Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America

Geopolitics is re-shaping the geography of innovation. In 2025, countries compete for technological superiority, splitting the world back into spheres of influence. In a way, the 2020s are the new 1970s. Nations have restored Cold War aims: to outcompete rivals by appropriating the resources necessary to develop critical technologies with strategic autonomy.

There are, however, significant differences between now and the Cold War era. First, the portfolio of technologies considered critical to national interests is broader and deeper, ranging from advanced artificial intelligence to quantum technologies and biotechnologies.

Second, the supply chain necessary to construct these technologies is inherently global. Protectionist strategies to re-shore production clash against the networked nature of innovation. Today, "no country alone can make an iPhone", as economist Eric Beinhocker put it. Deep Tech presents even greater barriers to autonomous development, given the complexity and distribution of inputs it requires, from rare minerals to skilled labor.

Finally, with traditional alliances fading, the global race for competitiveness is contested by more players with their own interests. Today’s world has more than two poles of influence. These new geometries of power leave room for new players to affirm themselves on the global stage. Latin America is one such player.

Latin America has the resources to move from a battleground for technological appropriation to a strategic actor in tech-driven geopolitics.

Latin America has traditionally had a passive role in the development of the global technology industry. It has traded at a deficit with bigger partners, serving skills, resources, and market opportunities at a discount, an effect widely known as the "Latin American Discount." It is a function of the institutional fragility of individual countries in the region and of the region’s fragmentation, which prevents it from leveraging its size and competitive advantages as a bloc. Foreign investors cannot value opportunities at their actual worth when the context is plagued by uncertain rules, frequent corruption, and inadequate public-sector de-risking of emerging markets.

Yet current changes in geopolitics can shift the position of Latin America from a Deep Tech vassal to a stronghold. This is the thesis behind the Latin American Dynamism Project: to accelerate the development and investment of frontier technologies in Latin America. The region is home to 42% of the world’s biodiversity; controls the lithium triangle, which contains 58% of global reserves; possesses abundant clean-energy potential, critical for scaling compute-intensive industries; and benefits from a booming nearshoring trend. With a GDP of roughly USD 6 trillion, almost double that of India but with barely half the population, the region combines large-market scale with significant availability for greenfield development.

What Latin America lacks is the network effects, in infrastructure, capital, and human talent, that can catalyse its potential into strategic autonomy, founded upon technological competitiveness. Realizing this potential will require coordinated action across the region: no single country has the scale, resources, and institutional reach to compete alone in the global Deep Tech race. The LADP addresses this gap by providing unprecedented insights to public and private decision-makers.

This report shows regional and global decision-makers a path to making LATAM an autonomous and reputable player in the global race for technological competitiveness.

This inaugural LADP report reveals more than a set of surprising data, which shows that LATAM is already a theatre for overlooked inventions. It shows regional and global decision-makers a path to making LATAM an autonomous and reputable player in the global race for technological competitiveness. Some countries, such as China, have long understood this, undertaking for a decade now policies of appropriation of natural resources. Others, from Latin American countries to traditional Western allies, have been slower to realise the potential of the region as more than the sum of its parts.

We publish these insights with the ambition to catalyze conversations, communities, and ecosystems that accelerate the transition of Latin America from a battleground for technological appropriation to a strategic actor in tech-driven geopolitics.

# Acknowledgments

This report was authored by Claudio Cifuentes Lobo, Marcus Alburez, Leonardo Quattrucci, Verónica Jijón and Said Saillant, with Nick Cohen and Fausto Carbajal Glass providing essential editorial guidance. Their combined expertise in data analysis, regional policy, and ecosystem development underpins every section of this publication. Production, design, data science, and communications were handled by Lucía Fenoglio, Solange Rodríguez, Milene Broche, Sebastián Díaz, Agustina Sojit, and Marco Tebélan.

To shape our findings, we spoke with almost 100 contributors and partnered with 17 organizations, venture-capital executives, policy-makers and ecosystem leaders, who generously shared their time and candid perspectives. This report was made possible by a grant from the International Strategy Forum, founded by Dr. Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Chairman of Google.⁰

Latin America pairs the inputs for frontier science with a market that has chronically underpriced them. The problems and the opportunities are two sides of the same coin. The report combines a database of 2,566 deep tech ventures with more than 100 interviews and five roundtables to map the ecosystem and to chart a path from the "LATAM Discount" to fair value.

# The problems

# The opportunities

The report groups its 20 recommendations into three arcs: what companies must do to become investable (Market Readiness), what unlocks investor confidence (Investor Readiness), and the regional coalition that ties it together, plus five further-research initiatives. The through-line is that the discount is a temporary mispricing driven by solvable structural factors, not permanently inferior fundamentals.

This report combines quantitative and qualitative research methods to provide a comprehensive overview of the Deep Tech ecosystem in Latin America.

# Quantitative approach

We began with a dataset of 5,000 Deep Tech companies from LATAM, sourced primarily from Tracxn. After a review process, we retained ~2,500 companies for our final analysis. The data cutoff date was March 2025. To assist with accuracy in classification, we employed large language models (LLMs) for initial categorization, supplemented by meticulous manual validation.

For the manual checks, our team reviewed open-source materials, including patents, scientific publications, documentation, and corporate disclosures, to verify whether companies met established criteria for Deep Tech classification. The primary challenge involved distinguishing companies that leverage trendy technologies like Artificial Intelligence primarily as superficial marketing strategies from those genuinely developing novel, scientifically rigorous solutions.

Another critical obstacle was the lack of a shared, comprehensive, and openly accessible regional database. During our literature review, we found that existing reports frequently rely on proprietary datasets or private data brokers, limiting their value as a universally acceptable benchmark for ecosystem mapping. It is important to note that this is not an exhaustive database, but the most complete mapping we have seen to date.

To classify the companies by Deep Tech vertical, we took the 12 categories proposed by the 2023 Deep Tech: The New Wave report, backed by the Inter-American Development Bank: Robotics, Spacetech, Advanced Mobility, Biotechnology, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Cleantech, Advanced Materials, Healthtech, Infinite Computing, Advanced Manufacturing, and Nanotechnology.¹⁹ To classify the companies by industry, we took the 8 categories proposed by EMERGE’s 2024 Relatório Deep Tech Brasil: Agribusiness & Animal Health, Food & Beverages, Cosmetics & Wellness, Energy, Chemicals, Petrochemicals & Materials, Human Health & Pharmaceuticals, Sustainability & Environment, and Other.

# Qualitative approach

Our qualitative research consisted of 5 roundtables and 100+ interviews with stakeholders across the ecosystem, including founders, investors, accelerators, researchers, and government actors. We asked them: what key gaps make LATAM investment less attractive to global VCs, and which resources would help bridge that gap? What do investors in LATAM’s Deep Tech ecosystem look for when deciding to fund startups at both the regional and global levels? How would you design a regional coalition that bridges local startups with global investment?

This report synthesizes insights from these conversations without attributing specific comments. We applied an obstacles-first lens to surface the binding constraints blocking ecosystem transformation, grounding our recommendations in removing root causes rather than proposing generic, solution-first fixes.

At its core, Deep Tech is the business of turning frontier science into products, the commercialisation of laboratory breakthroughs through structured technology-transfer processes. Whether the advance comes from a new material, a novel bioprocess, or a cutting-edge AI algorithm, the venture’s value proposition hinges on owning (or licensing) that underlying intellectual property and engineering it into a scalable solution that can redefine an industry.

# Five hallmarks

These technologies share five hallmarks, as noted in previous literature:¹

1. Radical novelty, they introduce genuinely new technical capabilities.
2. Fast growth, research, patents and investment expand rapidly.
3. Coherence, a recognizable knowledge base and community forms around them.
4. High-impact potential, often with long development timelines, their main socioeconomic effects are expected, not fully realised.
5. Uncertainty & ambiguity, outcomes, markets and standards are still fluid.

By contrast, sectors such as fintech or general consumer software build mainly on technologies that already exist. They remix mature stacks of code and cloud infrastructure to create new user experiences or business models, but do not introduce a fundamentally new technology layer. In that sense they are sometimes dubbed "shallow tech" or "regular tech", innovations driven more by application design than by scientific discovery.

In Latin America, Deep Tech ventures are commonly labelled Emprendimientos de Base Científico-Tecnológica (EBCT) amongst policy papers, innovation-law frameworks and regional multilaterals like ECLAC.² In China, we have found that the homologous term is "New Infrastructure," embedded in State Council guidelines and provincial five-year plans as the umbrella for AI, advanced manufacturing, and other Deep Tech priorities.³

# Deep Tech investment: demystifying the risk

Beyond defining Deep Tech itself, the primary hesitation surrounding investment often emerges from evaluating critical metrics, particularly funding cycles and return on investment, in comparison to traditional technology sectors such as fintech, where conventional tech typically demonstrates immediate and steady growth upon receiving capital. This concern can be especially pronounced in LATAM, where investors are familiar with shorter business cycles and may be reluctant to wait several years for tangible returns.

Fortunately, various studies have started to quantify these concerns. A McKinsey report analyzing European and U.S. Deep Tech funds reveals an average net internal rate of return (IRR) of 17%, outperforming traditional tech funds, which yield an average of 10%.⁴ However, the absence of directly comparable LATAM data complicates contextualizing these findings, underscoring the need for localized research. The 2025 European Deep Tech Report identified and addressed eight prevalent misconceptions about Deep Tech investments.⁵

While precise metrics for Latin America’s Deep Tech ecosystem, and granular KPIs for each vertical, are still under development, a high-level risk-profile comparison helps illustrate the fundamental differences. Deep Tech startups carry substantially higher technology risk, require large upfront capital, and face protracted development cycles measured in years rather than months. Yet, once past those hurdles, they enjoy a powerful competitive moat, anchored in proprietary scientific breakthroughs, extensive IP portfolios, and teams of niche technical experts, that most "regular" tech firms simply cannot replicate.

