ByteDance Weighs Second Phase of Its Brazil Data Centre Complex at Pecém Port

The TikTok owner is looking for a developer to lead the next stage at Pecém, according to the report. The project now being built is valued at US$10 billion, or about R$55 billion, with 300 megawatts of capacity under construction. ByteDance is also in preliminary talks with developers about a facility of similar size outside the port. ByteDance did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.

The second site is significant because of how Brazil's incentives work. Data centres at Pecém receive tax breaks on condition that they export data, so a facility outside the port would let ByteDance serve customers in the Brazilian market itself. Together, the two moves would strengthen the company's position as the largest builder of computing facilities in Latin America.

ByteDance's push into Brazil is tied to its plan to make AI a new growth engine, which requires heavy spending on equipment and processing capacity, according to the report. The company committed R$200 billion to a phased data centre complex at Pecém, and construction of the first phase began in early 2026. Figures for the first phase have varied: when Bloomberg first reported the project in July, the build was described as 200 MW, potentially rising to almost 1 GW, with Omnia, the data centre platform backed by Pátria Investments, handling construction and operations expected to start by late 2027. At that point only the building's pillars had been erected.

Ceará has drawn the project for its geography. Fortaleza is South America's largest hub for subsea fibre-optic cables, which supports data exports, and the state has strong wind and solar resources for power-hungry facilities. Affonso Nina, president of the Brazilian technology industry association Brasscom, called it "a privileged location".

Brazil's installed data centre capacity has more than doubled since 2022 and now exceeds 1 GW, according to Brasscom, which projects growth of about 20% a year through 2031. Brazil competes with Chile and Argentina for such projects. In September President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed tax incentives that cut the tax burden on imported servers, processors and network equipment by about a third, though the industry is still waiting for regulations setting out which products qualify. Lula promised to attract more data centre investment in his October re-election victory speech.

Unlike in the United States, the projects have support across Brazil's political parties and have met limited local opposition, according to the report, which said resistance to data centres among American voters could slow construction there and push developers toward markets such as Brazil. Opposition to data centres featured heavily in this week's US midterm elections.

The main constraint is the grid. Expanding transmission lines to carry renewable power to where it is consumed remains the industry's biggest infrastructure problem, particularly in the south of the country. "Our transmission network cannot absorb all the power plants seeking a connection to the system," said Bruna de Barros Correia, an energy partner at the law firm BMA Advogados.

It is not yet clear which developer will lead the second Pecém phase or what capacity it would carry. Neither expansion has been confirmed by ByteDance.