Venture funds that specialize in early-stage technology have supported AI start-ups. Their importance lies not only in their capital but also in their mentorship and global network that help firms scale and generate interest and confidence from other investors. Numerous examples in the region underscore how partnering with international and national development organizations can help fund impactful projects. Uruguay has used development financing from the Inter-American Development Bank for projects such as agricultural technology.24 The Brazilian Development Bank has approved financing to support digital transformation, including the application of generative AI.25 Chile’s Production Development Corporation has also supported AI growth, including through support for the country’s supercomputing investment strategy.26 Hyperscalers are investing heavily in the region. Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest $4 billion in a new Chilean cloud infrastructure region27 and has invested in a data centre in Argentina to provide low latency and high data transfer rates.28 OpenAI has announced $25 billion investments in Argentina as part of its global Stargate project.29 Microsoft has also announced billion-dollar commitments in Brazil and Mexico to support AI infrastructure and training,30 while Google is investing in a variety of initiatives to support Latin America’s digital future.31 Latin American organizations have started to adopt AI. However, adoption is often not at scale. Instead, AI, especially GenAI, is primarily utilized at an individual productivity level. At that level, there are signs Latin American populations can be quick adopters of AI technologies: ChatGPT penetration is higher in Brazil than in the United States.32 While these numbers are encouraging, illustrating that the population is open to embracing AI, individual adoption of these tools instead of real transformation of core business processes rarely translates into meaningful value capture. Accelerate deployment of embedded intelligence Embedded intelligence refers to the use of AI technology to enhance experiences, the utilization of AI agents in workflows, the leveraging of AI in robotics and devices, and the willingness to embrace emerging AI technologies. Its deployment can be driven by private and public sector leaders that embed AI in their strategies. According to our survey, only 10% of survey respondents in Latin America report that their AI strategy is systematically linked to their broader business strategy at all levels and that senior leaders feel accountable for the outcome of their analytics and AI strategy. To understand how AI is affecting operations, we looked at analytical AI and GenAI separately. Analytical AI, including advanced analytics and predictive machine learning, remains the primary driver of AI’s overall economic potential. In Latin America, the adoption of analytical AI is still in its early stages across most domains, with notable progress achieved at scale in only a few areas. Customer service leads the way, leveraging AI to enhance operations through behavioural routing and optimized agent scheduling, for example. Similarly, fraud and debt analytics are gaining traction, with analytical AI being used to predict potential fraud and ensure regulatory compliance. Personalization is another area where analytical AI is driving customer engagement and value through segmented retention strategies and upsell or cross-sell initiatives. However, significant opportunities remain untapped, most notably in IT automation (such as analytics-driven mail sorting, IT ticket automation and application rationalization), digital marketing (such as AI-powered digital advertising, e-commerce optimization and lead generation) and people analytics (such as CV screening, predicting employee success and employee churn reduction), where a combined 43% of surveyed participants report being in the early stages of implementing AI, signalling a vast potential for growth and innovation.2.2 Growing new intelligent economies Latin America in the Intelligent Age: A New Path for Growth 13

Latin America Intelligent Age