Claro Brasil said that the AI capacity and processing offering for companies – GPU-as-a-service –, previously announced in a partnership with Nvidia, is currently based in data centers operated by Oracle outside the country.
According to CEO Rodrigo Marques, this arrangement is due to economic and tax hurdles that still make importing GPUs to Brazil unfeasible, despite the growing demand for artificial intelligence.
The location abroad, according to him, is temporary.
Claro is awaiting regulatory advances, such as the approval of ReData and changes in the taxation of technology equipment, in order to bring this infrastructure in-house. “Today it is economically unfeasible to bring GPUs to Brazil,” Marques said in response to BNamericas at a press conference in São Paulo.
According to Marques, Claro — which holds the Nvidia Cloud Partner seal — maintains priority access to GPUs in a scenario of global shortage.
Even abroad, this capacity would be used by Brazilian clients from the start of operations, with contracts still in an “initial phase” but already including larger-scale negotiations.
Marques also stated that the company has sufficient volume to meet current demand, although he did not provide detailed figures, and that it is aligned with Nvidia to move the assets to the country when it becomes feasible.
According to BNamericas’ investigation, Claro managed to acquire “a few dozen” GPUs, which are installed in data centers abroad – essentially in the US.
As a result, and even though it prefers to purchase Nvidia’s chips, the subsidiary of the América Móvil group is unable to scale this line of business significantly, since many clients have requirements to store and process data in Brazil.
The movement also has a systemic impact, stalling business and data center investments in the country.
According to BNamericas’ investigation, Claro is in advanced negotiations with one of these operators for a broader agreement involving the Claro Cloud business. However, without running GPUs in the country, this process is compromised.
AI, traffic and fiber
The company also highlighted that the advance of artificial intelligence is already impacting data consumption on the network.
According to Marques, AI applications have been increasing the demand for traffic and requiring greater capacity and speed, which supports recent investments in connectivity.
In this context, Claro announced this Thursday (04/23) new fiber plans with speeds of 1 Gbps, 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps, accompanied by routers with Wi-Fi 7.
The rollout will be gradual, starting in capitals such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with progressive expansion as equipment becomes available. The company stated that it will continue offering lower-speed plans to meet different consumption profiles.
The expansion of fiber is taking place continuously, without a forced migration program for the coaxial cable base, said Marques at the press conference. According to the company, the replacement occurs as needed for capacity expansion or new constructions, prioritizing fiber for cost and efficiency reasons.
Claro leads fixed broadband in the country, with almost 20% market share, but has only 6.4% when considering only fiber accesses.
Regarding acquisitions, Claro expects Cade’s approval to complete the purchase of the provider Desktop, concentrated in the state of São Paulo. The expectation is that the review will be completed soon. When asked, the company also stated that it continues to evaluate other opportunities, but without advanced negotiations at the moment.
In the mobile segment, the operator began including cloud storage services in postpaid plans, in partnership with Apple and Google.
The offer will be national and aimed at new customers, allowing the choice of one of the services per plan. The strategy also follows the bundling model already adopted by the company, which seeks to simplify the offer and reduce cancellations (churn).
Executives at Claro stated that these partnerships are part of a broader strategy to build a digital ecosystem, also involving companies such as Microsoft, AWS, Oracle and OpenAI.
In the corporate segment, the operator indicated that it will continue expanding digital services integrated with connectivity, focusing on solutions that serve both companies and their end customers.
The company’s strategy remains focused on service convergence and on expanding bundled offerings, integrating fixed connectivity, mobile connectivity, and digital services into a single customer proposition.
Satellites
The operator also wants to have satellite connectivity to complement terrestrial coverage, although still without concrete announcements, said Marques.
On Wednesday, in an earnings conference call, the CEO of parent company América Móvil, Daniel Hajj, said that the group is talking with Starlink.
According to Marques, the business model is still being defined and may involve different applications, both in the corporate market (B2B) and for the end consumer (B2C).
He also emphasized that Starlink is currently the only company with this technology commercially available, which makes the topic strategic for operators.
Claro assesses impact of costs
The CEO of Claro Brasil also stated that he is closely monitoring the increase in costs in the global supply chain.
Marques pointed out that the global semiconductor crisis, especially in memory, is already directly impacting the prices of equipment used by the operator. Although Claro does not manufacture these components, the effect is spread throughout the entire chain.
According to him, items such as routers, smartphones and broadband equipment have been showing significant cost increases, with an expectation of normalization only over a longer time horizon. “We use a lot of equipment that has memory. This affects the price of this equipment,” he said.
Despite this, the company said that it has managed to negotiate with suppliers to maintain a certain price stability in the short term, avoiding immediate pass-throughs to consumers.
Even so, Marques admits that, depending on the magnitude of the adjustments, the transfer of costs may become inevitable.
In addition to prices, there is concern about possible supply bottlenecks. The anticipation of purchases by companies around the world is already putting pressure on inventories and may lead to a shortage of equipment such as modems and set-top boxes.
“If the crisis continues, there is indeed a risk of product shortages”, he said.
(The original version of this content was written in Portuguese)