Mexico plans to build Latin America’s most powerful supercomputer

Mexico has announced plans to construct what it says will be Latin America’s most powerful supercomputer, aiming to boost the country’s artificial intelligence capabilities and vastly expand its data processing capacity.

The supercomputer, named “Coatlicue” after the Mexica goddess regarded as the earth mother, is expected to be seven times more powerful than the current regional leader in Brazil, according to José Merino, head of Mexico’s Telecommunications and Digital Transformation Agency.

President Claudia Sheinbaum, an academic and climate scientist, said on Wednesday that the project’s location has not yet been finalised, but construction is slated to begin next year. She emphasised that the initiative will enable Mexico to fully leverage AI and process massive datasets that are currently beyond the country’s computational reach.

Mexico’s existing top supercomputer operates at 2.3 petaflops—capable of performing 2.3 quadrillion calculations per second. By contrast, Coatlicue is projected to reach 314 petaflops, a transformative leap in computing power for the nation.

The government frames the project as a strategic investment in technology infrastructure, ensuring Mexico remains competitive in emerging AI research and other high-performance computing applications.