At Magic Number, we tend to talk about building a patent portfolio versus buying one. This week, however, Equinix is doing something completely different as they are ignoring patent assets and buying a physical portfolio instead. A data center services provider for global enterprises, financial institutions, and over 500 service providers, Equinix has announced they are buying bare metal provider Packet for a currently undisclosed purchase price. Keeping this in mind, Packet’s last funding round included a valuation of over $100 million.

Equinix has numerous patents in the edge computing space, mainly relating to cloud-based services exchange. Packet, on the other hand, while well known in the Edge space, has no published intellectual property. This acquisition will enhance edge services for Equinix’s customers, as Packet owns more than 20 data center locations worldwide, many at the bases of cell towers, which will create the opportunity for single tenant servers. 

Packet has previously partnered with Vapor IO and EdgeConneX, collocating at cell towers to deploy its bare metal cloud system. Competitors in the space include Google.

In October, Equinix launched a joint venture to build data centers for providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google. This venture is valued at $1 Billion.