn to Lindsay or Equinix to learn more about it. And I hope that you're as inspired as I am after this chat. We're here at GTC in San Jose, California. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.