Brazilian operator Elea Data Centers is to build a data center for oil and gas firm Petrobras.

Elea was selected in a public bidding process in a contract worth 2.3 billion reais (US$431m) and lasting 17 years.

It is reportedly the largest information technology infrastructure initiative ever contracted by a Latin American company. The project includes the implementation of a high-capacity data center, set to offer approximately 30MW and liquid cooling technology.

The facility will house supercomputers and process scientific data related to Petrobras' exploration, research, and reservoir activities. The infrastructure can also be used for artificial intelligence workloads. In line with energy transition guidelines, the call for tenders established that the energy used should come from renewable sources, positioning the project as a benchmark in sustainability.

Since 2024, Elea Data Centers has been operating as an infrastructure platform for AI in Brazil and Latin America.

The project will be installed on Elea's campus in São Bernardo do Campo, in the ABC Paulista region. The data center will use exclusively certified renewable energy, will have a cooling system based on integral water reuse, and will follow strict efficiency standards in accordance with the sustainability guidelines established by Petrobras.

Elea was founded by Piemonte Holding in 2019, and in 2021 was invested in by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The company has seven data centers across Brasília (two), Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre (two). It has previously acquired data centers from TIM, Globo, DXC, and Oi.

The firm currently has three facilities across São Paulo. SP01 spans 1,995 sqm (21,474 sq ft) in the Santo Amaro area of the city and was one of five acquired from struggling telco Oi in 2021. The firm acquired two more in the region from IT services firm DXC last year, adding facilities in Barueri and São Bernardo do Campo.

Petrobras launched a tender for data center services earlier this year. Reports that Elea had won the tender surfaced last month.

The signing of the contract with Petrobras takes place in parallel with other major initiatives led by Elea Data Centers, such as the Rio AI City project - a data center complex aimed at supporting advanced workloads in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. With a projected capacity of up to 3.2GW, the project is under development in the Olympic Park region of Rio de Janeiro.