Latin America sits at a pivotal crossroads. On one flank, a web of long-standing deficits, in healthcare, learning, public trust, labor formality, financial inclusion, infrastructure, energy, and cybersecurity, continues to sap productivity and widen inequality.

Roughly 140 million people still lack reliable access to basic health services,⁶ and the latest PISA results reveal that teenagers in the region perform the equivalent of three to seven school-years behind their OECD peers in mathematics.⁷ Confidence in government has slipped so far that seven in ten citizens express little or no trust in their national institutions,⁸ fuelling political volatility just as the digital economy demands stable rules of the game. Add a labor market in which nearly one-half of jobs are informal,⁹ a persistent digital divide that leaves 230 million Latin Americans offline,¹⁰ and rising cyber-incidents, LATAM became the world’s fastest-growing region for disclosed cyber-incidents by 2024¹¹, and Deep Tech innovation can seem a distant luxury.

Yet the very scale of these gaps hints at outsized opportunity.

The region commands world-class biodiversity, booming renewable-energy corridors, and a growing cadre of STEM researchers eager to found science-based companies. This potential is most evident in lithium, where Latin America holds nearly two thirds of global reserves, concentrated in the "Lithium Triangle" of Bolivia (24%), Argentina (22%) and Chile (11%), though Chile has led the way by turning its reserves into commercial production.¹²

Beyond the momentum of its resources, Latin America offers compelling opportunities for greenfield FDI, projects where companies build new facilities from the ground up rather than acquiring existing assets. Greenfields are attractive given abundant land and natural resources, improving logistics links, and the ability to tailor plants to modern standards. For aerospace specifically, select geographies near the equator offer orbital-mechanics advantages for certain launch profiles, adding a niche location edge.¹³

According to the UNCTAD World Investment Report 2025, developing countries attracted more than $530 billion in greenfield digital-economy projects between 2020 and 2024. Close to 80% of this investment was concentrated in just ten countries, with Brazil and Mexico the only Latin American economies represented.¹⁴

Amid intensifying U.S.–China competition, near-shoring, relocating operations to nearby countries rather than distant off-shore locations, is disrupting the decades-old model of prioritizing lowest-cost production, instead emphasizing supply-chain resilience and regional proximity. Latin America has emerged as a prime beneficiary as companies in North America move "from pure cost efficiency toward resilience, redundancy, and regional integration," according to Fausto Carbajal.¹⁵

Mexico leads LATAM’s nearshoring wave, thanks to its geographic proximity, free-trade agreements, skilled and cost-competitive labor, and extensive logistics network, advantages expected to favor semiconductors, automotive, electrical equipment, medical devices, agribusiness, and food.¹⁶ Santander Mexico estimates near-shoring could drive FDI to levels exceeding remittances as soon as 2025.¹⁷ Beyond Mexico, countries like Colombia are becoming specialized IT hubs, creating complementary regional ecosystems.¹⁸

Latin America possesses the natural endowments, human capital and early-stage funding momentum to turn Deep Tech from a remote aspiration into a practical engine of inclusive growth.

Understanding this dual reality, the entrenched gaps and the emergent assets, is the first step. The pages that follow map the region’s structural challenges, spotlight global case studies of successful leap-frogging, and lay out the policy, capital-market and talent interventions to close the region’s long-standing "LATAM Discount."

The database used for this analysis comprises 2,566 LATAM startups. This count differs from our initial estimate of over 5,000 after filtering; a fuller explanation is in the Methodology section.

For context, the IDB mapped 340 Deep Tech startups in LATAM in 2023,¹⁹ and EMERGE reported over 1,300 in 2025.²⁰ Our higher count reflects an expanded sector scope that includes AI and cryptography, two verticals that have grown sharply in the last five years. This underscores the limits of closed, proprietary databases maintained in parallel by different actors, divergent definitions, methods, and limited auditability drive many of the discrepancies across reports. The robust path is a regional, open, versioned, auditable dataset with a shared taxonomy, transparent inclusion criteria, and a public correction/contribution workflow.

The main discrepancy comes because we expanded the scope of the database to AI and cryptography, two verticals that have grown significantly in the last two years. This is work in progress and will expand as we validate additional rounds.

# Geographical analysis

LATAM’s Deep Tech landscape is sharply concentrated: Brazil hosts about 41% of all startups, driven by São Paulo’s 29% share, while Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia, together with their leading capitals, gather most of the rest, leaving a long tail of smaller countries and cities that underscores both the ecosystem’s strength and its geographic imbalance.

• Brazil dominates with 1,048 Deep Tech startups, about 40.8% of the entire regional database. Its share is larger than the next four countries combined.
• Mexico (358, 14%), Argentina (256, 10%), Chile (251, 9.8%) and Colombia (219, 8.5%) form a solid second tier. Together with Brazil, these five countries host 83% of all mapped companies.
• Beyond the "Big 5," a long tail of emerging hubs, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Ecuador, offers earlier-stage, less-crowded markets.

Cultivating a distributed tech ecosystem depends on a dual approach: reinforcing major existing hubs, like São Paulo and Mexico City, while nurturing new ecosystems across the region, such as Uruguay and Costa Rica. Two strategies documented in Chile and Colombia are relevant: mixed cohorts that place international and local founders in the same programs to maximize peer-learning, and ecosystem-as-a-service (EaaS) operators that provide shared services so startups can progress faster.

• São Paulo is Latin America’s largest Deep Tech hub with 329 startups, roughly 29% of all ventures in the top-10 cities, more than the next three hubs combined.
• Buenos Aires, Santiago and Mexico City form a strong second tier; together with São Paulo they account for 63% of the mapped activity.
• Bogotá anchors the Andean corridor, but its scale remains half that of the tier-two group, signalling room for growth of seed and Series A funding.
• Brazil fields five of the top-ten hubs, São Paulo plus Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre, highlighting powerful domestic network effects.

# Funding stage and tickets

Our analysis indicates a significant funding gap. While capital flow has rebounded since the 2021 pandemic and big-tech crisis, few startups progress beyond Seed rounds as of 2025. This is consistent with IDB findings: up until 2022, 65% of Deep Tech startups in LATAM were still in pre-seed and seed phases, having raised less than $1 million, while a scant 8% had progressed to Series B (those exceeding $10 million).

The ecosystem is heavily front-loaded: 72% of ventures are still at Seed stage, and only 19% have secured a Series A. Dramatically, only 22 startups (10%) have secured a Series B round or beyond, confirming a steep funnel from validation to scale-up. According to Dealroom, even as overall Deep Tech funding remained robust at $138 million in 2024, not a single Series B or later round closed in LATAM.²⁵ Our data reveals the median round size scales from US$0.6M (Seed) to US$8.3M (Series A), then leaps to US$17M (Series B) and US$100M (Series C).

Over the past five years the number of funding rounds has increased, yet the average cheque size has fallen dramatically from its 2021 high. In 2021, only 27 rounds were recorded, coinciding with unusually large tickets. In 2022, deal activity more than doubled as capital dispersed into a wider set of companies. In 2023 the round count fell 30% from 2022 and, more dramatically, the average check dropped 70%. In 2024 activity rebounded to its highest level by round count, yet still skewed toward early-stage financing, confidence in Deep Tech fundamentals returned faster than appetite for large growth cheques, leaving the Series B–C "scale-up gap" even wider.

# Sector coverage

Given the absence of sector-level disaggregation in our data, we use the IDB’s Deep Tech: The New Wave as the reference framework. By 2023, Biotechnology (61%) dominated LATAM’s Deep Tech, followed by Artificial Intelligence (11%). Together they represented 72% of regional startups, reflecting the critical role these technologies play in sustainable agriculture, food security, and healthcare.

According to the IDB, the prevalence of biotech aligns with the region’s abundant specialized talent in biological sciences, the international competitiveness of the agricultural sector, and remarkable biodiversity. Costa Rica and Argentina illustrate this concentration, with 97% and 80% of their respective Deep Tech ecosystem value coming from biotech. Establishment Labs, a Costa Rica–based biotech company, stands as the region’s most valuable player. SOSV/IndieBio reported a 72% gross average return on LATAM Deep Tech startups between 2015 and 2023.

Beyond these two leading areas, the landscape includes Nanotechnology (6%), Clean Tech (5%), Spacetech (4%), Advanced Mobility (4%), Robotics (2%), Advanced Manufacturing (2%), Health Tech (2%), Advanced Materials (1%), and Medical Devices & Others (<1%). While these sectors carve out promising niches, the region’s Deep Tech ecosystem remains starved for capital, venture funding for R&D in LATAM is roughly 13 times lower than in China and 70 times lower than in the U.S., a shortfall that chokes off early-stage growth.²⁶

# Who is investing

By 2023, there were 65 VC funds with at least one Deep Tech investment in LATAM, according to the IDB, both regional and international. By 2025, Hello Tomorrow’s Deep Tech Investor Mapping had identified nearly 40 VC funds active in the region.²⁷ Beyond updating coverage, the analysis should move from presence to intensity: quantify how often each investor backs Deep Tech startups, at which stages and ticket sizes, their follow-on behavior, and the graduation rate of portfolio companies. It should also isolate corporate venture capital activity and add family offices and sovereign wealth funds, which emerged in our interviews as increasingly relevant co-investors.

