Johannesburg, 28 Aug 2026
Brazil has spent the last two decades building one of the world’s most dynamic digital economies. Now it faces a different challenge: making sure the infrastructure underneath that economy is ready for artificial intelligence.
The country starts from a strong position. Brazil has more than 9,500 registered Autonomous System Numbers, globally second only to the United States, reflecting an unusually large, decentralized, and technically mature Internet ecosystem.
Investment is also accelerating. For example, the hyperscalers are building out additional infrastructure. Microsoft has announced US$2.7 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure investment in Brazil over three years, while AWS plans to invest a further US$1.8 billion through 2034 in its Brazilian data center operations.
Brazil also has an advantage that is becoming increasingly strategic in the AI era: energy. Renewable sources account for approximately 87% of the Brazilian electricity matrix, and the country has the third-largest renewable generation capacity in the world.
The opportunity is clear. But AI is changing what it means to have good digital infrastructure.
AI changes the connectivity equation
The first phase of the AI boom has largely focused on training enormous models in centralised hyperscale data centers. The next phase will increasingly revolve around inference: AI responding to users, applications, and machines in real time.
That requires a different infrastructure model.
McKinsey estimates that global demand for data centre capacity could reach as much as 219 GW by 2030, with around 70% of total demand coming from AI-ready infrastructure.
More compute capacity, however, is only part of the equation.
AI applications depend on data constantly moving between users, enterprises, data centers, clouds, and increasingly specialised AI infrastructure. As this happens, the route that data takes becomes almost as important as the amount of bandwidth available.
A faster Internet connection does not necessarily solve the problem if traffic still takes an indirect route between networks or cloud environments. Those detours increase latency, affect resilience, and make applications less efficient.
For AI inference, financial services, industrial automation, and other real-time applications, milliseconds matter.
This is where interconnection becomes strategic.
Data centres need ecosystems around them
There is a tendency to equate more data centres with a stronger digital economy. But data centres alone do not create digital hubs.
Fibre transports data. Submarine cables connect continents. Data centres provide storage and computing capacity. The ecosystem emerges when networks, clouds, content platforms, enterprises, and AI providers can exchange traffic directly and efficiently.
Internet Exchanges are one of the layers that make this possible, allowing traffic to remain local when appropriate while providing direct routes between different participants in the digital value chain. Strong interconnection can reduce latency, improve resilience, and give companies greater control over how their data moves.
Brazil’s geography makes this particularly relevant.
São Paulo remains the country’s primary digital hub, but Brazil is too large to depend on a single metropolitan area. Rio de Janeiro offers additional access to international subsea routes, while Fortaleza has become a strategic Atlantic gateway connecting Brazil with North America, Europe, and Africa.
The opportunity is therefore to create a more distributed ecosystem in which these hubs complement one another and connect efficiently to international markets.
The market is already asking for more choice
The first year of DE-CIX’s operations in Brazil offers one indication of how quickly demand for this type of infrastructure is developing.
DE-CIX entered Brazil in 2025 with interconnected platforms in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Within its first three months, 41 networks had connected, representing more than 3 terabits of customer capacity, and 76% chose 100 Gigabit Ethernet connections. By mid 2026, close to 80 networks were connected or connecting and customer capacity had passed 5 terabits.
What we have seen in our first year confirms that Brazil is ready for more interconnection choice. Networks are looking not only for capacity, but for neutrality, redundancy and better access to international ecosystems.
Our role is to provide that neutral layer, connecting networks within Brazil while creating efficient routes to clouds, content and digital services in North America, Europe and beyond.
For us, this is an important signal. The market does not need another infrastructure model operating in isolation. It needs complementary, carrier- and data center-neutral options that increase choice and help connect Brazil’s already mature domestic ecosystem with the rest of the world.
Brazil can become an Atlantic AI hub
Brazil’s opportunity therefore extends beyond its domestic digital economy.
Its infrastructure already sits at the intersection of South American, North American, European and African routes. As AI and cloud architectures become increasingly distributed, those Atlantic connections will gain importance.
Compute may be located in one country, a cloud environment in another and the user or enterprise somewhere else entirely. Building a competitive AI economy will therefore depend on connecting data centers, energy infrastructure, terrestrial networks, submarine cables, and cloud platforms across borders.
That is why this discussion cannot happen only at a national level.
It is also at the heart of Atlantic Convergence, taking place in Lisbon from 29 September to 1 October 2026, bringing together leaders from Europe, the Americas, and Africa to discuss how AI, cloud, connectivity and next-generation infrastructure are reshaping the Atlantic digital economy.
Brazil should have a strong voice in that discussion.
The country has already demonstrated that it can build one of the world’s largest digital ecosystems. The next step is making sure its infrastructure is interconnected enough to support the next generation of growth.
In the AI era, leadership will not be determined only by who builds the largest data centres or develops the most sophisticated models.
It will also depend on how efficiently we interconnect them.
The conversation is only beginning, and Lisbon will provide an opportunity to bring Brazil’s perspective into the wider debate about the future of the Atlantic digital economy
As part of Atlantic Convergence, the Atlantic Café Talk “Brazil – Building Latin America’s AI and digital infrastructure future”, on 30 September, will bring together Brazilian and international industry experts to explore this opportunity in more detail.
Carlos Eduardo Sedeh, CEO of SAMM; Charles Ferreira, CEO of Dot a Dot; and Luciano Charlita de Freitas, Senior Digital and Artificial Intelligence Specialist at the World Bank, will discuss how infrastructure, investment, innovation and collaboration can support the next phase of AI-driven growth in Brazil and strengthen Latin America’s position in the global digital economy.
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