• Strong start to 2026 following rapid network expansion (+25%), increased connected customer capacity (+40%), and deployment of the world’s first 800 GE IX port with a 120% increase in 400 GE ports 

Frankfurt, Germany – DE-CIX has further strengthened its position as the world’s leading data center and carrier-neutral Internet Exchange (IX) operator, holding the number one position across Europe, the Middle East, and India, while strengthening its position to become the 3^rd largest in North America. As reported in the latest DE-CIX Annual Report, published today, a strong start to 2026 has been underpinned by a 25% rise in connected networks to more than 4,300, and a 40% increase in total connected capacity to 220 terabits during 2025. The deployment of the world's first 800 GE customer port at DE‑CIX Frankfurt, and 120% growth in 400 GE ports globally, reflects a deliberate push to stay ahead of the capacity demands that AI and cloud are now placing on the Internet's core infrastructure.

A series of strategic new IX launches in 2025 increased the operator’s global footprint by 10% as it celebrated its 30th year of operations. These included deployments in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Mexico City and Querétaro (Mexico), Doha (Qatar), and Houston (the US), as part of a global effort to prepare for next-generation traffic demands and support low-latency data flows, cloud expansion, and AI‑driven workloads.

DE-CIX has stayed on course financially, with global revenues of all company parts growing by €2.3 million (+3.3%) to reach a total of €70.9 million in the 2025 financial year.

New Traffic Peaks

Peak traffic on DE-CIX’s IXs grew strongly during the year, reflecting growth in networks and customer capacity. DE-CIX Frankfurt surpassed 18 terabits per second (Tbit/s), reaching a peak of 18.73. DE-CIX Mumbai grew 63% to 2.76 Tbit/s, while the UAE-IX powered by DE-CIX in Dubai exceeded the one-terabit threshold for the first time (up 35%). DE-CIX New York (+9%) and DE-CIX Dallas (+30%) both finished the year approaching 2 Tbit/s. DE-CIX Chicago’s peak traffic jumped 200%, reaching 672 gigabits per second (Gbit/s), while DE-CIX Istanbul grew by 40% to reach 530 Gbit/s.

With core upgrades undertaken in Frankfurt, New York, Dallas, and Singapore, combined with the widescale rollout of 400 GE and 800 GE‑ready capabilities and the launch of its AI-IX, DE‑CIX continues to advance its global interconnection platform through automation, scalability, and high‑capacity innovation, while ensuring resilience and performance at global scale. As the company transitions toward an Interconnection as a Service model, its focus on API‑enabled provisioning, platform automation, and expanded self‑service capabilities is making interconnection more dynamic, programmable, cloud-native, and AI-ready.

Laying the Foundation for AI-Ready Infrastructure

“We started building for terabit-scale, real-time AI traffic before most networks were asking for it, and that’s reflected in where we stand today,” said Ivo Ivanov, CEO at DE-CIX. “Everybody is coming to the realization that 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. As AI-driven applications reshape industries and societies, the Internet is entering a new phase where latency, capacity, and proximity matter more than ever. At DE-CIX, we see this transformation unfolding in the rapid rise in high-capacity ports, the shift toward terabit-scale exchanges, and the acceleration of network density in both mature and emerging markets. By interconnecting networks and expanding our footprint to more edge locations, we are laying the neutral and resilient foundation required to support the real-time data exchange that current and future AI use cases will demand.”

DE-CIX offers interconnection services in 60 locations in Europe, Africa, North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. Today, accessible from data centers in over 600 cities world-wide, DE-CIX interconnects thousands of network operators (carriers), Internet service providers (ISPs), content providers and enterprise networks from more than 100 countries, and offers peering, cloud and AI connectivity, and other interconnection services. DE-CIX Frankfurt is one of the largest Internet Exchanges in the world, with a data volume of over 48 Exabytes per year (as of 2025) and close to 1100 connected networks.