City government establishes unprecedented partnership to boost innovation and economic growth.

Project marks the beginning of Rio AI City with a new phase of innovation and technology aimed at improving the lives of Rio citizens - Fabio Motta/Rio City Hall

The Rio de Janeiro City Hall launched, this Monday (November 3rd), an unprecedented partnership with X – The Moonshot Factory, the innovation lab of Alphabet, Google's parent company. The agreement, brokered by the Municipal Informatics Company (IplanRio), brings together projects in connectivity, sustainability, energy, and urban planning. It consolidates Rio as the first municipality in Latin America to develop an urban infrastructure guided by artificial intelligence.

The official launch took place during an event at Porto Marvalley, with the participation of Mayor Eduardo Paes, Deputy Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere, the president of IplanRio, João Carabetta, and the CEO of X, The Moonshot Factory, Astro Teller.

– The company seeks to address urban challenges and find solutions using technology. I visited their factory in the US and offered Rio as a location for testing new technologies. We are starting with four projects: one focused on waste recycling, transforming it into an economic asset; another focused on construction planning and licensing; another where we can provide high-speed internet without the need for wires; and one where we are upgrading our entire power grid, making it more stable, which represents an economic opportunity for Rio. This is a partnership where X, The Moonshot Factory, and the City Hall contribute resources and test these innovations. When we innovate, using technology greatly facilitates the possibilities of solving the city's problems – stated Eduardo Paes.

A key focus of the partnership is to ensure the availability of reliable and affordable electricity for Rio AI City, which will be the largest data center hub in Latin America, powered by renewable energy. The complex will have an initial capacity of 1,5 gigawatts (GW), with the possibility of expansion to 3,2 GW, a volume equivalent to the hourly consumption of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

– Our mission is to use technology to make the world a radically better place. Our job is to find new problems in the world and find solutions for them. We are bringing four technologies, in partnership with the City Hall, focusing on the vision of Rio AI City. Innovation is a team effort. We have never had a partnership like this. We are very excited about the vision of Rio AI City and believe that we can help in this process, that this partnership can be a model for how other cities in the world can use technology – said Astro Teller.

AX, The Moonshot Factory, is Alphabet's innovation engine, creating groundbreaking technologies to help solve major global challenges in areas such as transportation, healthcare, and energy. Some of the technologies born in its lab include Waymo (autonomous cars), Verily (precision life sciences and healthcare), and Wing (drone deliveries).

The cooperation agreement was orchestrated by IplanRio, in partnership with the Civil House, Comlurb, and the municipal secretariats of Economic Development (SMDE), Environment and Climate (SMAC), and Infrastructure. The objective is to modernize public management and expand economic and social advancements driven by technology.

"This is a technological leap for the city. We are aligning ourselves with one of the world's greatest innovators to bring four incredible technologies. Iplan will be the technical body that will mediate this entire conversation with Google. With this, we hope to improve the lives of citizens," said the president of IplanRio, João Carabetta.

– This is a partnership that brings technology. We will have everything that X, The Moonshot Factory, does that is most advanced. By signing this partnership, we will bring disruptive technologies to help solve real problems in our city. And by doing so, we will improve the quality of life, because we are talking about recycling, internet, and the electrical grid. We are talking about ways to bring better conditions for the provision of public services, but also to attract people and businesses to the city – declared the Secretary of Economic Development, Osmar Lima.

Tapestry, X's "moonshot for the power grid," will ensure the reliability of Rio's power grid for the development of Rio AI City. The AI-powered Tapestry platform helps partners build a more reliable and resilient energy system to better manage, plan, and operate the power grid.

Tapestry will ensure that Rio's network is "AI-ready," providing unprecedented visibility and planning capabilities. It will utilize computer vision, machine learning, and AI to map the entire network, flagging outdated or damaged equipment for proactive maintenance. Combined with Tapestry's large-scale, long-term simulation power, Rio AI City planners will be able to model the impact of connecting new data centers and power sources to the network up to 20 years into the future. These advanced simulations will help network planners make more accurate and cost-effective network upgrades, keeping the network reliable and resilient as Rio AI City grows.

The partnership also includes the implementation of a wireless optical network mesh by Taara, another X company, The Moonshot Factory. Taara uses light beams to transmit data at speeds equivalent to fiber optics—up to 20 Gbps—over long distances, without the need for underground cables. Taara offers fiber-speed internet access in areas where it is not economically viable, or very difficult, to install fiber. For example, in dense urban areas, over rivers and sea straits, or in areas where it is unsafe to dig trenches for cables.

In Rio, Taara will enable the connection of schools, hospitals, and public facilities in hard-to-reach areas, as well as ensure stable connectivity to security and emergency systems. It will also work with the City Hall to deploy citywide links connecting critical services such as hospitals, municipal schools, and health clinics. Some of these links will also be used to establish a rapid response communication system for disasters.

Another aspect of the partnership is the Anori project, which uses artificial intelligence to make architectural projects and constructions faster, more efficient, and more sustainable. Anori integrates vast amounts of information, such as environmental, regulatory, and infrastructure data, into a single unified digital environment for developers, architects, urban planners, regulators, and many more.

Anori will be used in Rio de Janeiro to transform the urban licensing process. The platform will digitize all of the municipality's urban planning legislation, allowing architectural projects to be generated and validated automatically according to local regulations. The goal is to reduce the analysis and approval time from months to minutes.

The municipality plans to use Anori to predict urban growth scenarios, attract investment, and expand job creation in the construction sector.

The Matera project, X's Moonshot to radically reduce global waste and advance towards a circular economy, will apply AI and molecular analysis to modernize the sorting of recyclable waste in partnership with Comlurb. Matera will identify, at the molecular level, the types of plastics and materials that can be recycled. This will increase recycling efficiency and help the municipality achieve its sustainability goals: raising the recycling rate from 1,4% to 35% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.