The mayor of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil has announced a strategic partnership with Oracle and Nvidia.

During Rio Innovation Week this week, Mayor Eduardo Paes announced an agreement to accelerate the development of the "Rio AI City" project, which aims to transform the city into one of the main global hubs for artificial intelligence.

"We've signed with the world's largest chipmaker, a coveted company. We'll buy Nvidia equipment and computing power. We have a major provider of computing power, Oracle. New developments will come; we're talking to other major companies in this field, and everyone will want to come to Rio. We'll be the capital of artificial intelligence in Brazil," said Paes.

GPU giant Nvidia, which specializes in chips and technologies for artificial intelligence, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Rio de Janeiro City Hall for the acquisition of GPUs to enable the AI model that the municipality intends to implement as part of the "Rio AI City" project.

A second agreement will see Oracle joining the Rio AI City project being led by Elea Data Centers.

Elea is developing a gigawatt-scale campus in Barra da Tijuca, west of Rio. The company has one existing data center there - RJO1, the project's first data center, which has been in operation since the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

"With Rio AI City, we reinforce Oracle's commitment to providing Brazil and Latin America with cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology and data center infrastructure. We want to support companies and institutions to innovate faster, with secure, scalable, and sustainable solutions," said Alexandre Maioral, president of Oracle Brazil.

"With this partnership, we take a decisive step toward achieving our goal. Rio AI City is a project born with robust infrastructure, clean energy, and high connectivity, ready to attract talent and businesses that will shape the next digital era. Brazil, and especially Rio de Janeiro, now has the opportunity to be at the center of this global transformation movement," added Alessandro Lombardi, president and founder of Elea Data Centers.

The RJO2 unit is scheduled for completion in 2026, with a capacity of 80MW. This will be followed by the RJO3 and RJO4 units, which should add around 120MW to the complex.

The development could potentially reach 1.5GW by 2027 and 3.2GW by 2032, positioning Rio AI City among the largest data centers on the planet.

Oracle operates two cloud regions in Brazil, both in and around São Paulo. Brazil East opened in 2020, and Brazil Southeast, in nearby Vinhedo, opened in 2021.