en.Wedoany.com Reported - Ascenty plans to invest $1 billion in its Latin American data center business, with 85% of the funds allocated to Brazil (the majority), Chile, and Mexico. The company's Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Strategy, Marcos Siqueira, stated that this investment trend is primarily driven by two demands: key cloud projects progressing normally, and AI projects awaiting regulatory decisions or beginning to shift to other countries.
In a conversation with Mobile Time, Siqueira noted that delays in Redata's approval have the greatest impact. However, given that the data center issue is crucial to the country and has support from both the opposition and the ruling party, he is optimistic about approval. In his view, the national data center policy is a "large ecosystem" with the potential to attract massive investments related to AI, such as creating jobs for data centers, building power transmission lines, increasing telecom investments, and boosting the local ICT industry.
Reducing equipment costs is key, as these can account for up to one-third of the savings in data center construction investment, especially for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) critical to AI training. Siqueira illustrated with specific data that a 100MW data center costs approximately $1 billion, including infrastructure, power, land, and construction. However, when equipment is added, client investment ranges between $4 billion and $5 billion, including taxes, with the tax burden accounting for one-third of the total. Therefore, tax incentives can encourage the import of equipment not manufactured in Brazil.
In Ascenty's view, Brazil is fully positioned to become a strategic hub for the global data center ecosystem. The country's power consumption is less than its supply, 90% comes from renewable sources, electricity costs are up to 20% lower than in the United States, and it has good submarine cable connectivity, nationwide fiber optics, and strong energy and telecom infrastructure capabilities.
In this context, Siqueira expects that primary demand will still come from hyperscale cloud providers and their cloud services embedding more AI. Secondly, local demand from low-latency AI inference, especially in major city centers.
Regarding specific projects, Ascenty recently announced the expansion of its São Paulo campus, with the SPO05 data center becoming operational and construction beginning on SPO06. SPO05 was announced in July 2025, costing R$300 million. SPO06 is expected to involve an investment of R$600 million and is planned to go live in May 2027.
As a joint venture between Digital Realty and Brookfield, Ascenty operates 26 data centers and has 12 under construction, with 21 located in Brazil. The remainder are distributed across Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. However, the Colombia data center has not yet been activated due to insufficient demand. The construction strategy is based on three pillars: using self-generated energy in partnership with Casa dos Ventos; data centers do not use water for cooling; and architecture design is compatible with the latest GPUs and CPUs, although it does not influence the client's selection process.
With over 4,000 kilometers of proprietary fiber optic network connecting its data centers, the company provides network services to hyperscale cloud providers and large enterprises in the United States and Asia.
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