Cirion buys land for 60MW Rio de Janeiro datacenter complex

Cirion acquired a 15,000m2 plot of land in Rio de Janeiro for the construction of a 60MW-capacity datacenter complex, which would make it the largest ever developed in the Brazilian city.

Located in the São Cristóvão neighborhood, the RIO2 site will be at Cirion’s current RIO1 site and, like the existing facility, will be carrier-neutral and aimed at hyperscale customers. The first phase of the datacenter is projected to be ready for service in 2026. 

BNamericas was informed of the expansion of Cirion's capacity in Rio de Janeiro in April by Nelson Fonseca, the company's regional director of datacenters, in an interview in April.

The RIO2 announcement falls under the company’s US$300 million planned capex for Latin America this year. In 2023, Cirion allocated over US$235mn in investments in interconnection, datacenters and related projects across the region.

Cirion, previously the Latin American operations of Lumen Technologies, is backed by NY-based investment firm Stonepeak, which has over US$71.2bn in assets under management worldwide. 

Cirion has been owned by the fund since 2022.

PROJECT

RIO2 will have access to renewable energy sources and will rely on an already established ecosystem with more than 50 network and cloud providers, in addition to diversified metropolitan and long-haul connectivity, said Cirion.

Like RIO1, the new site will be close to international submarine cables that land in Rio de Janeiro, providing reduced latency between Latin America and other geographies.

Once completed, RIO2 will be Cirion's fourth datacenter complex in Brazil. 

The move is part of a major bet of Cirion in Rio de Janeiro, considering other areas that are already saturated with projects and power availability, such as the metropolitan region of São Paulo.

Cirion is not alone. Other players with datacenter projects and expansions in Rio include Elea Digital, V.tal, Equinix, Ascenty, Scala and CloudHQ.

At present, Cirion has three datacenter campuses in Brazil, located in São Paulo (SAO1), Rio de Janeiro (RIO1) and Curitiba (CUR1).

Across Latin America, it operates 18 datacenters totaling 41MW in operating capacity (power effectively in usage), with plans to double that capacity in one year, as previously reported by BNamericas.

In addition to Brazil, Cirion also has datacenters in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Chile. In the latter two, the company is expanding capacity with the upcoming sites SAN2 in Santiago and LIM2 in Lima.

With over 5,500 clients, Cirion provides colocation, cross-connectivity, and disaster recovery to meet the demands of hyperscalers, carriers, content providers and companies in general.