Mariajose Garza/THE RIDER
Brownsville dives to the future with a city-owned internally operated artificial intelligence factory, which would modernize the delivery of services and processing data, according to an official.
On Dec. 19, 2025, the city announced, as part of Brownsville Connected, the building of its own AI factory.
“An AI factory is a dedicated environment where we process and analyze large amounts of real-time data using high-performance computing and advanced AI models,” according to the news release.
Jorge Cardenas, chief information officer for the City of Brownsville, said it started using AI because every city, nation and world needs the capability of processing data rapidly.
Cardenas added an AI factory is composed of multiple layers, with “so much” behind it.
“The infrastructure that needs to be pretty much built and that includes the city or organization needs to have its own fiber connectivity infrastructure,” he said. “Without that, it is very hard to, you know, have a city connected and have the information available at the speed that is required for an AI factory.”
Cardenas added the other layers are to ensure the city has modern IT data centers and the technology systems for cameras, weather sensors, flood detection sensors and traffic control.
“Right now, the AI factory, you know, is going to go in multiple phases but, [in] the first phase, we will start utilizing vision AI … making every camera that is available at city network, whether it be inside of buildings, outside of buildings [or] in traffic,” he said.
The CIO said public safety is the first to benefit, with the end goal of making the city safer and providing better services.
“Now, police, fire and all departments will react or act accordingly to the real-time analytics that we are getting,” Cardenas said.
He added AI technology is moving “very” fast. When the city purchased its equipment, Blackwell GPUs from Nvidia, they were the fastest chips available six months ago.
“A couple weeks ago, I went to a conference where Nvidia was presenting their new set of chips, which is called Rubin, that are 10 times faster than Blackwell,” Cardenas said. “This is just less than a year, so it’s moving very fast.”
The chief information officer said Brownsville is “leading the edge when it comes to technology,” the only city in the nation that has an AI factory. Other plans he said the city has are designing and planning an expansion to a private 5G network, and providing internet connectivity to trails and smart traffic systems.
Ruben Alvarado, an accounting senior, said he thinks the city implementing AI is a good tool if it helps Brownsville run more efficiently.
Jose Pardo, a mechanical engineering freshman, said he thinks AI is useful in some cases but should not be implemented into everything, adding data analysis should be something with people checking up on it. Cities improving infrastructure with technology is “pretty” useful.
“Technology is just basically the future, but we should also limit its use entirely,” Pardo said.