The science is already shipping. From extremophile microbes to Earth-observation constellations, LATAM Deep Tech ventures are reaching global markets today, concrete proof points that demystify the journey from lab to market.

By 2023, investment in LATAM increased by nearly 600% between 2019 and 2023, rising from under USD 300 million to USD 2 billion in just four years, according to the IDB’s Deep Tech: The New Wave.²⁸ As of September 2024, cumulative investment had grown by an additional USD 536 million, bringing the regional total to roughly USD 2.54 billion.

Even at this higher level, LATAM still trails other regions: roughly USD 13 billion in Asia, USD 14 billion in Europe, and USD 52 billion in the United States.²⁹ In macroeconomic context, those volumes correspond to about 0.04% of Latin America’s GDP, versus approximately 0.08% in Europe, 0.20% in Asia, and 0.22% in the U.S. Per capita, Latin America’s $15.25 per-person investment is higher than Asia’s modest $2.7, but still half of Europe’s $31 and a fraction of the United States’ $153.

This illustrates that while other regions have more mature Deep Tech ecosystems, Latin America has an immense and largely untapped opportunity for both capital and innovation. Looking ahead, the IDB projected in 2023 a twentyfold increase in VC investment into LATAM Deep Tech startups over the next decade, underpinned by a growing pool of researchers and engineers, cost advantages, lower early-stage valuations with attractive return profiles, and the region’s exceptional biodiversity.

The model rests on three points: Europe’s deep-tech VC 18× growth from 2012 to 2022, LATAM’s general 20× VC growth between 2012–2022, and LATAM’s 1.8× Deep Tech growth from 2020 to 2022.³⁰ We present this as a high-end scenario, credible but contingent on progress in talent retention, later-stage capital depth, regulatory coherence, and exit pathways.

In 2024, after three years of decline, primarily due to the pandemic and the "big tech crisis", the funding landscape for LATAM tech startups showed positive signs again. According to the LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review report by SlingHub & Itaú, 2024 marked the first year since 2021 that LATAM’s tech industries experienced year-over-year growth, reaching 37%. Market funding across all tech sectors increased from USD 6.4 billion to USD 8.8 billion.³¹

LATAM’s tech investment rebounded 37% YoY in 2024, marking the first year of recovery since 2021 and signaling renewed investor confidence across sectors.

A closer look reveals that Deep Tech is the most steadily growing area. Deep Tech emerged as the third-largest category within all tech industries, securing USD 536 million of funding, 6% of the overall total, placing it just behind energy (13%) and fintech, which dominated with 55% of market funding. Although a small percentage overall, Deep Tech grew the most year over year, accounting for a 219% overall growth increase. On equity funding the trend is similar: Deep Tech lags Fintech (41%) in volume and equals Energy at 11%, yet was the highest year-over-year grower in equity funding volume in 2024, with 189% growth.

# Gaps to become international unicorns

While Deep Tech in LATAM boasts exciting pockets, the region remains dramatically undercapitalized. R&D funding is roughly 13× lower than in China and 70× lower than in the U.S.³² This shortfall is structural. In advanced economies like the US and EU, companies fund over 60% of R&D (nearly 80% in China); in LATAM, businesses cover only about 35%, while governments provide roughly 60%.

The "LATAM Discount" refers to the phenomenon where startups and companies in Latin America are often valued lower than counterparts in the United States, Europe or other emerging markets, despite similar or even superior metrics. The discount is attributed to perceived risks, political instability, economic volatility, and regulatory challenges, that deter international investors.

Even in traditional equities markets, Latin American equities have traded at a significant discount to global averages and Emerging Markets in recent years. The MSCI LATAM Index, which captures large- and mid-cap representation in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, suggests LATAM is trading at a –51% discount compared to the world, above the historical average of –13.9%. According to Itaú BBA, "this can be partially explained by the rising relevance of tech companies in global indexes, at a higher pace than EMs, while LATAM has virtually little exposure to this sector." Against other Emerging Markets, LATAM trades at a –27.7% discount as of 2024.³³

# Key exposures that drive risk and return

The 2025 MSCI Index compares the factor exposures of LATAM and other EMs like China or India against a global benchmark (MSCI ACWI IMI).³⁴ From the six main factors, Value, Low Size, Momentum, Quality, Yield and Low Volatility, LATAM is especially overexposed to Volatility, represented by commodity exposure, macroeconomic swings and political risks. This is typically negative and can deter global equities investors. In parallel, LATAM lags behind other emerging markets and the global benchmark on Quality and Momentum, indicating fewer high-quality balance sheets or fewer stocks with strong price momentum. A negative Low Size tilt suggests the index is more concentrated in large-cap stocks.

This phenomenon brings us to the pivotal question: why bother investing in emerging markets? After all, investors might remain in the U.S., where returns are stable and fixed-income rates exceed 5%. As one observer put it, "the big issue seems to be whether emerging returns are enough to drag U.S. and Western funds away from an increasingly comfortable home bias."³⁵ Nevertheless, this report and broader data indicate compelling reasons to invest precisely at this juncture.

The LATAM discount represents a temporary mispricing driven by solvable structural factors, regulatory uncertainty, limited market liquidity, and information asymmetries, rather than permanently inferior fundamentals.

As these factors improve through institutional development, enhanced transparency, and deeper capital markets, the region’s valuations should converge toward their intrinsic value, creating attractive risk-adjusted returns without requiring speculative premiums.

The question is shifting from "Why Latin America?" to "Why haven’t we invested more?"

Cristián Hernández Manager, Zentynel³⁶

What follows are 20 concrete recommendations across three arcs: what companies must do to become investable (Market Readiness), what unlocks investor confidence (Investor Readiness), and the regional coalition that ties it together, plus five further-research initiatives.

One of the most critical challenges for Deep Tech startups lies in bridging the gap between scientific innovation and business execution. Many ventures are founded by brilliant scientists who face a steep learning curve when shifting into entrepreneurial leadership roles.

In Latin America, scientific founders are commonly left to juggle multiple high-stakes roles at once: raising capital, taking products to international markets, and continuing to push technological frontiers. This is further rooted in the academic culture of many universities across the region, where entrepreneurship is still seen as a niche path rather than a viable or encouraged career option for scientific talent. As a result, the entrepreneurial potential of highly skilled scientists remains largely untapped.

Venture Building, also called a venture studio, is a model tailored to fit this gap. It is an institutional co-founder model that originates startups from scratch, not just accelerates existing ones. A venture builder scouts frontier science/IP, forms founding teams by pairing scientists with seasoned operators, structures the company (IP, governance, regulatory), provides shared product/BD resources, and co-invests to reach the first meaningful technical and commercial milestones. Unlike incubators/accelerators, venture builders are hands-on company creators with longer engagement, deeper ownership, and operational responsibility.

A venture builder scouts frontier science/IP, forms founding teams by pairing scientists with seasoned operators, structures the company, provides shared product/BD resources, and co-invests to reach the first meaningful milestones.

# Regional examples

One key element missing is a concrete track record that shows Latin American companies have global reach and impact. Track records are super important for investors. While there are isolated examples, the overall image and history of successful exits in the region remain limited.

Roundtable participant

# Recommendations: Train, Fund, Validate

Stakeholders recommend starting with the basics: normalize entrepreneurship inside universities and top labs. Make it routine, run short, hands-on founder bootcamps and add recurring entrepreneurship modules to graduate programs, with mentors who can pair scientists with operators. Provide universities with the right incentives to engage with company building, circulating economic value back to the institutions.

A parallel demand emerged for increased non-dilutive capital in the initial stages. Stakeholders consistently requested small grants and rapid bridge funding to support proof-of-concepts before Series A, without this early funding, there will be no credible projects for subsequent financing. Finally, connect venture builders with VCs and corporates to secure funding for clinical trials, pilots, and initial market entry. Establishing dedicated corporate pilot lanes (at least one per hub) would enable product validation in real-world environments, and shared diligence and data-room templates would accelerate the most promising projects.

In the process of fundraising and building investor confidence, clear, tailored metrics and compelling success stories are essential tools for Deep Tech startups. Unlike software ventures, where traction is measured by user growth, churn, or recurring revenue, Deep Tech operates on fundamentally different timelines and value drivers.

One of the key hurdles startups face is the lack of standardized, relevant metrics. Applying the same indicators used in traditional tech sectors often leads to misunderstandings and undervaluation. Metrics must be contextualized to each vertical, a biotech startup needs different benchmarks than one focused on quantum computing or advanced materials, and even within biotech, indicators should vary across sub-segments.

One key element missing is a concrete track record that shows Latin American companies have global reach and impact. Track records are super important for investors. While there are isolated examples, the overall image and history of successful exits in the region remain limited.

LADP investors roundtable participant

# Recommendations: Deep Tech KPI framework

The main pillar for this endeavor is robust data. We recommend establishing a LATAM Deep-Tech KPI framework to close the gap left by U.S. and EU-centric benchmarks and to improve the transparency and comparability of investment opportunities across the region. This report offers a first pass; moving from map to machinery will require follow-on convenings, working groups of investors, founders, and technical experts, to validate gaps, agree on relevant sources, and set clear data-collection cadences.

