A new artificial intelligence (AI) data center campus has been announced in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.

The “Rio AI City” project was revealed at the opening of the Web Summit Rio on 27 April. The project, which will be located in the city’s Olympic Park, has an initial planned capacity of 1.8GW, expected to come online by 2027, with a view to expand to 3GW by 2032.

When completed, the project will reportedly be the largest data center campus in Latin America and one of the largest worldwide.

Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, who announced the project, said that its primary aim is to boost the city’s role in the growth of AI and consolidate Rio as the “Innovation Capital of Latin America.” “We want to drive the AI ​​revolution and ensure that it serves the public well,” said Paes.

Paes added that the campus will be powered entirely by clean energy, and will have an “unlimited” supply of water available for cooling.

The data center campus is expected to create the conditions for the installation of new supercomputers, such as the existing Santos Dumont, located at the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing and managed by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The campus will also be directly connected to Porto Maravilha, a large-scale urban regeneration project which aims to restore the old port district of Rio. According to the municipal government, the area will act as a hotbed of sustainable innovation, with the computing power of the Rio AI City project used to support the growth of startups in the area.

According to Data Center Map, Rio currently has 21 operational data centers. The city is home to operators including Ascenty, Elea, and Equinix. Last month, Equinix launched its third data center in the city, known as RJ3.

This article was first published on DCD’s Spanish language website.