Ascenty Paulinia data center, São Paulo, Brazil

Ascenty's Paulinia data center, at Avenida Prefeito Jose Lozano Araujo 4545 in Paulinia, in the Campinas area of Sao Paulo state, has been running since 2019 with 8,000 square meters, 1,300 racks and 14 megawatts of power. It is certified Tier III in design and facility, built with three power lines serving each data hall, a dual coil chilled water cooling system, and two diesel tanks holding 48 hours of fuel. Ascenty chose the town for the same reason the petrochemical industry did: it sits on the highway cutting across the city, with quick access to Sao Paulo and the rest of the region.

Paulinia has since become a data center hub: CloudHQ held a groundbreaking there in March 2023 for its first Latin American campus, announced at 228 megawatts across up to six buildings and more than 3 billion dollars. About a third of Brazil's data centers are in Sao Paulo state, which went through an acute water crisis about a decade ago, and that history is why the buildout worries residents there.