Brazil Announces $444M AI Investment Plan

Brazil’s government announced that it will invest about 2.3 billion reais, or $444.2 million, to bolster the country’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, according to Reuters.

Just over half of the total, 1.3 billion reais, will fund a supercomputing infrastructure project in Rio de Janeiro developed in partnership with China’s Huawei Technologies and iFlytek. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government said the infrastructure will be used primarily to develop large language models for general and sector-specific applications.

Separately, about 1 billion reais will be allocated through a tender for a supercomputer that Brazil expects to rank among the world’s 10 most powerful AI supercomputers.

The machine will be installed in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, chosen for its energy potential.

Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expect U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to win the tender. Science and Technology Minister Luciana Santos told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper last week that she expected the company to supply the machine.

“The strategy is not to depend on a single company, technology or country,” Lula’s administration said in a statement, adding that the investments are aimed at strengthening national sovereignty over data.

The investments will be funded by the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development in phases. The government expects the supercomputer to begin operating by the end of next year, while the cooperation agreement with the Chinese companies is scheduled to start in July 2027.

The government also announced a partnership with Spain based on the open-source RISC-V architecture to develop semiconductors, plans for a Brazilian cloud-computing service through public-private partnerships, and plans to create a national center for algorithmic transparency and trustworthy AI, to be operated by the Federal University of Minas Gerais.