The framework should combine a standardized, cross-vertical core with sector-specific annexes. The standardized core would track graduation rates from one funding round to the next, internal rate of return over defined time horizons, and the share and depth of active corporate venture capital participation. Sector annexes would then capture what general KPIs miss: clinical and regulatory milestones in biotech, certification and qualification cycles in hardware, or approvals and interconnection timelines in climate and energy.

This two-tier approach preserves comparability while capturing each vertical’s operational realities. For startups, it creates a credible, investor-ready narrative grounded in standardized metrics. For the broader ecosystem, it generates a stronger evidence base, producing the robust numbers and decision-grade insights needed to elevate the region’s standing in the global deep-tech landscape.

Robust data is the first step. Second, and maybe most important, is communicating it to the appropriate stakeholders at the appropriate time, publicly and privately.

Privately, it is essential to educate investors on the viability and strategic significance of Deep Tech, an area traditionally absent from their consideration, and more so around LATAM’s. This information gap also includes local, off-the-radar investors: regions like southern Argentina harbor considerable, long-accumulated wealth, often tied to oil, agriculture, and mining, yet many local capital stewards lack exposure to alternative asset classes such as startups and Deep Tech.

Publicly, a mosaic of initiatives, from podcasts and newsletters to demo days and national summits, works to spotlight deep-tech talent. Notable examples include EMERGE’s Deep Tech Summit in São Paulo (launched 2024);³⁸ Impacto Deep Tech LATAM, co-hosted on Uruguay’s coast by CITES, Draper Cygnus, GRIDX, Air Capital VC, and The Ganesha Lab with IDB Lab support;³⁹ Draper Cygnus Tech Week 2025 across the Southern Cone; GRIDX’s 2025 U.S. Biotech Roadshow;⁴⁰ Alianza Deep Tech Colombia’s Genera Summit in Bogotá;⁴¹ and The Ganesha Lab’s BIGinBIO alongside CORFO’s Go Europe Connect.⁴²

These initiatives are genuine wins, yet as the ecosystem expands, efforts that run program-by-program and country-by-country can drift into duplication, thin signaling, and missed network effects for lack of a unifying architecture.

This education should not rely on theory alone. Real-world examples are essential: startups that have secured follow-on rounds, entered regulated markets, or translated scientific breakthroughs into commercial products serve as proof points that demystify the deep-tech journey.

# Recommendations: Educate Privately, Convene Publicly

On the private side, governments, corporations, and regional stakeholders can institute dedicated Deep Tech investor-education initiatives, formal and informal, that address capital requirements, R&D timelines, exit strategies, and sector-specific success metrics. By designing targeted programs for high-net-worth individuals, the region can cultivate a new class of angel investors.

Publicly, the goal is to convene a single flagship Deep-Tech forum, not a routine conference, but a marquee gathering that places Latin America squarely on the global investment map. A curated mix of exhibitions, keynote sessions, and investor roadshows would showcase the region’s strengths, while an intentional invitation strategy ensures the room includes international LPs and strategic corporations. Coordinated under a shared strategy, today’s scattered sparks would cohere into a region-wide beacon.

Once Deep Tech startups have aligned scientific innovation with business structure and begin fundraising beyond initial grants, a critical next step is to strategically reframe how they present their value. Participants repeatedly emphasized moving beyond a purely technical narrative, focused on scientific complexity or engineering novelty, toward a more impactful and globally relevant story.

This shift involves positioning Deep Tech as a vehicle for addressing the most pressing global challenges: climate change, the energy transition, and public health. As Cristián Hernández, general manager at Zentynel and author of Catalysts of Change⁴³, argues, the savviest biotech investors don’t merely analyse spreadsheets; they buy into stories.

Facts alone don’t move hearts, or wallets. Investors, regulators, and partners must not only understand the science but also feel the urgency and potential impact of what a company is building.

Cristián Hernández General Manager, Zentynel

That said, Deep Tech investment isn’t merely philanthropy. Participants emphasized that Deep Tech can deliver substantial ROI, with long-term value stemming from its capacity to resolve significant challenges while generating returns. Many investors are drawn to this hybrid appeal, they want more than just financial gain, but are not willing to compromise on performance. Deep Tech, when framed correctly, offers both.

# Recommendations: Deep Tech for SDGs

From the outset, think beyond technology and pure investment. Deep Tech can directly address climate change, inequality, and multiple SDGs. We recommend situating engineering and go-to-market strengths within clear societal outcomes, without slipping into greenwashing. Institutionally, the 2025 UNDP report Global Deep Tech Ecosystems opens with "Why Deep Tech Matters for the Sustainable Development Goals,"⁴⁴ including case studies on solid-state battery technologies. We recommend using these frameworks when pitching and when designing institutional approaches. As the agenda gains legitimacy, startups can leverage their mission as a strategic asset that differentiates them and attracts long-term partners.

For Deep Tech startups in Latin America, adopting a global mindset from day one is not just an advantage, it’s a necessity. While the region holds immense scientific talent, local markets are simply not large or stable enough to support the scale that breakthrough ventures require.

Whether due to limited ambition or barriers such as language, particularly difficulties with English, many founders still build with a local frame of reference. There needs to be a fundamental shift: startups must be designed with global relevance from the outset. Yet mindset alone is not sufficient. Operational readiness must go hand in hand with global thinking, aligning company structures with international standards to attract foreign capital and strategic partners.

Operational readiness must go hand in hand with global thinking. This means aligning company structures with international standards to attract foreign capital and strategic partners.

# Recommendations: Language First, Structure Next

Start with the basics. Make English the working language for internal and external materials, pitch decks, data rooms, technical docs, and contracts. Pair this with targeted English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) upskilling for founders and research teams, focusing on the vocabulary they’ll use: IP and licensing terms, term sheets, regulatory and clinical/device documentation, and investor pitching. Provide operational support such as English-ready data-room templates, bilingual model contracts, and translation stipends.

Once those fundamentals are in place, layer in structural elements that signal global readiness: setting up holding companies in jurisdictions like Delaware, favored by international investors for its robust legal framework and transparent corporate governance. Register intellectual property early with the USPTO, it is often recommended to patent in the U.S. before filing in home countries. Another route is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT): a single application recognized by 158 member states lets founders "time-buy" to nationalize filings across jurisdictions. Unfortunately, only 14 of 33 LATAM countries are registered, Uruguay being the latest signatory.⁴⁵

Together, these practices demonstrate that a startup is not only building cutting-edge technology but also structuring itself to operate and thrive on a global stage.

Among the chief pain points identified were skepticism toward LATAM’s R&D capabilities and a fragmented regulatory landscape. Deep Tech companies rely extensively on R&D at top-tier academic institutions; their defining characteristic is that they emerge after years of rigorous research by individual scientists or teams of PhDs.

This process involves developing robust intellectual property and a lengthy, strategic technology transfer from academia to the commercial sector. The entire journey, from research and prototyping through development, validation, and commercialization, takes 25–40% longer to translate into returns than a conventional software company, according to Boston Consulting Group estimates.⁴⁶ But before commercialization, the primary risk at early stages is the robustness of the underlying science.

Latin American ventures often face skepticism from international investors regarding the robustness and credibility of their early-stage scientific research.

U.S. investors, accustomed to evaluating founders and technologies emerging from prestigious institutions like Stanford, MIT, and Harvard, might doubt the credibility of innovations presented by founders from lesser-known universities in LatAm. This skepticism forces founders to undertake the additional challenge of proving the reliability of their technology and data.

Garret Dempsey Global investor, 2024

Consequently, this skepticism often results in an extended deliberation process for international investors, sometimes even perceived as biased, at a crucial stage in company development.

# Recommendation: Regional International Scientific Advisory Boards

To enhance credibility and accelerate investment decisions, we recommend establishing Regional International Scientific Advisory Boards within each major vertical. These impartial, high-caliber validation panels would combine global expertise, senior scientists and technology-transfer officers at institutions such as MIT, Stanford, ETH Zurich and Cambridge, with the local insight of distinguished LATAM researchers who have proven commercialization track records.

To ground the boards in excellence, they should include leaders from Latin America’s top patent-producing academic institutions: Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) in Mexico; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Universidad de Concepción in Chile; Universidad de los Andes in Colombia; and CONICET in Argentina, among the top 20 LATAM patent filers over the past two decades.⁴⁷

These boards could conduct rigorous peer reviews of early-stage ventures at Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 3–5, evaluating experimental design, reproducibility and IP robustness. Ventures that meet these benchmarks could receive a formal endorsement seal for investor materials, alongside tailored expert and policy support. Finally, the boards could publish an annual "State of Deep Tech Science" briefing highlighting validated breakthroughs and de-risked technologies.

Depending on needs, the boards could be housed (1) within a multilateral institution such as the IDB; (2) in an intergovernmental academic body like the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research;⁴⁸ (3) under a consortium of leading LATAM academic institutions; or (4) within a newly established, neutral committee run by an ecosystem enabler such as the LADP or the proposed Regional Deep Tech Coalition. The financing architecture could mix public–private partnerships, multilateral and philanthropic grants, and program-tied corporate sponsorships, with a package that balances financial honoraria and non-financial incentives to preserve independence.

LATAM does not have a centralized regulatory agency overseeing trial phases and market readiness for emerging biotech or AgTech innovations. Each country operates under its own rules and timelines, making navigation both challenging and essential for success.

As detailed by Cristián Hernández, Zentynel’s General Partner, a drug approval in Chile can take 6 to 8 months, in contrast to the 1.5 to 2 years it may take the Brazilian, Mexican or Colombian equivalents. Below is an overview of the regulatory framework different countries maintain for biotech.⁴⁹

For international investors, this augments the risk of investing, as it may not be strategic to back an early-stage startup that only complies with regulations of a single country, thus impeding regional and global expansion.

