Google Ireland boss Adaire Fox-Martin leaving to become CEO of €77bn data centre giant Equinix

Google, which employs 4,500 staff in Ireland and thousands of additional contractors, is set to announce a successor in the coming weeks. It will be the third country boss for Ireland that the tech giant has had in four years.

Ms Fox-Martin, who has been an Equinix board member since 2020, was also Google’s president for ‘Go-to-Market’ for Google Cloud.

Equinix, which is Nasdaq-listed, has a market cap of €77bn.

The multinational firm has extensive data centre business in Ireland, with over $500m invested here and plans to invest more.

Charles Meyers, the CEO being replaced by Ms Fox-Martin, is moving to become the company’s executive chairman.

“I am confident that Adaire's capabilities and experience will be deeply additive to our team and our culture,” he said.

“I am grateful to our board for their support of my desired transition timeline and excited to assume the executive chairman role and to actively support Adaire as she leverages her tremendous global experience to extend and expand our market leadership."

Before working at Google, Ms Fox-Martin held senior global positions at SAP and Oracle.

She began her career as a secondary school teacher for three years in a socially deprived part of London. She moved into IT, climbing the ladder at Oracle in the UK, Australia and Singapore. A company change to SAP in 2007 accelerated her career, leading to the presidency of SAP’s Asia Pacific business and then an executive board seat at the software giant in Germany.

In 2021 Ms Fox-Martin joined Google as the Emea head of the company’s cloud operations, with sales of over €20bn globally per year.

In 2022, she was announced as the head of Google Ireland, succeeding Australian Nick Leeder; she was also confirmed as the company’s president for international cloud sales, extending her remit into Asia.

She has previously defended Ireland’s focus on facilitating energy-hungry data centres, arguing that they are inextricably linked with decarbonisation and the country’s economic growth.

"Coupled with my passionate belief in the vision, mission and values of Equinix, I am excited to leverage my experience in driving business transformations and building for scale to drive continued innovation and growth at Equinix,” she said.

"In today's dynamic digital landscape, Equinix has uniquely amassed global reach, highly differentiated ecosystems, strong partner relationships, and an innovative range of product and service offerings, collectively forming a robust and future-proofed platform to address diverse customer challenges.”