ByteDance is dropping roughly $39 billion on a data center campus in northeastern Brazil, a bet so large it would rank among the most expensive single-site infrastructure projects in Latin American history. The facility, located at the Pecém port complex in the state of Ceará, will start with approximately 200 MW of IT capacity and is designed to scale toward nearly 1 gigawatt.
What ByteDance is actually building
The campus will feature 20 data halls in its initial configuration, with a total power demand near 300 MW for the first phase alone. The full buildout envisions expansion to 900 MW or close to 1 GW of total capacity, making it comfortably the largest data center initiative in Brazil.
Initial operations are expected to begin in 2027, with gradual scaling planned over subsequent years. The investment totals over R$200 billion, which converts to approximately $37.7 billion to $39.87 billion depending on exchange rate fluctuations.
The facility is being built exclusively to serve TikTok’s operational needs in markets outside Brazil, the US, Europe, and China.
