Al Avery

Al Avery was a visionary engineer and internet pioneer who co-founded Equinix with a relentless commitment to building a neutral, carrier-dense environment that would eliminate the proprietary bottlenecks of the early telecommunications industry. His defining founding philosophy was a deep belief in the open internet, establishing the technical architecture and operational standards that allowed Equinix to become the mandatory physical location for the world’s largest networks.

Al Avery co-founded Equinix, Inc. in 1998 alongside Jay Adelson, serving as the company’s initial technical architect and leading the development of the highly secure, heavily powered IBX facilities. Under his leadership, Equinix established the technical standards for redundant cooling, diverse fiber pathways, and physical security that became the industry benchmark for mission-critical data centers. Avery instilled a culture of extreme operational excellence and technical rigor, making Equinix the preferred infrastructure partner for the world’s largest telecommunications carriers and internet service providers. He led the company’s early engineering teams through the brutal dot-com crash of 2001, ensuring that the physical infrastructure remained operational and secure even as the company faced near-bankruptcy and massive financial restructuring. Avery stepped down from his operational role in the early 2000s, but his legacy is a company that proved that a neutral, open, and highly secure physical infrastructure was the mandatory foundation for the global digital economy, a philosophy that remains the core tenet of Equinix’s interconnection ecosystem today.