# Recommendations: Global-First Alignment Through Interoperability

To bypass this hurdle, regional investors have been encouraging portfolio startups to work with a global-first approach from the beginning, like the FDA or EMA, to immediately meet international standards. By aligning with FDA frameworks, companies signal adherence to rigorous standards, reducing perceived risks and facilitating smoother market entry.

However, stakeholders cautioned that an FDA-only posture can backfire, slowing iteration velocity, entrenching incumbent advantages, and imposing prohibitive compliance costs on early-stage ventures. Another model worth exploring is Próspera in Honduras, a Special Economic Zone offering bespoke regulatory pathways for health and biotech. Próspera self-reports "15× faster commercialization of drugs" and markets its health regime as enabling companies to go "10–100× faster."⁵⁰ Under this framework, the gene-therapy startup Minicircle has conducted Phase I human trials.⁵¹

That said, the model is contested, by bioethicists and biotech operators concerned about oversight,⁵² by Honduran authorities challenging Próspera’s legality,⁵³ and by local communities. The zone is embroiled in legal disputes with the state amid efforts to unwind the SEZ framework.⁵⁴ These tensions underscore both the potential speed advantages and the governance risks of using special-jurisdiction routes for biomedical development.

Latin America’s Deep-Tech policy landscape is a patchwork: several countries have strategies and tech-transfer programs, yet startups still face duplicative approvals, uneven incentives, and slow, case-by-case rulemaking across borders. Investors and founders stressed that one missing layer is coordination, portable rules and institutional capacity that let a company scale regionally under one predictable framework.

Building on the prior chapter’s case for regional interoperability, this section outlines how mutual recognition, regional sandboxes, and a voluntary LATAM "single-startup status" could translate policy intent into cross-border scale, inspired by Europe’s emerging "28th Regime" model. A region-wide framework can sound politically unrealistic given sovereignty concerns and market fragmentation, yet a voluntary, modular design may reduce sovereignty costs, allow phased adoption, and create incentives for convergence.

There is international precedent to devise LATAM’s "34th Regime": a Pan-LATAM initiative to unite its 33 countries under a single regulatory framework for Deep Tech advancement. In December 2024 the grassroots coalition EU-Inc submitted more than 13,000 signatures urging the next European Commission to create a "28th Regime", an optional, pan-European company form that would let a startup incorporated in one member state operate everywhere else through one fully digital registry.⁵⁵ The idea has won backing from founders of Stripe, Wise and Bolt, VCs like Index and Sequoia, and even Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

France Digitale’s accompanying non-paper fleshes out the concept: a regulation (not a directive) establishing an online-first, mobile-first, API-first corporate status with minimal share-capital requirements, a single employee-stock-option regime, and due-diligence processes completed 100% online. By stripping away the "27 different hurdles" that slow cross-border expansion, the 28th Regime aims to give European scale-ups a clear path to become global champions.⁵⁶ Particularly for Deep Tech, it proposes an explicit exemption from state-aid restrictions, recognizing that university spin-outs and science-heavy scale-ups may need five, ten or even fifteen years to break even.

While a region-wide "single startup status" is still some way off, a promising basic recognition stack is already taking shape. At the base, cross-border digital identity and electronic signatures are moving from pilots to practice, most visibly with Mercosur’s Digital Citizen.⁵⁷ In trade, the new mutual recognition between Mercosur and Pacific Alliance "Authorized Economic Operator" programs, signed in 2025, streamlines supply chains without creating a supranational authority.⁵⁸ In health, the Pan American drug-regulatory network and the single-audit program for medical devices offer workable reliance models. Taken together, this is recognition without harmonization, the scaffolding for a voluntary pilot of a regional Deep Tech startup label and shared sandboxes.

Down the line, the 34th Regime should also propose policies that tackle the lack of incentives for Deep Tech ventures, from programs to create Deep Tech companies to public-purchase mechanisms and tailored regulations, as identified by ECLAC in 2020.⁵⁹ Rather than an exhaustive list, the following highlights a diverse set of innovative regulatory strategies that governments in the region are already implementing, which could serve as primers for the 34th Regime.

Public funding plays an essential role in the development of Deep Tech ecosystems, particularly during the early stages of R&D. Over the past decade, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Colombia have introduced public programs, from patent drives to millions of dollars in annual matching funds, to foster technology-based entrepreneurship.

Such support mechanisms have proven vital in bridging the financing gap, allowing startups to advance from early R&D to market entry without heavy equity dilution. Public funding programs accounted for 70% of all deep-tech financing in Brazil, as noted by EMERGE in 2024.⁶⁵ Governments increasingly recognize that Deep Tech startups are a vital component of national competitiveness, witness Costa Rica’s semiconductor roadmap to attract FDI (2024)⁶⁶ and Chile’s roadmap to advance its quantum technology sector.⁶⁷

Governments have increasingly recognized that Deep Tech startups are not just about fostering innovation, they are also a vital component of national competitiveness.

However, this heavy reliance on public programs signals an imbalance that could hinder long-term ecosystem maturity. In the US, EU and OECD, businesses supply over 60% of R&D funding (nearly 80% in China) while government shares hover around 20–30%. In LATAM, by contrast, the state underwrites roughly 60% of R&D, far above its peers, whereas private investors contribute only about 35%.⁶⁸

Public financing typically manifests in two forms. First, non-dilutive grants, which preserve equity for founders and early investors while enhancing capital efficiency, especially important because Deep Tech projects often require prolonged research before a viable product emerges. Second, matching-fund programs. Inspired by the Israeli model, governments in Argentina and Uruguay have implemented matching-fund initiatives that co-invest with private venture capital and angel investors, reducing risk for private investors and creating a multiplier effect.

Is the challenge one of increasing the amount of funding, or is it about improving the quality and efficiency of the available resources?

A question raised in the research

The public sector’s core role should be to complement and de-risk private deep-tech investment through targeted programs, matching-fund schemes, special economic zones, shared labs and applied R&D grants, while advancing the regulatory framework via technology-transfer laws, empowered economic-development corporations, STEM education, and streamlined permitting. Although Latin America already hosts promising examples in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and beyond, these instruments remain too fragmented and limited in scale. Weaving them into a coherent, region-wide playbook will be essential.

# The case of biotech in Brazil: broad but shallow public funding

The biotech sector in Brazil stands out as one of the most mature Deep Tech ecosystems in the region, representing almost 60% of biotech startups across Latin America. Public funding programs such as PIPE FAPESP and FINEP have been instrumental.⁶⁹ However, participants pointed out that grants still tend to be "low-ticket funding," insufficient to fully meet the substantial R&D and laboratory setup needs essential for scaling. Rather than increasing the number of funding rounds, Brazilian investors suggested increasing the funding amounts per round.

FAPESP

A leading state-level funding agency, central to supporting both fundamental research and innovation through academia-company collaborations.

PIPE Program

Inspired by the U.S. SBIR model, funds innovative R&D in small companies based in São Paulo.

Cooperative Research for Innovation

Fosters structured partnerships between universities and companies, with programs on AI, advanced mobility and biotech alongside Shell, IBM and GSK.

International Research Centers

In March 2025, FAPESP launched a R$5 million initiative to boost São Paulo’s Deep Tech competitiveness, focusing initially on a biology center for immune and inflammatory responses.

FINEP

Linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MCTI), FINEP is Brazil’s main federal-level financier of business R&D and innovation.

Mais Inovação Program

Launched in 2024, a flagship federal program offering non-reimbursable grants and credit for R&D-intensive companies in health, energy, ICTs, and sustainability.

Private R&D Center Attraction Incentives

In partnership with BNDES, FINEP is offering US$500 million to incentivize multinational and national firms to set up R&D hubs in Brazil.

# Matching funds in Argentina, Chile & Uruguay

Matching-fund schemes address the well-known market failure of private underinvestment in innovation by co-investing public capital alongside private resources, typically covering 40–60% of eligible costs on the condition that private partners supply the remainder. This structure aligns incentives, enforces rigorous project validation, and creates a self-sustaining cycle.

Israel’s resurgence from the mid-1980s crisis owes much to three flagship programs. The 1985 R&D Law reimbursed up to 50% of corporate R&D, lifting private R&D spending to 4% of GDP. The 1991 Incubator Program leveraged US$600 million to underwrite 24 private incubators, fueling 1,700 startups. The 1993 Yozma Program injected US$100 million into ten VC funds (40% public, 60% private), sparking a domestic venture industry that now manages over US$10 billion and has generated more than US$80 billion in value creation.⁷⁰

Israel’s playbook is an extension of its security doctrine: mandatory service in elite IDF tech units, especially 8200 and 81, funnels thousands of engineers into the civilian economy; Unit 8200 alumni alone have launched 1,000-plus startups.^71,72 In the Latin American context, a comparable large-scale public–private mobilization would require different rationales aligned with domestic strengths, natural-resource-based innovation, climate adaptation, biodiversity protection, public health, biosecurity, or logistics.

Argentina, FONDCE (2017)

Inspired by Israel, Argentina’s Entrepreneurs Law established FONDCE ("Fund of Funds") to underwrite science-based accelerators and early-stage VCs, and simplified company formation to under 24 hours. Within two years, five FONDCE-backed accelerators had invested in 79% of Argentina’s investor-funded Deep Tech ventures. Alumni include NotCo and Autofact.

