LatinNews Daily - 21 August 2026

*Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced that the government will invest R$1bn (US$193m) in building a supercomputer in the north-eastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. Yesterday Lula visited the Macaíba technological park, in the metropolitan region of Natal, the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, where he announced a series of measures aimed at improving digital infrastructure. Lula said that he aims for this supercomputer to be among the top ten computers in the world in terms of processing capacity for artificial intelligence (AI). The government will hold a public tender for the supercomputer project, with national daily Folha de São Paulo reporting that US chip maker Nvidia is among the favourites to win the contract. Aside from projects in the northeast of the country, the Lula administration reportedly also plans to invest around R$1.3bn for Chinese tech companies Huawei and iFlytek to boost infrastructure for AI and supercomputing capabilities in the south-eastern state of Rio de Janeiro. Folha reports that the Huawei-iFlytek project in Rio de Janeiro also aims to develop a large language model that is trained on and optimised for Portuguese and Spanish.

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