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Brazil to get its own AI supercomputer

The Augusto Severo Science and Technology Park, affiliated with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, the state capital, has been chosen to house the new artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer that the Brazilian government will acquire for just over BRL 1 billion. According to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, the funds will be drawn from the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT). Notícias relacionadas:Electoral Court approves restrictions on AI use in 2026 elections.Brazil should seek to benefit from China’s alliance for AI sovereignty.The infrastructure is expected to reach 7,200 petaflops, or about 7.2 quintillion mathematical operations per second. A petaflop is a unit used to measure the processing capacity of supercomputers. One petaflop corresponds to 1 quadrillion mathematical operations per second. To put this into perspective, Brazil’s most powerful supercomputer, Santos Dumont, operates at 27 petaflops and is located in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The new system’s capacity will be made available to companies, universities, scientific institutions, and government agencies for model training, research, and the development of AI applications. The project will be carried out by the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC). The goal is to create opportunities for research, innovation, and the development of new products, services, and businesses by leveraging Brazil’s increased computing capacity. “We’re going to reduce our dependence. Sixty percent of all artificial intelligence processing in Brazil is done abroad, and now we’ll be able to process it here,” said Luciana Santos, Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation, adding that the supercomputer will rank among the 10 most powerful in the world. According to Santos, the call for proposals includes requirements related to technology transfer, training, research and development, local content, and the participation of Brazilian suppliers, with the goal of training 5,000 Brazilians over five years. The initiative is part of the Brazilian Artificial Intelligence Plan (PBIA), which brings together efforts to expand the country’s technological infrastructure, train professionals, facilitate technology transfer, and strengthen governance and digital sovereignty. “We will prove that Brazilians - our academics and our young people - are second to none. They just need an opportunity, and that is what we want to ensure with the supercomputer,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated at the event announcing the new equipment. The choice of the Northeast was based on efforts to reduce regional inequalities in the technology sector and the region’s abundant renewable energy resources. Rio Grande do Norte is the leading state in wind energy production. Open-source chips Another initiative is the development of chips based on the open RISC-V architecture, aimed at reducing dependence on proprietary architectures. The effort involves a partnership with approximately 70 countries and is expected to take 10 to 15 years to complete. According to the ministry, the initiative will be led by the Eldorado Institute in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo, in cooperation with Barcelona’s innovation ecosystem in Spain. It aims to expand Brazil’s expertise in technologies critical to high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. Technology transfer Another technological initiative will involve supercomputing infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro through the National Education and Research Network (RNP), in partnership with the Chinese companies Huawei and iFlytek. The initiative aims to expand processing capacity through technology transfer, research and development partnerships, professional training, and the development of a sovereign software stack. Plans also include the development of a national large language model (LLM) and artificial intelligence models in Portuguese, enabling the creation of solutions better suited to the language, data, and needs of Brazil. In this case, public investment is estimated at BRL 1.276 billion over five years, with operations scheduled to begin in July 2027. In July, the Brazilian government signed the founding document of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (Waico), headquartered in Shanghai, China. The initiative aims to promote global AI governance through open-source models that allow any company or organization to adopt the technology. Brazilian cloud The event in Natal also marked the signing of a cooperation agreement among government institutions, including the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), to develop a Brazilian alternative to foreign solutions for data storage, processing, and systems. The goal is to reduce dependence on large foreign providers for computational data storage.