Chile, CORFO (since the early 1990s)

Through FONTEC (now under the Innova umbrella), CORFO provides reimbursable grants covering 40–65% of private R&D costs. The FONDEF fund co-finances pre-competitive joint R&D between academia and firms.⁷³

Uruguay, Law 20.075 & the Innovation Hub

Uruguay enacted Law 20.075 (2022, approved 2023) to kick-start Deep Tech ventures, and in May 2024 inaugurated the Uruguay Innovation Hub (UIH) with US$10 million for a 1:1 matching-funds program.^74,75

Pension funds should be part of the conversation on Deep Tech financing in Latin America. They are among the region’s largest pools of patient capital, yet much of that capital is deployed abroad rather than into domestic innovation. Beyond isolated remarks in private interviews, we found no coordinated effort to bring pension trustees, supervisors, and Deep Tech managers around a shared investment architecture.

Global benchmarks clarify both feasibility and urgency. Across Europe and the United States, pension funds account for under 5% of the top-50 Deep Tech investors by deal count by 2024, well behind VC funds, government entities, and corporate VCs.⁷⁶ Even so, their presence demonstrates an investable foothold. For the authors of the 2024 State of European Tech Report, redirecting even a small share of pension assets currently invested outside the EU could unlock the patient capital needed to seed and scale Deep Tech.⁷⁷

The 2025 "CERN for AI" white paper, authored by the European Union, also points to European pensions to unlock patient capital.⁷⁸ In the United Kingdom, the idea is entering the mainstream.⁷⁹ Most importantly, the UK’s Mansion House policy reforms are already putting this approach into practice, and France’s Tibi initiative goes further by setting clear commitments for institutional investors. Under Tibi’s first phase (2020–2022), institutional investors committed €6.4 billion; its second phase projects €40–50 billion in technology funds under management by 2026.^80,81

While precise figures are hard to aggregate across LATAM, a useful order-of-magnitude comes from the OECD: in Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay, pension AUM total roughly US$1 trillion. Redirecting even 1% would mobilize USD 10 billion for domestic Deep Tech.⁸² This 1% would represent about four times the USD 2.5 billion deployed into LATAM Deep Tech since 2018, enough to turn today’s funding bottleneck into an investable pipeline.

# Recommendation: A Fund-of-Funds path for patient capital

A coalition-led strategy can change the frame: instead of treating pensions as distant spectators, invite them, prudently and voluntarily, into vehicles that channel a small share of assets toward local R&D and Deep Tech, without compromising fiduciary duty. Immediate priorities are to specify investable vehicles that fit fiduciary mandates, map the regulatory tweaks that would enable pilot allocations, and define safeguards that protect senior pension tranches.

Governments should take the lead by establishing a public-anchored Fund-of-Funds (FoF). By pooling public-sector balance sheets, including mutual insurance and pension funds, governments can set an example, then commit to independent managers through clear, competitive mandates, drawing inspiration from the 2018 Tibi report in France.⁸³ The UK’s Mansion House Accord (May 2025) has taken this French policy as a first step, pledging to allocate 10% of pension portfolios to private markets by 2030, with at least 5% ring-fenced for UK assets. Complementing this, the BVCA’s 2025 expert panel proposes a UK "NOVA" program, modeled on Tibi, steps LATAM can mirror with development banks and multilaterals.⁸⁴

# Shared R&D infrastructure

From quantum rigs and petabyte-scale AI clusters to secure blockchain nodes and biotech wet-labs, Latin American innovators converge on one persistent bottleneck: the region’s limited supply of specialised, capital-intensive R&D infrastructure. Governments have begun to chip away at the gap: Brazil now boasts 11 active biotech hubs, Chile at least three, Uruguay at least seven, and Argentina at least one.^85,86 Yet the region is still scratching the surface of what is needed.

Parque de Innovación de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

An urban innovation district spanning 12 city blocks and 340,000 m², uniting universities, research centers, co-working spaces, and startups.

StartupLab.01 (Chile)

CORFO and Fundación Chile launched a shared lab and cowork space for Deep Tech startups focused on climate tech, supported by the IDB and partnered with GRIDX.⁸⁷

Patagonia Biotech Hub (Chile)

A shared lab and cowork space for biotech startups, launched September 2024 with backing from the Ministry of Science.⁸⁸

CBT SOFOFA HUB (Chile)

The Translational Biotechnology Center accelerates adoption of biotechnology across biomedicine, mining, aquaculture, forestry, and agriculture.

New Lab (Uruguay)

Newlab’s first LATAM hub, a partnership with ANII, Globant, UPM and others, offers state-of-the-art prototyping labs and pilot testbeds inside Montevideo’s Innovation Campus.⁸⁹

Beyond capital, infrastructure and regulatory frameworks, Latin America’s Deep Tech transformation depends on systematically building social clusters, dense networks connecting researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and institutions that enable knowledge transfer and risk mitigation at commercial scales. These networks form the invisible "relationship architecture" that converts research breakthroughs into scalable ventures; without them, even breakthrough innovations can remain trapped in laboratories.

# The network infrastructure gap

Scientific talent abundance means little without connection infrastructure. A study of Chilean biotech firms revealed that almost half of business links (47%) originated from personal connections.⁹⁰ Analysis of global tech hubs shows serial entrepreneurs and investors serve as crucial "ecosystem connectors," with individual network brokers linked to up to 15 different ventures simultaneously.

Silicon Valley’s success stems partly from its 60+ annual tech conferences creating "temporary townships" of concentrated interaction, while Cambridge UK’s cluster generates £18 billion annually through systematic face-to-face networking.^91,92 Israel’s ecosystem produces one startup for every 1,400 citizens largely because military-alumni networks create pre-established trust.⁹³ Berlin adds another model: its rise was driven less by capital abundance than by grassroots density, 40,000 business registrations annually and hundreds of informal meetups, only after which capital followed, with Berlin startups raising over €10 billion in 2021, surpassing London.⁹⁴

Latin America has systematically underinvested in this relationship infrastructure. Past programs provided capital and services but failed to establish enduring networks, causing knowledge leakage and preventing ecosystem self-reinforcement.

# Contrasting network-formation models

Start-Up Chile (SUC), launched in 2010, is widely recognised as Latin America’s most successful public innovation initiative. It pioneered an "import and mingle" model, offering equity-free $40K grants plus one-year visas to foreign entrepreneurs who relocated to Santiago, and enforced mixed cohorts, a socio-psychological mechanism that encouraged interaction between Chilean and foreign teams.⁹⁵ A 2014 study found the $40K grant was useful but non-differentiating; the real divergence was peer learning: only 16% of foreign founders named it their primary source of value versus 45% of domestic founders.

Lower-confidence entrepreneurs are more likely to observe, imitate, and internalize concrete behaviors modeled by credible peers, especially when reinforced in shared workspaces. SUC’s bet was that imported know-how could become shared know-how if you engineered the right social collisions. Results exceeded expectations: 3,000+ startups from 85 countries entered SUC, generated over $1 billion in collective sales and raised $1.2 billion in follow-on funding, while 68% of Chilean founders reported changing their financing strategies after engaging with international peers.⁹⁶

Colombia pursued systematic domestic network strengthening through the Alianza DeepTech Colombia, designed as a private Ecosystem-as-a-Service (EaaS) model. The Alianza united 31 stakeholders, universities, corporations, government agencies, under coordinated action commitments: joint research projects, cross-institutional mentorship, and unified policy advocacy.⁹⁷ The 2024 DeepTech Colombia report documents 56% year-over-year growth in Deep Tech startups (now 56 active companies), 500+ new jobs, $60 million in fresh investment, and $800+ million in total ecosystem value, with near gender parity (49% female founders).^98,99

# Value generation through networks

Across both models, the advantages of social clustering are clear and measurable. Dense networks create economic advantages through four primary mechanisms:

Accelerated knowledge spillovers

Technical insights flow faster through personal relationships than formal publications. Face-to-face interactions transfer tacit knowledge, equipment tricks, failure-pattern recognition, market-timing intuition, that never appears in academic papers.^100,101

Risk mitigation

Trusted network referrals reduce investor due-diligence costs while improving deal quality. Informal information supplements formal due diligence.¹⁰²

Resource bundling efficiency

A startup needing specialized equipment, legal advice, and a pilot customer can often find all three through cluster connections, assembling domain experts, grant money, and partners much faster than starting cold.¹⁰³

Self-enforcing ecosystem loops

Each entrepreneurial success feeds back into the ecosystem, generating new social capital and nurturing talent. Over time, a culture of "giving back" takes root, an Ecosystem Nutrition Cycle where resources and experiences compound.¹⁰⁴

# Lessons for Latin America’s Deep Tech ecosystems

Experiences from Chile, Colombia, and global hubs underscore a common theme: ecosystems thrive where networks are deliberately built, continuously reinforced, and institutionally anchored. Three structural elements matter most:

Continuity and follow-through

Isolated interventions create sparks but rarely sustain momentum. Start-Up Chile successfully imported global know-how, but the absence of retention and institutional anchoring meant most of the value dissipated once participants left.

Domestic alliances

Durable ecosystems emerge when local actors coalesce around shared goals. Colombia’s Alianza DeepTech shows how universities, firms, and government agencies aligning under joint commitments and KPIs transformed a fragmented landscape into a nationally visible cluster.

The density dividend

Density, the frequency and intensity of interactions, drives innovation as decisively as funding. Capital must be complemented by recurring spaces of interaction that allow ideas, talent, and capital to circulate with speed and trust.

