AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the world’s largest cloud- and carrier-neutral data center platform, today announced the opening of its first Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL) in Latin America. Located at the Vinhedo II campus in São Paulo, Brazil, DRIL Sao Paulo provides customers with a real-world environment to test, validate, and optimize multi-vendor artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure solutions before deploying at scale.
The launch builds on established DRIL locations in Northern Virginia, Tokyo, and most recently, London, extending Digital Realty’s commitment to helping customers prepare their infrastructure for evolving AI demands. By bringing together high-density infrastructure, advanced cooling, resilient connectivity, and partner technologies in a live data center environment, the DRIL gives customers a practical setting to explore how different components work together and identify the right architecture for their needs. This hands-on approach helps customers make more informed infrastructure decisions, optimize total cost of ownership and build for greater scalability and operational resilience as AI workloads evolve.
“AI infrastructure is evolving at a pace that makes interoperability increasingly complex,” said Claude Brown, Senior Vice President, American Sales at Digital Realty. “As enterprises bring together compute, networking, cooling, and other state-of-the-art technologies, they need confidence that these components will work together and perform at scale as AI workloads move from experimentation into production. The DRIL gives customers and partners around the world a controlled environment to identify potential fail points and prove out their architecture before deployment.”
Key features of the São Paulo DRIL include:
- High-Density AI Testing – The DRIL is designed for high-density AI workloads, including liquid-cooled racks supporting cabinet densities of 150 kilowatt (kW) and above as the industry evolves.
- Advanced Cooling Capabilities – High-efficiency chilled-water cooling, containment system and both liquid-to-liquid and air-to-liquid cooling configurations enable customers to explore different approaches to managing the thermal demands of AI infrastructure.
- Resilient Infrastructure – A distributed redundant design and parallel uninterrupted power supply (UPS) architecture provide the high availability and operational resilience needed to evaluate infrastructure under real-world data center conditions.
- Flexible Connectivity – Dual, diverse fiber entry paths and a carrier-neutral design provide access to multiple carriers and connectivity options.
- Integrated Monitoring and Security – Integrated building management system (BMS) and electrical power monitoring system (EPMS) capabilities, alongside multi-layer physical, network and operational security, provide visibility and control across the lab environment.
“Bringing the DRIL to São Paulo is about investing directly in the future of AI in Latin America,” said Chris Torto, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Ascenty. “Our commitment to the region is backed by years of building the infrastructure and local expertise necessary to understand what our customers need, complemented by the technology and partner ecosystem available across Digital Realty’s global platform, PlatformDIGITAL®.”
Digital Realty will continue expanding its global network of DRIL locations, with sites in Singapore and Johannesburg planned for late 2026.
Partner Quotes
- “An AI cluster’s performance depends on its connectivity. Our advanced structured cabling and fiber infrastructure at the Singapore DRIL enables partners to rigorously validate high-bandwidth, low-latency links across compute, storage, and the Digital Realty ecosystem—so they can test the same network design they plan to deploy,” – Rocky Colapietro, General Manager, CommScope Data Center Solutions.
- “AI deployments underperform when network limitations prevent organizations from fully utilizing their costly GPU infrastructure, an issue that only becomes apparent once the full stack is running together. Nokia technologies validated at the DRIL, including Nokia Data Center Fabric and our 7750 SR routers, provide the trusted, high-performance connectivity needed for next-generation AI infrastructure. By combining Nokia’s networking expertise with Digital Realty’s power, cooling and interconnection capabilities, the lab enables customers to validate interoperability, automation and network performance under real AI workloads before scaling deployments,” – Javier Falcón, Vice President Network Infrastructure for Latin America, Nokia.
- For a decade, OpenGlobe has been designing, testing and deploying Open Compute and Open Networking in real production environments, and today we are recognized as Latin America’s first OCP Experience Center. That expertise is what we bring to DRIL São Paulo: the most powerful AI infrastructure, built from the best of every vendor, with full freedom of choice and lower total cost of ownership. For Ascenty, its partners and customers, what is validated here, we deliver anywhere in the world,” – Victor Fernando Proscurchin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, OpenGlobe.
- “Enterprises across Latin America increasingly want cloud services delivered inside their own data centers, not consumed from a public region alone. Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer deployed with Digital Realty’s colocation and interconnection at the DRIL gives them a jointly validated architecture they can test against their own workloads, using no-production or sensitive data, only dummy data for testing, in country, before making deployment decisions,” – João Paulo Lunardelli, Head Oracle AI Customer Excellence Center in Latin America.
Additional build partners include EBM, which delivered the construction scope; IDS, which supplied and installed the thermal control system, with the manifold supplied by Starcenter; Multiway, which provided hot aisle containment and cable trays; and Consultimer, which installed the structured cabling. Coolant distribution units were supplied by Schneider Electric and Delta.
Enterprises and partners can access the DRIL through their Digital Realty account manager. For more information, visit https://www.digitalrealty.com/expertise/digital-realty-innovation-lab.
About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company’s global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation, from cloud and digital transformation to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 55+ metros across 30+ countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X.
For Additional Information
Helen Bleasdale
Digital Realty
+1 737 267 6822
hcbleasdale@digitalrealty.com
Investor Relations
Jordan Sadler / Jim Huseby
Digital Realty
+1 (737) 281-0101
InvestorRelations@digitalrealty.com
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to the company’s partnerships and expected benefits, expected performance and capabilities, expected completion dates, emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, PlatformDIGITAL®, customer demand and the company’s strategy. For a list and description of risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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