DE-CIX Pushes Into North America’s Top Tier as AI Traffic Pounds Internet Infrastructure

Artificial intelligence traffic is hammering Internet infrastructure across the globe. DE-CIX appears ready for the storm.

The Internet Exchange operator announced that DE-CIX New York has climbed into the top three Internet Exchanges in North America, according to public PeeringDB data. At the same time, every DE-CIX exchange in the United States now ranks either first or second in its local market.

That is not a small milestone.

Internet Exchanges, commonly called IXs, sit at the center of Internet traffic flow. They connect carriers, cloud providers, streaming platforms, enterprise networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs). These facilities move enormous amounts of data between networks every second.

Most consumers never hear about them. Yet without IX operators, the Internet would crawl like rush-hour traffic after a football game.

DE-CIX now finds itself sitting in a very strong position at a time when AI workloads are driving massive demand for low-latency and high-capacity connectivity.

AI Traffic Is Reshaping Internet Infrastructure

The latest DE-CIX Annual Report paints a clear picture. AI and cloud workloads are pushing networks into a new phase of infrastructure growth.

Across North America, total connected customer capacity on DE-CIX infrastructure increased 40 percent during 2025, reaching 43 terabits.

That type of growth does not happen by accident.

Artificial intelligence systems move huge amounts of data between cloud platforms, GPU clusters, data centers, storage systems, and enterprise applications. AI inference systems also require extremely low latency. Every millisecond matters.

The old networking model starts to crack under those conditions.

Enterprise customers want direct cloud connectivity. They want multi-cloud architectures. They want automated provisioning. They want scalable interconnection. Most of all, they want speed.

DE-CIX appears to have anticipated this shift years ago.

The company upgraded backbone infrastructure in New York and Dallas during 2025. It also introduced 400 Gigabit Ethernet (400 GE) access capabilities at both locations and prepared infrastructure for 800 GE deployments.

For context, 400 GE and 800 GE refer to ultra-high-capacity network connections capable of moving enormous amounts of data between networks. These connections are built for hyperscale cloud computing, AI workloads, and large-scale enterprise traffic.

In plain English, DE-CIX is building highways where most competitors still have country roads.

Chicago Emerges as a Major Growth Market

One of the more interesting developments came from Chicago.

DE-CIX Chicago recorded the strongest percentage growth across the company’s North American exchanges during 2025. Peak traffic increased 200 percent, reaching 672 gigabits per second.

Connected customer capacity in Chicago also climbed 85 percent to 6.6 terabits.

That kind of jump says a lot about where enterprise and carrier demand is heading.

Ed d’Agostino, Vice President at DE-CIX North America, pointed directly at AI-ready infrastructure and cloud connectivity as key growth drivers.

“When we entered the US market more than a decade ago, our ambition was to build highly connected, carrier- and data center-neutral interconnection ecosystems in markets that were often underserved,” d’Agostino said.

That strategy now appears to be paying off.

New York traffic also continued climbing, reaching 1.93 terabits per second. Dallas increased 30 percent to 1.75 terabits per second.

The numbers matter because traffic growth reflects real demand from real customers. These are not vanity metrics. Traffic levels reveal how much data enterprises, cloud providers, and content platforms actually trust an exchange to handle.

DE-CIX Expands Across the Americas

DE-CIX did more than upgrade existing exchanges.

The company also expanded aggressively across the Americas during 2025.

New distributed Internet Exchange platforms launched in Mexico City, Querétaro, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. DE-CIX Houston also launched through a partnership with DataBank.

The company then activated new interconnection routes linking New York to São Paulo and Mexico to Dallas.

That matters for one major reason: latency.

Data traveling shorter and more direct routes reaches its destination faster. AI systems, cloud applications, financial platforms, streaming services, and enterprise software all benefit from lower latency and improved routing efficiency.

Years ago, many networking conversations focused mainly on bandwidth. Today, proximity matters just as much.

AI applications are changing the equation.

Large language models, inference systems, autonomous systems, and real-time analytics platforms all depend on fast data exchange between distributed infrastructure points.

The Internet is starting to look less like a giant centralized machine and more like thousands of connected edge environments working together simultaneously.

That shift favors companies operating dense interconnection ecosystems.

Global Growth Shows No Signs of Slowing

DE-CIX is also growing well outside North America.

The company now ranks as the leading Internet Exchange operator across Europe, the Middle East, and India.

Globally, connected networks increased 25 percent during 2025, surpassing 4,300 connected networks worldwide.

Total connected customer capacity increased 40 percent globally, reaching 220 terabits.

DE-CIX Frankfurt also deployed the world’s first 800 GE customer port.

That deployment matters more than many people realize.

The networking industry has entered what many engineers call the “terabit era.” AI traffic growth is forcing infrastructure providers to think far beyond traditional enterprise demand curves.

Training AI systems requires enormous east-west traffic movement between servers, GPUs, storage arrays, and cloud environments. Video streaming once pushed Internet infrastructure hard. AI traffic may make video look tame by comparison.

That reality is changing investment strategies across the networking sector.

Financial Performance Remains Stable

Infrastructure growth often comes with heavy capital spending. Yet DE-CIX says revenue continued growing during the 2025 financial year.

Global revenue across all company operations increased by $2.7 million, reaching $83.3 million.

That increase may not sound explosive compared to some venture-backed AI startups making flashy headlines every week. Still, infrastructure businesses tend to grow differently. Slow, steady, predictable growth often wins the race.

In networking, hype comes and goes. Fiber stays in the ground for decades.

AI Is Turning Internet Exchanges Into Strategic Infrastructure

DE-CIX CEO Ivo Ivanov made the company’s position clear.

“The success of AI will not be defined by algorithms alone, but by the infrastructure that allows intelligence to move, scale, and act in real-time,” Ivanov said.

That statement cuts directly to the heart of the AI infrastructure race.

Most public AI discussions focus on models, chips, or software companies. Far less attention goes to the physical infrastructure moving data between systems.

Yet infrastructure determines performance.

A brilliant AI model connected through congested or inefficient networking infrastructure quickly becomes an expensive headache.

DE-CIX appears focused on solving that issue before it becomes a crisis.

The company continues investing in automation, API-enabled provisioning, self-service capabilities, and large-scale interconnection architecture. It is also moving further into what it calls an “Interconnection as a Service” model.

That phrase may sound like technical jargon. Still, the concept is simple. Enterprises increasingly want connectivity services that operate more like cloud services: fast provisioning, programmable controls, flexible scaling, and automated management.

The networking industry has traditionally moved at the speed of paperwork. AI demand is forcing everyone to move faster.

DE-CIX clearly believes the next Internet era belongs to companies prepared for terabit-scale AI traffic. Looking at the company’s latest growth numbers, that bet seems to be paying off.