ByteDance Picks Brazil for Its Largest Data Center Outside China

ByteDance Picks Brazil for Its Largest Data Center Outside China The TikTok creator’s $39 billion data center is the latest payoff from Lula’s courtship of Chinese investment. Glimpsed from the highway, half-hidden by fan palms and other vegetation, the symmetrical rows of 18-foot columns evoke the grand edifices of the Roman Empire. Up close you’ll see this isn’t some ancient ruin but a rising monument to the geopolitical ambitions of a modern-day superpower: China. On this remote corner of Brazil’s Ceará state, hundreds of workers are building a data center for ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. The facility will be the company’s largest data center complex outside China, a project with a total estimated price tag of 200 billion reais ($39 billion). Construction boss Wellysson Costa can’t contain his enthusiasm. “This was all weeds and brush,” he says, striding past cranes, cement mixers and square concrete foundation blocks the size of hot tubs.