Durable ecosystems emerge when local actors coalesce around shared goals. Domestic alliances institutionalize trust, concentrate resources, and create the connective tissue that enables Deep Tech ventures to scale.

These lessons converge on a hybrid framework. First, prioritize continuity by embedding retention incentives, tracking mechanisms, and institutional anchors. Second, formalize domestic alliances that unite universities, corporations, investors, and government agencies. Third, cultivate density through recurring interaction platforms, monthly meetups, flagship summits, and sector-specific convenings, that replicate the "density dividend" of global hubs.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) has emerged as a linchpin for accelerating private-sector R&D. CVC refers specifically to corporate-backed VC arms using their own balance-sheet capital, distinct from traditional VC, which manages external LPs’ funds with a primary focus on financial returns.

While both carry the "venture capital" designation, they operate with distinct logics. Traditional VCs are primarily accountable to LPs for financial performance; CVCs pursue dual objectives, financial returns alongside strategic benefits such as access to emerging technologies, new markets, talent, and organizational learning. This makes CVC units the corporation’s "eyes and ears" in the external innovation ecosystem.¹⁰⁵

CVC sits within a wider corporate-venturing toolbox that includes incubators, accelerators, venture clienting, strategic partnerships, tech scouting and challenge prizes.

The most effective programs pair investment with privileged assets, distribution, data, domain experts, regulatory know-how, and facilities for pilots. CVC typically takes three main shapes: equity investments via dedicated corporate funds; R&D partnerships, where startups receive financing in exchange for co-developing new products; and licensing agreements that provide non-dilutive revenue while preserving startups’ core IP.

# Global benchmark

Globally, the trend is unmistakable. Major incumbents such as Pfizer, Ford, Tyson Foods, Lockheed Martin Ventures and GM are acquiring Deep Tech startups and spinning up their own venture arms.¹⁰⁶ From 2017 to 2021, overall corporate venturing expanded 2.8×, corporate–Deep Tech collaborations surged 4.2×, and 71% of firms expected the weight of Deep Tech in their corporate-venturing portfolios to grow.¹⁰⁷ Still, momentum is uneven: by 2021, about 90% of U.S. corporates operated venture arms; 57% of firms in East and Southeast Asia had launched CVC programs; and in Latin America, only ~40% of companies were engaged.¹⁰⁸

In Sweden, roughly 70% of local startups have secured investment from local corporate venture arms; CVCs participate in about 30% of Series A rounds and 60% of Series B rounds.¹⁰⁹ European evidence points the same way: Hello Tomorrow finds lower bankruptcy rates for CVC-backed startups (~1.24%) vs. those without (~2.58%), suggesting corporate investors contribute more than capital, distribution, technical validation, and procurement pathways that improve survival odds.¹¹⁰

# LATAM’s CVC reality check

Latin America reveals both immense potential and limitations. The region combines the weight of major local multinationals such as Cemex, Marcopolo, Grupo Bimbo, and JBS with global incumbents including Siemens, IBM, Nestlé, Pfizer, and Novartis. Local firms contribute market knowledge; international players bring advanced technologies and global networks. The broader CVC market across all sectors reached $3B in 2024, up from $1.5B in 2023.¹¹¹

Dealroom provides statistics specific to Deep Tech in the region: funding rose from $9M in 2020 to $119M in 2022, then retracted to $73.9M in 2023 and $36.5M in 2024, about 70% below the peak, yet still roughly 4× the 2020 baseline, suggesting a market recalibration after an overheated period.¹¹² The region appears to have no shortage of interested corporations, but rather a deficit of dependable avenues.

# CVC–startup matchmaking

A new generation of accelerators, venture studios, and consultancies is professionalizing the matchmaking process between startups and corporations. Regional firms like 414 Capital, Pragmatec, Bluebox, New Venture Groups and New Genesis have incorporated corporate investment into their value propositions. These programs address a problem heavily reported by our stakeholders: an over-reliance on personal connections to secure investments. A neutral matchmaking program with transparent intake, common NDAs, shared data-room templates, and quarterly demo days can shift the model from relationship-only to evidence-driven.

For corporates entering Deep Tech CVC, pairing with SMEs can turn abstract science into operational proof quickly. SMEs are the backbone of Latin America’s economy, 99% of its firms and about two-thirds of the workforce.¹¹³ Their agility makes them a natural testbed for pilots in agriculture, Industry 4.0, and mobility. Industry 4.0 pilots have been shown to improve productivity by 10–30% and reduce waste or downtime.^114,115

# Recommendations: A Deep-Tech CVC Bridge for LATAM

Latin America needs a neutral Deep-Tech CVC Bridge to close the gap between its most promising science-based startups and the global corporate funds that can propel them beyond Series A. A dedicated bridge, co-run by organisations like the LADP, leading accelerators and supported by a multilateral, would organise recurring virtual pitch days and cross-border roadshows, offer a standardised CVC-ready data-room template, and maintain an open database of corporate investors and their thematic priorities.

The Bridge can anchor a regional CVC × Deep Tech Observatory, filling key data gaps: CVC participation, survival/attrition, time-to-next-round, procurement conversion, plus a LATAM benchmark of bankruptcy rates with vs. without CVC support. By releasing open, anonymized dashboards through standardized reporting, the Observatory can shift the market from relationship-driven to evidence-driven. For corporates, CVC programs should target SME clusters, keep pilots small-scope and short (8–12 weeks), and focus on one clear KPI, with public co-funding from national or IDB/CAF programs to lower costs.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Latin America have proven they can attract global tech leaders. But traditional SEZs rely on tax incentives, a race to the bottom that competitors can match. The breakthrough lies in Calibrated Regulatory Autonomy (CRA): giving SEZ authorities the power to adapt regulations in real-time while maintaining democratic oversight.

UNCTAD defines SEZs as geographically delimited areas where governments offer a tailored regime, streamlined regulation, targeted fiscal incentives, and dedicated infrastructure, to de-risk investment. They are not fringe experiments: UNCTAD counts 5,383 SEZs across 147 economies, with China alone hosting more than half.¹²¹ Its flagship zone, Shenzhen, transformed from a fishing village into a US$510 billion tech hub generating over 11 million jobs and contributing roughly 3% of China’s GDP.¹²²

# From tax perks to time advantage: Calibrated Autonomy

Calibrated Regulatory Autonomy (CRA) means a statutory delegation that lets a zone steward modify, waive, or pilot regulatory requirements within strict guardrails. The law sets scope, non-retroactivity, transparency, service-level deadlines, appeals, and sunset or renewal. The steward issues time-boxed permissions, gathers evidence, and graduates proven conditions into standing rules mapped to external standards.

Proven track record

Costa Rica attracted Intel’s $1.2B+ expansion, creating 3,400+ high-skill jobs and drawing Databricks. The Free Trade Zone regime now contributes ~15% of GDP through 265,000 jobs, returning nearly $3 for every $1 in tax expenditure.¹²³ The Dominican Republic operates 87 Free Zones hosting 25+ electronics leaders including Eaton and Rockwell Automation, generating $8.1B in exports and 197,600 direct jobs.¹²⁴ Uruguay leveraged its stable democracy to attract Satellogic’s manufacturing operations and Newlab’s innovation hub; twelve Free Zones support 64,000 direct jobs and achieved near-record exports in 2024.¹²⁵ These successes share a pattern: they moved beyond simple tax incentives to create predictable, adaptive regulatory environments.

Baseline SEZs trade taxes for factories. CRA trades predictable speed and precedent for durable Deep Tech investment, which removes the priced-in LATAM discount.

# The democratic regulatory sweet spot

A LATAM SEZ with CRA pairs democratic legitimacy, contractual stability, and rapid adaptation, so it outperforms Gulf, US/EU/UK, China, and Hong Kong models on innovation velocity at lower risk.

# Talent infrastructure that scales

Place training institutes inside the SEZ to lock strategic partnerships with anchor firms and the zone steward. That placement enables curriculum co-design for live vacancies, shared labs with duty-free gear, guaranteed apprenticeships, payroll-levy co-funding, fast instructor visas, and direct placement pipelines into tenants.

INFOTEP, Dominican Republic

A 1% payroll levy finances custom tech courses co-designed with Free Zone tenants and delivered on-site; programs retool quickly for new lines.¹²⁷

INA, Costa Rica

Free, skills-based training in high-demand sectors; dual vocational tracks modeled on Germany’s system expand firm-aligned talent.¹²⁸

INEFOP, Uruguay

With Uruguay XXI, "Finishing Schools" co-finance up to 70% of bespoke company training plans to ramp workforces for new investments.¹²⁹

# Geopolitical positioning: SEZ-first, ADD/CHIPS as levers

SEZs anchor nearshoring, they deliver predictable rules, fast permits, and bonded logistics. The Alliance for Development in Democracy (ADD)¹³⁰ and the CHIPS Act’s International Technology Security and Innovation (ITSI) Fund play supporting roles that amplify the zone’s pull.¹³¹ ADD provides a diplomatic umbrella for joint statements and supply-chain cooperation; CHIPS/ITSI provides grants and technical assistance for trusted semiconductor supply chains, co-financing Assembly-Testing-Packaging (ATP) lines and workforce programs inside the SEZ.

# The compounding advantage

Traditional SEZs handle place and logistics. CRA attacks time. In Deep Tech, time gains snowball: early regulatory clarity shortens build cycles, pulls stronger talent, and converts each pilot into reusable playbooks. SEZs lay the platform; CRA supplies pace and credibility. Together they turn chronic disadvantages into a durable moat.

