INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY

DATA CENTRES

well-located powered landbank, including its + 3GW Rio AI City development, which provides a strong foundation for capacity expansion. Together with Elea’ s founderled management team, we are focused on building a next-generation platform designed for large-scale hyperscale and AI deployments. We believe this positions Elea to capture the structural growth driven by cloud adoption, artificial intelligence and service training demand for international markets.”

Squared Capital( I Squared), a leading independent global infrastructure investment manager, has agreed to acquire Elea Data Centers( Elea), one of the largest carrier-neutral data centre platforms in Brazil.

Elea operates a nationwide network of nine interconnected data centre campuses across Brazil including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília, serving a diversified base of enterprise and hyperscale customers, with over 300MWs of powered land and over 1GW currently in development that will require more than US $ 10bn of capital to support its delivery.

I Squared’ s investment will support Elea’ s planned expansion programme and accelerate the development of largescale, high-density AI infrastructure across Brazil.

Brazil is the largest data centre market in Latin America and a rapidly emerging global hub for digital infrastructure, supported by more than 180 million

Internet users and accelerating demand for private and public cloud storage, local inference and training compute demand as well as training for international markets.

At the same time, the market remains structurally underpenetrated relative to more mature economies, with demand expected to outpace supply, presenting a significant opportunity. The country benefits from a compelling combination of low-cost power, which is predominantly renewable, and established hyperscaler availability zones, along with supportive policy initiatives such as the ReData tax framework under discussion.

“ Elea represents a compelling, groundlevel opportunity to build a scaled digital infrastructure platform in one of the fastest-growing data centre markets globally,” said Gautam Bhandari, Chief Investment Officer, I Squared Capital.

“ The company combines a national colocation footprint, a substantial and

Alessandro Lombardi, President and Founder, Elea Data Centers, said:“ AI infrastructure is now constrained less by technology and more by access to energy. Brazil is one of the few markets in the world with gigawatt-scale renewable energy available for data centre expansion. With this investment, we are scaling a distributed AI infrastructure platform designed to unlock that potential across the country.”

As a pioneer in sustainable infrastructure in Latin America, Elea operates entirely on renewable energy and is focused on delivering efficient, low-carbon solutions at scale. Its platform combines local market expertise with global standards, enabling international and domestic customers to expand into Brazil and across the region.

Alongside Piemonte Holding, a longterm partner of the platform, I Squared Capital will partner with Elea’ s founder-led management team, which brings extensive experience in developing and operating large-scale data centre assets, as well as a strong track record of executing acquisitions in Brazil’ s fragmented market.

I Squared Capital has been investing in Latin America since 2015 investing more than US $ 3bn in seven investments across the region. •

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