Chinese tech giants Huawei Technologies and ByteDance are planning major investments in Brazil’s cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence sectors, moves likely to deepen US concerns over Beijing’s expanding digital reach in Latin America.
The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported on Monday that Huawei is set to announce a deal with Dataprev – a state-run technology company that manages the country’s social data systems – to use its data centres. Huawei is also in talks with Edge UOL, a cloud services arm of Grupo UOL PagSeguro, which also owns Folha.
Executives from Huawei and Edge UOL met in May in Dongguan, China, along with Brazil’s secretary of digital governance Ricardo Leite and the Huawei Cloud division’s Latin America president Mark Chen.
“We want to be the bridge between China and Latin America,” Chen said, calling the Brazilian firm a “strategic service partner”.
Edge UOL Chief Operating Officer Rodrigo Lobo said that the partnership aimed to expand into infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI operations across Brazil.
The planned expansions come as the United States has stepped up warnings about Chinese investments in critical tech infrastructure across Latin America, citing risks of data theft, surveillance and strategic leverage.
