Atlas of AI Buildout

Emerging · Power & Grid

A continent's compute runs through one city

São Paulo and Latin American data centre capacity

537 MWSão Paulo, the region's largest · grade A, Reported

São Paulo carries 537 MW42% of every megawatt tracked across Latin America. Unusually for a leading market it is not tight: vacancy sits at 9.6%, down from 14.2%, where Northern Virginia runs at 0.3%.

Behind it the region thins fast: Querétaro 298.2 MW on US nearshoring, Santiago 165.8 MW growing 23% a year despite water-permitting fights, Bogotá just 44.3 MW at 18.7% vacancy.

The interesting question is why a continent with abundant hydro, serious renewable build-out and a large population supports so little compute. The answer is mostly not power. It is latency to the users who pay, submarine cable landing geography, and the currency and jurisdiction risk that hyperscale capital prices in.

Source — CBRE, Global Data Center Trends 2026 (2026)
Q1 2026 metro inventory, vacancy and preleasing. Northern Virginia 4,182.0 MW at 0.3% vacancy; Dallas-Ft Worth 1,249.4 MW with 716.7 MW under construction, 88% preleased; Atlanta 1,465.2 MW; Chicago 910.6 MW; Frankfurt 1,222.5 MW; Paris 666.8 MW; Sao Paulo 536.7 MW; Queretaro 298.2 MW; Santiago 165.8 MW; Bogota 44.3 MW.

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The thinking behind the atlas is written up in Cheap thought has a physical address on Substack.

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