Alibaba launches first South American data centres in Brazil amid AI expansion

Alibaba Group Holding will operate two data centres in Brazil, its first cloud infrastructure footprint in South America, as the Hangzhou-based company accelerates its artificial intelligence expansion in emerging markets while US-China technology competition intensifies.

The Chinese tech giant announced the Brazilian venture on Thursday, saying the facilities would deliver secure cloud infrastructure and "agentic AI services" to local enterprises. The deployment gives Brazilian companies, start-ups, developers and public institutions direct access to Alibaba's full cloud portfolio running on local servers, designed for low latency, resilience and data governance standards required by mission-critical operations.

Strategic push beyond China

"Brazil is one of the world's most dynamic digital economies and a new market central to Alibaba Cloud's expansion in Latin America," said Allen Guo, Alibaba Cloud's general manager for the Latin America region and vice-president of international business.

The expansion reflects Alibaba's rapid AI infrastructure buildout outside mainland China as it hunts for new revenue streams during the escalating US-China AI race. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Guo said the local infrastructure and Alibaba Cloud's growing partner ecosystem would power Brazilian enterprises' AI capabilities while connecting them to the company's global network.

The Brazil launch marks Alibaba's latest effort to plant flags in developing markets where demand for cloud computing and AI tools is growing but Western and Chinese providers have yet to establish dominant positions.

Source: South China Morning Post