Nine companies express interest in BNDES' datacenter financing

Brazilian development bank BNDES received interest from nine companies regarding a 2bn-real (US$350mn) financing line aimed at datacenter projects launched by the bank in September.

Of the nine, two have already submitted projects for analysis, João Pieroni, deputy manager of industry and innovation at BNDES, told BNamericas.

“We're now in the process of qualifying, analyzing the registration and the credit profile of these clients. These are companies that, for the most part, have never operated with the bank,” the bank official said on the sidelines of DCD Connect event in São Paulo on Thursday.

The bank expects this assessment process to be concluded soon and that some of the initiatives may have financing approved in the coming weeks, said Pieroni.

The profile of these companies varies, but all have annual revenues of 100mn reais or more.

The projects are mainly colocation projects, since the bank’s focus, at least for this particular line, is to foster funding for companies that do not have large private investment funds as financial backers or easy access to private capital, such as large hyperscale providers.

“Our emphasis, our focus, is on colocation companies, on smaller datacenters, and especially in the north and northeast,” Pieroni said.

Launched in September by BNDES, the 2bn-real line falls under the so-called Mission 4 of the Nova Indústria Brasil policy unveiled by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration.

This was the first line ever launched by BNDES exclusively for datacenters, a long-standing demand from the national colocation industry.

This credit line is funded with resources from BNDES and by the Fust telecoms services universalization fund, which is managed by Brazil’s communication ministry and operated by the development bank.

For datacenter projects aimed at the north and northeast regions, the interest rate proposed starts at 6.3%. In other regions, the rate starts at 8.5%.

BNamericas has found that, in addition to national colocation companies, private players operating datacenter and interconnectivity infrastructures, such as Cirion, also have interest in potentially accessing BNDES' line.

In June, prior to this line, BNDES approved financing worth 41mn reais for Um Telecom to develop the first Tier 3 datacenter in Pernambuco state. That financing was approved within the scope of the BNDES line Funttel (fund for the technological development of telecommunications).

Initially expected for Q3, the construction of this datacenter is now set to begin this quarter, with completion scheduled for 2025. 

EBM Engenharia and Trusted Data, an engineering company focused on edge computing infrastructure, signed a contract with Um Telecom and will be responsible for the works.

Big techs and hyperscalers

For large technology, cloud and AI companies, BNDES' approach in datacenters is a little different.

The bank is considering, for example, providing incentives to attract and install large AI processing centers, but without financing the entire structure of the project itself.

BNDES has already had talks with some of these companies, giants such as Microsoft, AWS and Meta, among others.

“What we've discussed with big companies is not to support a big datacenter project per se, but to facilitate the conditions with funds so that the company can actually decide to bring the development of technologies and innovation to the country," said Pieroni.

"It's only for the portion of the investment that the company, without these funds, wouldn't make in Brazil."

It should be noted that, in addition to the BNDES credit line and the Nova Indústria Brasil, the Brazilian government launched a datacenter national policy, with which it hopes to further boost the attraction of large AI processing projects to the country.