Former Equinix CEO Steve Smith Joins GI Partners

Steve Smith, the former CEO and president of Equinix who earlier this year abruptly left the company, has been named managing director at GI Partners, the private equity firm known in the data center industry for backing some of the biggest players in data center services.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Smith joined GI in June. A GI spokesperson declined to comment.

He resigned from Equinix in January, after 11 years as chief executive. The company did not explain his surprising departure – Equinix has been one of the industry’s biggest success stories – saying only that he stepped down after “exercising poor judgement with respect to an employee matter.”

Equinix’s chairman and pre-Smith CEO Peter Van Camp has been filling in as interim chief exec of the world’s largest colocation and interconnection provider since.

San Francisco-based GI’s current data center portfolio includes Flexential, the company formed as a result of the $1.67 billion acquisition of ViaWest by GI-backed Peak 10 last year. Chris Downie, former CEO of Telx, which also used to be part of GI’s portfolio, now leads Flexential as chief executive.

GI’s other past portfolio companies include Digital Realty, which it founded and which three years ago acquired Telx, and SoftLayer, now part of IBM.

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The firm also owns several individual data center properties in the US.

Besides data centers and data center providers, GI invests in other types of IT infrastructure companies, as well as companies in healthcare, software, and services sectors.