DigitalBridge-owned Scala Data Centers plans to build an enormous data center campus in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The company has pitched developing a campus that could cost R$300 billion (US$50bn) and grow to 4.75GW. But, for now, it will build a 54MW data center for an investment of R$3bn (US$500m).
Scala has already acquired around 700 hectares for the 'AI City,' in the municipality of Eldorado do Sul, 32 kilometers from Porto Alegre.
“This is our response to the demand for artificial intelligence," Marcos Peigo, Scala CEO, told DCD Brazil, which first reported the news.
"What AI is bringing is more than an opportunity for the company; it is an opportunity for the country," he said (translated).
"When we look at all the aspects in which Latin America has fallen behind in terms of latency, lack of application maturity, customers’ fear of evolving due to the dollar and the lack of regulation, this has changed. Now we are in an advantageous position, because we have the basic transmission infrastructure and the capacity for sustainable energy generation that no one else in the world has."
Peigo pointed to grid constraints in regions like Virginia, the world's largest data center market with around 4GW of capacity. “If you want to open a new data center campus in Virginia, you’re going to have to wait about seven years in line to get power," he said.
"Meanwhile, our country has 12GW of power ready on the transmission grid, and we’ve been able to lock in 5GW of that 12GW.”
He claimed that there is currently 4-6GW of demand for data centers that can't be met in North America, which could move to Brazil - although this does not seem to account for regulatory or latency concerns.
Scala plans to open its 54MW data center within two years, including waiting for approval and 12 to 18 months of construction. The technical feasibility report for the grid connection was received last week.
This facility alone would be one of the largest data centers in Brazil, which has a total capacity of around 777MW. It would also be larger than the total data center market of Argentina and Uruguay.
The initial data center is set to serve both traditional cloud and AI workloads, while the following facilities - should they be built - are set to be AI only. The speed of expansion, and the ultimate actual final size, will depend on demand.
For comparison, Microsoft Azure's total data center footprint is estimated to be around 5GW. The company is, however, believed to be considering developing a 5GW supercomputer in the US for OpenAI.
Two companies - one likely to be Microsoft - are in talks to develop $125bn, 5-10GW data centers in North Dakota. This week, Oracle said it would build a 1GW data center powered by three small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in the US.
Of officially announced projects, this AI City would be the largest data center campus in the world - should it be fully built out.
