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Home/Deal Room/Elea advances Rio AI City toward 3.2 GW Brazil AI campus

Data centers · Evidence brief

Elea advances Rio AI City toward 3.2 GW Brazil AI campus

Elea Data Centers + City of Rio de Janeiro

Near-primary sourcePress release only2025-05-19
Deal structureGigawatt-scale AI data-center campus / renewable-powered AI infrastructure project
GeographyRio de Janeiro, Brazil
Infrastructure layersData centers + power infrastructure + cooling + cloud capacity
Disclosed scaleRio AI City is planned for up to 3.2 GW across future phases at Rio de Janeiro Olympic Park; DCD says construction is underway on RJO2, which is expected to begin delivering 80 MW in 2026, followed by RJO3 and RJO4 adding a further 120 MW, with further developments taking the campus to 1.5 GW in the first phase and potential full build-out around 27 buildings

Why it matters

The strategic read

Adds Latin America's clearest multi-gigawatt AI-campus lane to the Deal Room. Elea is pairing an existing Rio data-center footprint, construction on the next building, waterless cooling, renewable-power framing and municipal support into a Brazil AI City project large enough to matter for hyperscaler, sovereign AI and regional cloud-capacity demand. It also sits beside the newer RiverHook / Pindamonhangaba Brazil campus signal, showing Brazil moving from isolated data-center projects toward national-scale AI-infrastructure corridors.

Source-supported terms

What was disclosed

  1. 01

    DCD reported on May 19, 2025 that Elea confirmed it was the company behind Rio AI City, a gigawatt-scale AI data-center campus in Rio de Janeiro.

  2. 02

    The project is located at Rio de Janeiro Olympic Park, where Elea already operates the RJO1 facility.

  3. 03

    DCD said construction work is underway on the RJO2 data center, which is expected to begin delivering 80 MW of capacity in 2026.

  4. 04

    RJO3 and RJO4 are expected to add a further 120 MW of capacity after RJO2.

  5. 05

    Further developments are expected to take the site to 1.5 GW in the first phase, including the existing RJ01 building.

  6. 06

    The campus has potential to reach up to 3.2 GW in future phases.

  7. 07

    DCD said renders of the full campus suggest approximately 27 buildings could be developed at full build-out.

  8. 08

    Elea said the campus will use waterless cooling and offset its energy use with renewable power deals.

  9. 09

    Google News RSS also surfaced Elea's May 8, 2025 PRNewswire announcement describing Rio AI City as a Brazilian data-center project with capacity up to 3.2 GW of renewable energy supporting AI growth.

  10. 10

    The June 26, 2026 search trail surfaced a new Elea / Business Wire item about the Amazon region's first AI data center with power infrastructure from Axia Energia, reinforcing Elea's Brazil AI-data-center expansion theme, but that specific item was not fully accessible in this pass.

Disclosure boundary

What is known—and what is not

Near-primary DCD reporting plus Google News / PRNewswire title trail. Public materials disclose Elea as the operator, Rio Olympic Park location, RJO2 construction underway, 80 MW initial RJO2 delivery target for 2026, RJO3 / RJO4 follow-on capacity, 1.5 GW first-phase target, up-to-3.2 GW future-phase potential, waterless cooling and renewable-power framing. Public materials available in this pass do not disclose full project financing, binding hyperscaler or AI tenant contracts, signed power-purchase agreements, utility-interconnection terms, construction / EPC vendors, permit packages, phase-by-phase capex, power pricing, cooling-system vendors, final building count, delivery milestones beyond stated targets, or whether the full 3.2 GW will be financed and built.