There are some locations where the setting does half of the storytelling for you. São Paulo is one of them. Set in a city that seems to move to its own rhythm, Capacity LATAM felt like more than just another stop on the global events circuit. And in Brazil, of course, there’s a constant running through everything: football. Not just as a sport, but as a shared language, a point of connection, and a perfect reflection of how people engage, compete, and collaborate.
DE-CIX wanted to bring that same spirit to the exhibition floor with a football-themed concept built around a simple idea: where connectivity comes to play. At the booth, attendees were invited to take their shot at tabletop football while they weighed in on where they saw Brazil’s digital future heading – and maybe win an exclusive “DEE-KICKS” team shirt to take home. It created an easy point of entry into more meaningful conversations, turning a familiar game into a way of exploring positioning, strategy, and direction in a market that is moving quickly.
Alongside Capacity LATAM, DE-CIX also hosted Interconnecting Rio, a more focused, invite-only forum in Rio de Janeiro designed to take connectivity conversations one step further. While the show floor offered a broad view of market momentum, Interconnecting Rio created space for deeper discussions around infrastructure, interconnection, and what it will take to support the next phase of digital growth in Brazil.
Across both settings, DE-CIX also ran a formal survey of attendees and partners, asking them to ponder a series of questions about Brazil’s digital future. From AI adoption and cloud strategy to data sovereignty and the rise of São Paulo as a global interconnection hub, the goal was to capture a clear snapshot of industry sentiment – and while the results point to a region moving with confidence in some areas, it also showed that some important questions were still being grappled with.
Brazil kicks off on the world stage
If there was one area where opinion was aligned, it was Brazil’s trajectory as a digital infrastructure powerhouse. A clear majority agreed that Brazil will become the leading digital infrastructure hub in Latin America by 2030, one of the strongest signals across the entire survey. That level of confidence reflects something we heard repeatedly throughout the event: Brazil is no longer being discussed as an emerging market for digital infrastructure, but as a market that is actively defining itself on the global stage.
That becomes even clearer when looking at São Paulo. When asked whether the city would rank among the top ten global interconnection markets by the end of the decade, 80% of people gave a score of 8 or more, where 1 is “disagree” and 10 is “agree”. São Paulo already acts as the central hub for connectivity in Brazil, but what’s changing is its position within the broader global ecosystem. As demand for cloud services, content delivery, and AI-driven applications continues to grow, the need for high-performance, well-connected infrastructure in key metropolitan areas is becoming more pronounced. That’s why São Paulo is increasingly being seen not just as a regional anchor, but as a critical hub in global digital infrastructure.
Casual onlookers might see this as Brazil simply “catching up”, but all signs point to the country becoming a leader in its own right, in a region where digital demand is soaring and infrastructure investment is finally starting to match ambition.
Back of the net for AI infrastructure
Like most other regions, AI is becoming embedded across the LATAM economy, particularly in Brazil. When asked whether AI will be part of most Brazilian businesses’ daily operations within five years, people at the exhibition were in almost unanimous (around 95%) agreement. It’s little surprise given that many of the conversations that took place throughout the week focused on the emerging “AI cities” and large-scale infrastructure projects seen across the region. AI has made its mark – what matters now is the underlying infrastructure required to support it in practice, from power availability and data center capacity to the connectivity needed to move data quickly and securely between locations. We’ve known for some time that AI is more than just a software story, it’s a physical infrastructure story, and it’s playing out everywhere.
Data visibility/control is now the number one goal
Data sovereignty emerged as one of the clearest areas of agreement across our survey. The majority of respondents agreed to the idea that it will make local interconnection a strategic necessity in Brazil. And that mirrors how many organizations are now thinking about their network infrastructure. Decisions about where data is stored, processed, and exchanged are tied to regulation, risk management, and the need for greater visibility across increasingly complex environments. As enterprises expand across multiple cloud and edge environments, the ability to connect locally, securely, and with predictable performance is becoming more important – and rather than defaulting to global architectures, many are investing in stronger regional ecosystems that better align with both operational and regulatory requirements. In Brazil, interconnection is playing a central role in enabling that transition, supporting both control over data flows and the flexibility to scale as demand continues to grow.
Speed is a dealbreaker
Expectations around edge computing and AI inference were predictably strong. When confronted with the statement “edge deployments in Brazil will triple by 2027 to support low-latency applications”, the overwhelming majority (more than 99%) said they agree or strongly agree. That plays into the idea that proximity and geography now matter more than power and raw compute, and this is already influencing how infrastructure is being designed and deployed across the region. From AI-driven services to financial platforms and interactive applications, there is growing pressure to reduce delay and improve responsiveness. That’s driving investment closer to end users, whether through distributed data center footprints or more localized interconnection points. What stood out in Rio was not just the expectation of growth, but how widely it is understood that performance will increasingly be measured in milliseconds and latency rather than capacity alone.
The game isn’t over yet
Not every topic produced the same level of consensus. On the subject of whether Brazilian enterprises will abandon single-cloud strategies altogether by 2027, responses were more mixed, with around a quarter sitting on the fence and not sure whether to agree or disagree and around 40% strongly agreeing. That speaks to a market still working through the trade-offs. While multi-cloud and hybrid approaches offer flexibility and resilience, they also introduce operational complexity that many organizations are still learning to manage effectively.
A similar pattern emerged when respondents were asked whether Brazil’s fintech expansion will reshape national traffic patterns over the next three years. With most saying they somewhat agree (the average score being 7 out of 10), there is clear recognition that fintech will play a major role in shaping how data moves across the country, but less certainty around how quickly those changes will materialize. So, while the direction of travel is broadly understood, some aspects of Brazil’s digital evolution are still being defined in real time, shaped by both technological progress and practical implementation challenges.
Like any good match, not every play is predictable, and the final score is far from decided. But what stood out in São Paulo and Rio was the pace, the intent, and the sense that Brazil is not just participating in the game, but helping to shape how it’s played.
