Known for his role as rapporteur for the Marco Civil da Internet, former federal deputy Alessandro Molon is leading a movement in favor of investments in data centers in Brazil. Alongside big techs like Google, Meta, Amazon and now, Microsofthe wants to competitively insert the country into the international flow of capital destined for digital infrastructure.
Molon began his work outside of parliamentary work with an initiative in defense of net neutrality in 2023, at the head of Open Internet Alliance (AIA). Now, the group is expanding its scope to also include the defense of a regulatory environment aimed at attracting digital infrastructure projects, such as data centers, submarine cables and edge computing networks.
With the change, the alliance will be called Dig.it – Alliance for Digital Infrastructure and Open Internet. The announcement was made this Sunday (01), during the MWC (Mobile World Congress) events, in Barcelona.
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“A AIA It was created to prevent extra fees from being imposed on Brazilian consumers, and the initiative has been successful so far. Let’s continue taking this fight forward. But we realized that it was necessary to add to our work the fight for digital infrastructure as a whole, to allow Brazil to take advantage of this opportunity to attract large investments in data centers to the country”, says Alessandro Molon, executive director of Dig.itin an interview with Startups.
In addition to the name change, the alliance announced the arrival of four new members: data center companies Ascenty, On the roof and the gaúcha Scala Data Centersin addition to the Microsoft.
Companies join a group that already included Amazon, Netflix, Meta, Google, TikTok, Free Market, HotmartBrazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters (Abert), Brazilian Radio and Television Association (Abratel), Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers (Abrint) and Brazilian Association of Startups (Abstartups), among others.
Tax incentives
The movement occurs amid discussions in Congress about the creation of tax incentives for the installation of data centers in Brazil. One of these initiatives was MP 1,318/2025, which had established the Special Taxation Regime for Datacenter Services (Redata), but lost its validity on February 25th.
The text, sent by the federal government, suspended the collection of federal taxes for the purchase of machines and equipment for data processing centers. Despite being published in September, the joint commission that would carry out the analysis was never installed.
Before the deadline, however, the government leader in the Chamber, deputy José Guimarães (PT-CE) presented a project with the same objective as the MP. The was approved on February 24th in the Chamber of Deputies and now depends on the approval of the Senate.
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According to Molon, the Dig.it will fight for initiatives like this that guarantee incentives for the data center sector in Brazil. “Our country has one of the cleanest energy matrices in the world, which is an attractive factor for this market, in addition to having the prospect of growth in energy generation in the coming years. But it is not enough to have clean and available energy. A series of public policy measures are needed to add to this. For example, with the reduction of equipment import costs, something that was foreseen in Redata”, he points out.
The revenue potential brought by the data center market has caught the attention of the federal government, which had reserved R$5.2 billion for Redata in the Annual Budget Bill (PLOA) 2026. The National Data Center Policy has been widely defended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who believes that investments in the sector boost the entire digital chain in the country.
At the regional level, cities like Rio de Janeiro have also invested in attracting these data processing centers. In August last year, Mayor Eduardo Paes announced the plan to transform the capital of Rio de Janeiro into an AI City, with the creation of a data center hub close to the Olympic Park.
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“In this first moment, our operations are national, but there will be regional developments”, guarantees Molon. The executive director of Dig.it defends the consolidation of a predictable regulatory environment in the country, at a time when other Latin American countries are also competing to host new data processing and storage structures.
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