Chile added a new Amazon Web Services infrastructure region following a USD 4 billion investment

AWS calculates a contribution of more than USD 7.5 billion to gross domestic product and the training of 300,000 people in technology. (REUTERS/Isabel Infantes)Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing subsidiary, launched its first infrastructure region in Chile this Wednesday, the result of an investment of more than USD 4 billion over 15 years. It is the company's third in Latin America, after those in Brazil and Mexico. For now it is operating for a small group of clients; the rest will gain access before the end of the year. An AWS region groups together at least three availability zones, physically separate facilities with their own power and cooling, less than 100 kilometers apart. Chile's three are located in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. This design prevents a failure at one center from interrupting the service and allows data to be stored within the country. The first users are BancoEstado, BTG Pactual, Cencosud, Consorcio, Itaú, and the retail chain Ripley. Paula Bellizia, AWS vice president for Latin America, said that clients were asking to "keep their data in the country, comply more easily with regulatory requirements, and offer their own customers faster and more reliable experiences." Water is the most sensitive issue for this industry in Chile, whose central zone has accumulated more than 15 years of drought. In February 2024, the Second Environmental Court partially upheld a complaint by residents of Cerrillos, in western Santiago, against a USD 200 million Google data center, and ordered an evaluation of its impact on the Santiago Central aquifer. Seven months later, Google abandoned the original design. AWS maintains that its Chilean facilities are cooled mainly with air and only use water on the hottest days, about 4% of the year. A report by the consulting firm Accenture, commissioned by the company itself, estimates that its infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more energy efficient than data centers that companies operate on their own. The infrastructure region will reduce response time for users in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. (REUTERS/Noah Berger for AWS/File Photo)President José Antonio Kast, who took office in March with the promise of cutting red tape for private investment, led the event. There he said that foreign companies "have found in Chile a place for their investments." The company says the region will also reduce the response time of its services for users in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In its first stage it offers computing, storage, networking, and databases; the artificial intelligence tools Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker will arrive during the first year. AWS estimates that the region will contribute more than USD 7.5 billion to Chile's gross domestic product and sustain an average of 4,100 full-time jobs per year, both direct and indirect. In addition, it committed to training 300,000 people free of charge in artificial intelligence and cloud computing by 2028. AWS announced the project on May 7, 2025, during the government of Gabriel Boric, who in December 2024 had launched a National Data Center Plan to attract the sector. By then, the company already had environmental permits for two data centers in Santiago, worth USD 205 million each. In June 2025, Microsoft got ahead and opened its Chile Central region, also in the Metropolitan Region. One of the AWS complexes, in the north of the capital, was challenged by residents who argued that the permit did not take into account a high-voltage power line that, they said, will be needed to supply it. Environmental authorities ruled in early April that the work could continue and that any power line would have to be evaluated separately. With the opening in Santiago, AWS's global network reaches 39 regions and 124 availability zones. The company expects to open the Chilean region to all its customers in the coming weeks.