I Squared Capital Acquires Majority Stake in Brazilian Data Center Firm Elea
April 28, 2026
I Squared Capital Acquires Majority Stake in Brazilian Data Center Firm Elea
Investment firm I Squared Capital has acquired a majority stake in Elea, a Brazilian data center operator, marking a significant expansion of its digital infrastructure footprint in Latin America. The deal, announced this week, did not disclose financial terms, but positions Elea alongside other I Squared portfolio companies such as Kio, Exa, and nLighten.
Elea operates nine data center campuses across Brazil, including key markets such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasília. The company currently holds approximately 300MW of powered land and has more than 1GW of capacity in development. Notably, Elea is advancing its Rio AI City project, a massive campus development exceeding 3GW, designed to support large-scale artificial intelligence workloads.
I Squared Capital said the investment will accelerate Elea’s expansion program and “accelerate the development of large-scale, high-density AI infrastructure across Brazil.” Gautam Bhandari, chief investment officer at I Squared Capital, described Elea as “a compelling, ground-level opportunity to build a scaled digital infrastructure platform in one of the fastest-growing data center markets globally.” He highlighted the company’s national colocation footprint and substantial powered landbank, including the Rio AI City development, as a strong foundation for growth. “Together with Elea’s founder-led management team, we are focused on building a next-generation platform designed for large-scale hyperscale and AI deployments,” Bhandari added.
Founded by Piemonte Holding in 2019, Elea received investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 2021. The company has since expanded through acquisitions from TIM, Globo, DXC, and Oi, and currently operates seven data centers across Brasília, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre, with additional facilities under development.
Alessandro Lombardi, president and founder of Elea Data Centers, emphasized the strategic importance of energy access in the AI era. “AI infrastructure is now constrained less by technology and more by access to energy. Brazil is one of the few markets in the world with gigawatt-scale renewable energy available for data center expansion,” he said. “With this investment, we are scaling a distributed AI infrastructure platform designed to unlock that potential across the country.”
I Squared Capital, based in the US and managing $50 billion in assets, holds a diversified digital infrastructure portfolio that includes European data center firm nLighten, APAC operator BDx, fiber companies Exa and Lightstorm, and thousands of cell tower sites. The firm previously acquired Mexican data center operator Kio in 2021. The Elea acquisition underscores the growing investor appetite for Latin American data center markets, driven by surging demand for cloud computing and AI services.
Source: datacenterdynamics
