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On RCR’s AI TechTalk, Elena Winters, vice president of international business at Elea Data Centers, talks about what makes Brazil unique in terms of renewable power, massive scale, and highly favorable land use and tax frameworks.

Known as the “bridgeway to Latin America,” Elea Data Centers builds sustainable, high-performance AI data centers and cloud computing services across the LATAM region. Elea’s Rio AI City  will be the largest AI-ready data center campus in Latin America, breaking ground next year around the heart of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Park. RCR AI TechTalk discusses with Winters the unique features that make São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and other Brazilian metro-areas increasingly attractive to hyperscalers, multinationals and large enterprises.

A renewable footprint that scales

Elea Data Center’s Rio AI City is slated to break ground in 2027, and will be one of the largest sustainable digital infrastructure initiatives in the world, aiming for an initial 1.5 GW of capacity and potentially expanding to 3.2 GW. The masterplan features two-dozen or more data center buildings alongside offices, retail businesses, hospitals, as well as schools, colleges, and hotels. It will be designed by Hyphen and supported by Oracle, Nvidia, local energy providers, and other partners, including institutional support from theRio de Janeiro City Hall, CCPar, and Invest.Rio.

For U.S.-based hyperscalers, the project’s immediate access to “green power” and high-density, AI-ready capacity (at about 100kW per rack) is a harbinger of what’s to come. “Brazil is over 90% green power because of hydro, wind, and additional capacity, which will come from solar and thermopower,” explains Winters, noting that by comparison, the U.S. and the rest of the world are currently at about “39% renewable capacity.” She further explains, “LATAM is projected to have 8.5 GW of capacity by 2034, with Brazil becoming a major part of that because of its unique integrated transmission system, which allows clean energy to be moved efficiently across the entire country.”

Winters points out that “unlike countries with fragmented power markets, Brazil has 16 subsea cable networks and extensive fiber.” That vast subsea and fiber connectivity gives Elea Data Centers low-latency connectivity and a robust data flow for high-density AI workloads. For example, its EllaLink connects to Europe and V.tal connects to the U.S. This robust renewable energy infrastructure is making Brazil increasingly attractive to U.S.-based hyperscalers and others seeking highly sustainable operations to meet ESG goals and net-zero commitments.  

“Brazil can get electricity efficiently across most of the country through a single interconnected grid…which is powerful, as is it enables the renewable energy to travel at scale,” explains Winters. “This also creates flexibility for infrastructure investors and hyperscalers, because they don’t have to be located right next to the energy source to benefit from the cleaner power.”

When it comes to Rio AI City, Winters predicts Rio de Janeiro could become the “Silicon Valley” of the Brazilian marketplace. “It has the same number of subsea systems  coming into the metro as São Paulo, and from an integrated connectivity perspective, the [digital infrastructure] story is there.” That story, she says, begins with the land around the Olympic Park and the abundance of power there, which makes it ideal as a mixed use, urban-residential “ecosystem” where thousands of jobs can be created and digital infrastructure can co-exist with residential areas. “A lot of people think of São Paulo as the hub for data center development, but Rio has all the same elements, which his why RIO AI city will be successful,” she believes.

Zoned land and favorable permitting

Other characteristics that Winters believes will make Brazil increasingly attractive for hyperscalers is the abundance of buildable land and energy-linked zoning, as well as a favorable tax and regulatory framework. For example, there are government initiatives to remove friction for large-scale projects like RIO AI City, and, in places like São Paulo and Rio de Janiero, land is being repurposed in old industrial zones so there is rapid “time to power” from high-voltage substations that already exist.

“What’s cool about these types of projects is they are designed to attract investment, tourism and innovation,” says Winters, emphasizing that for developers, “potential tax incentives, faster permitting pathways, and strategic priorities at municipal and state levels” are making Brazil an attractive destination.

“There’s no regulation that says AI training can’t happen in Brazil so it’s absolutely possible and we are seeing interest from the hyperscale companies based in the U.S.,” contends Winters. “If they have power issues for 2026-2027, they’re looking at where they can they go that has the power available, a connected grid, distributed fiber networks, and zoned land permitting to grow and scale. That is Brazil.”

Winters believes that from a regulation perspective, there are areas Brazil can improve to further attract U.S. investors, and she sees discussions taking place around  tax incentives, like the REDATA program, and others that could help companies come in and train models and then export those back to the U.S.”  

REDATA (Tax Regime for Datacentre Services), currently under discussion in the Brazilian Senate, aims to create exemptions for certain projects in order to expand the number of data centers and to make Brazil a digital infrastructure hub.

Talent Pipeline

“Brazil as a country and LATAM as an entire region is very strong story, not only from a renewables perspective, but also connectivity and jobs.” She emphasizes that the growing Brazilian talent pipeline includes “lots of students coming out of more tech- and AI-related industry fields here…crucial for the evolving developmental of data centers.”

Elea is a big part of Brazil’s plans to cultivate technical talent, including the existing Plano Brasileiro de Inteligência Artificial (PBIA), or the Brazilian Artificial Intelligence Plan, for the period 2024–2028, which will invest an estimated R$ 23 billion (~$4 billion) to train AI professionals across all levels of education, from primary school to postgraduate research.

“When it comes to what hyperscalers go through in terms of operations, security, design…it’s important to have an understanding of what’s important,” says Winters, whose background gives her a unique “buyers” perspective because of her previous roles at Meta, Oracle, and Microsoft, where she was a part of data center site selection and global capacity planning efforts. “I know how important it is to prove yourself in how you deliver and operationalize a facility once it’s live and active.”

Elea’s belief in diversification

As part of the boost to education and training for AI-centric careers, Elea is a pushing to increase female representation in the digital infrastructure field. As of mid-2025, 34% of Elea’s leadership positions were held by women, a figure that exceeds typical industry averages, with a goal of raising that to 40% by 2027. Winters, who co-founded the Women’s Tech Forum, which currently has more than 4,000 members.

Started a decade ago, the forum aims to connect women in the cloud, networking, and data center infrastructure industry, answering two primary questions: “why aren’t there more women in our industry?”and “how come more of us don’t know each other?”

“At that time, in 2016, there were far fewer of us than now, so we formed [the forum] to allow women to come together, especially before major events, to do networking before the first day of a conference. Then, we could walk around and see people we recognized from the day before, helping to build confidence and to be integrated,” says Winters. “It also helped us see women in positions of leadership, making strategic decisions…and, discussing their journeys to the C-suite and boardroom. By allowing women to hear the stories, they could say ‘I can do that.’”