AWS opens first cloud region in Chile with $4bn investment

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its first cloud infrastructure region in Chile, marking its third cloud region in Latin America as it expands its global data centre footprint.

The AWS South America (Chile) Region is now operational for a select group of customers ahead of general availability, which the company expects to begin in the coming weeks.

AWS said it will invest more than $4 billion in Chile to support the new region. The company estimates the investment will contribute more than $7.5 billion to Chile’s GDP every year and support an average of 4,100 full-time equivalent jobs across sectors including telecommunications, construction, electricity generation and data centre operations.

Early customers include BancoEstado de Chile, BTG Pactual, Cencosud, Consorcio, Itaú and Ripley.

The local cloud region will allow businesses to keep data within the country, reduce application latency and help organisations meet evolving data residency and regulatory requirements, according to the cloud services provider.

It highlighted demand for cloud services across the country, with 78 per cent of companies already integrating artificial intelligence into their operations. Chile also has a $2.5 billion data centre investment pipeline and more than 330 active fintech companies.

The new region will initially provide core cloud services covering compute, storage, networking and databases. AWS said it plans to introduce artificial intelligence and machine learning services, including Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker AI, during the first year of operation.

Several Chilean organisations already use AWS AI technologies, including Latam Airlines and local retailer Copec.

“At AWS, everything we build starts with listening to our customers, and what they told us was clear: they needed to keep their data in the country, meet regulatory requirements more easily, and give their own customers faster, more reliable experiences,” said Paula Bellizia, vice president of AWS for Latin America.

“Every AWS Region is built to the same security and resilience standards used by the most demanding organizations in the world, and starting today that infrastructure is here, in Chile, and from Chile to Latin America and the world.”