Latin America transforms from a discount destination into a premium platform for global innovation, one competitors cannot easily copy, because the advantage lies not in any single policy but in the compounding returns of adaptive, democratic governance.

World politics is tending towards a paradox. Geopolitics is restoring Cold War dynamics, with states seeking technological autonomy that guarantees superiority over adversaries. However, national governments have scarcer means and more dependencies, on each other and on new actors such as technological multinationals. "No country alone can make an iPhone today," as economist Eric Beinhocker aptly puts it.¹³²

The return of spheres of influence is taking place in a world of hardwired networks, where old alliances have become less certain, with the United States taking distance from NATO.¹³³ This combination is creating new battlefronts for critical technologies, where large and small countries play a new game of appropriation versus autonomy. Many Latin American countries hold an indispensable supply of resources for Deep Tech, from raw materials to energy, yet have had, so far, wasteful institutions and disjointed ecosystems, lending themselves mostly to appropriation.

Now that there is less West and more Rest in geopolitics, how will resource-rich places like LATAM realign to the emerging world dis-order?

# The politics of appropriation in a networked world

In 1945, Vannevar Bush published Science: The Endless Frontier, advocating that the United States invest in what today we would call Deep Tech, to engineer advantages in knowledge into economic and military competitiveness. Eighty years later, Bush’s predictions have become the doctrines of states, from the US to China. Today, geopolitical preparedness is technological preparedness, and vice versa. We are back to the ’60s: competition between states plays out at the technological frontier, ranging from Artificial Intelligence to Quantum Technologies to Biotechnologies. Every investment in inventions is a dual-use investment in a world where alliances are more fragile and conflicts more frequent.

A nation which depends upon others for its new basic scientific knowledge will be slow in its industrial progress and weak in its competitive position in world trade, regardless of its mechanical skill.

Vannevar Bush Science: The Endless Frontier (1945)

The Biden administration had started imposing export controls on critical technologies and offering incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, TSMC received $6.6 billion in direct funding and $5 billion in low-cost loans through the CHIPS Act to build a foundry in Arizona; it later announced an additional $100 billion investment.¹³⁴ Today, the United States, China, the European Union and others are trying to repatriate these capabilities, or appropriate them, evident in the Trump Administration’s use of tariffs to coerce adversaries and allies alike into buying or becoming Made in the USA.

Today, geopolitical preparedness is technological preparedness, and vice versa. Every investment in inventions is a dual-use investment in a world where alliances are more fragile and conflicts more frequent.

As for China, they understood early that geography is destiny. Part of China’s National Development and Reform Commission 2024 directives include a strategic positioning of their Deep Tech industries, framed as a response to "a shift in the international balance of power, the rise of the East and a relative decline of the West."¹³⁵ China has been building a network of Silk Roads worldwide, where the silk is the natural resources and minerals quintessential to building new tech. As Ángel Melguizo and Margaret Myers put it, many of China’s ICT and high-end manufacturing companies have sought to engage more extensively with Latin America and the Global South.¹³⁶ If the iPhone cannot come to China, then China goes to the iPhones.

China has woven Deep Technology into the fabric of its long-term development model, positioning it as a pillar of an innovation-driven, self-reliant economy. While the release of DeepSeek looked like an overnight sensation, it was anything but.

Deep Tech, aka "New Infrastructure" in China, sits at the heart of the country’s strategy for sustainable, innovation-led growth. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) spells out an extensive support system,¹³⁷ while the 2021 Science and Technology Progress Law reaffirms Beijing’s determination to keep pushing frontier research.¹³⁸ The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with six other ministries, has spotlighted a roster of "future industries" (quantum computing, 6G, space technologies, next-generation materials) as pillars of China’s new "quality productive forces."

A flagship element is the "20 + 8" cluster agenda, which earmarks twenty strategic emerging industries and eight forward-looking fields, biotechnology, next-generation ICT, advanced manufacturing, and more, and bundles them into regional hubs where companies, research institutes and investors collaborate at scale.¹³⁹ In November 2022 the Ministries of Science & Technology and Education green-lit ten pilot "future industry" parks across eight provinces and municipalities, each combining co-creation spaces, incubators, accelerators and industrial parks, underpinned by a 30-point talent scheme.^140,141

Between 2017 and 2022, Deep Tech’s share of total domestic tech investment jumped from 15% to 71%, reflecting how quickly capital has followed this coordinated policy drive.

The payoff is visible.¹⁴² China’s Deep Tech market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.2% through 2034, outpacing the 15.6% projected for the United States and trailing only Australia & New Zealand’s 22% trajectory.¹⁴³ The biotech sector dominated Deep Tech investments until recently, attracting roughly $22 billion in private capital, double the next largest vertical, computer hardware. But 2022 marked a pivot: biotech contracted sharply to $10 billion, while the EV, AV, and Automotive Technology segment surged from $7.9 billion to $11.1 billion, seizing the top position.

# Tangible outcomes of China’s Deep-Tech push

China has begun to harvest visible dividends. In January 2025, Beijing-based DeepSeek released its DeepSeek-R1 model, matching the best U.S. foundation models while training on far leaner compute budgets; analysts describe its open-weight successor as one of the strongest code-generation systems outside Silicon Valley.¹⁴⁴ The same "thrift-at-scale" mindset underpins ManusAI, a Chinese agentic platform many observers rate above current state-of-the-art.¹⁴⁵ A recent paper unveiled Zuchongzhi 3.0, a 105-qubit superconducting processor executing sampling tasks that stump classical supercomputers.¹⁴⁶

Hardware supremacy is most obvious on the road: Chinese brands account for about 60% of global EV sales, and in 2024 BYD shipped 4.27 million vehicles and booked USD 107 billion in revenue, outstripping Tesla’s 1.79 million deliveries and USD 97.7 billion top line.¹⁴⁷ Furthermore, in March 2025 the General-Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party unveiled a US$138 billion public-private fund for quantum computing, advanced semiconductors, AI, and next-generation renewables. The quantum component alone is almost 30 times larger than the combined quantum programmes of the United States and European Union.

# Chinese engagement in LATAM

The United States and Europe still dominate Latin America’s investment landscape. In 2023 they supplied roughly 33% and 22% of incoming FDI, according to ECLAC; China registered a negligible 0.4%, a steep drop from the 3% it posted the year before.¹⁴⁸ Even sources casting Beijing in a brighter light, such as the China OFDI Monitor, put its 2023 outlay at just USD 8.8 billion, about 10% of all FDI.¹⁴⁹ Yet momentum is shifting: the European Union projects that by 2035 China will have become Latin America’s single largest trading partner.¹⁵⁰

Research by Melguizo and Myers shows the number of Chinese projects in Latin America grew by 33% from 2018–2023 versus 2013–2017, even as total value declined, more investments, smaller-scale projects, more focused on "new infrastructure." In 2022, 60% of China’s investments were in frontier sectors.¹⁵¹ Chinese investment shifted from canals, rails and energy infrastructure to Deep Tech, consistent with Beijing’s laser focus on economic upgrading. In 2022, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology explicitly committed to enhancing scientific cooperation with Latin America, emphasizing technology transfer.¹⁵²

When we polled regional stakeholders about China’s footprint, most admitted they have yet to see sizeable cheques hit the ground. Interest is rising, particularly in biotech and ag-tech, but curiosity has not matured into transactions large enough to bend the market’s arc. Still, the real inflection arrives when states unleash large-scale public capital. In March 2025, China launched a US$138 billion sovereign vehicle,¹⁵³ and only two months later rolled out a US$9 billion credit facility for Latin-American governments.¹⁵⁴ The signal could not be clearer: China’s Deep Tech surge is inseparable from its bid to broaden its economic, and therefore geopolitical, ties across the hemisphere.

While China’s Deep Tech strategy illustrates the scale a global superpower can bring, LATAM countries face a dilemma: reliance on a single dominant partner risks overdependence and limits strategic flexibility. At the same time, partnerships with the United States are increasingly constrained by trade tensions, export controls, and shifting priorities.

In this context, LATAM can diversify its partnerships to access advanced technology, patient capital, and know-how without compromising autonomy. This is where partnering with "middle powers", technologically advanced, non-superpower nations such as Israel, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Japan, the Gulf states and Australia, offers a strategic path forward. These countries occupy a sweet spot: technologically sophisticated and financially robust without the baggage of superpower status. They need partners, not dependants.¹⁵⁵

Currently, private-sector R&D funding in Latin America accounts for only 43% of total R&D expenditure, a sharp contrast to the 80% seen in a hub like Israel.¹⁵⁶ LATAM faces three fundamental challenges that middle-power partnerships can address directly: capital, specifically the patient kind that allows Deep Tech to mature;¹⁵⁷ knowledge transfer, connecting the region’s strong research talent to global innovation networks; and strategic autonomy, spreading risk across multiple partners. These partnerships succeed because they are built on mutual need rather than charity.

LATAM does not need to choose between the United States and China to build its technological future. By working with a diversified portfolio of middle powers, the region can access world-class innovation ecosystems, patient capital, and targeted knowledge transfer while maintaining strategic independence.

# Comparative case studies of middle-power strategies

# Implementation frameworks

Each partnership highlights a different strategic lever: the UAE brings patient capital and infrastructure; South Korea offers industrial innovation tied to energy transition; Canada demonstrates co-funded R&D; Japan aligns technology transfer with value-chain upgrading; and Singapore provides a bridge to rule-based digital and trade frameworks. The case of Airbus can serve as a historical precedent for a consortium created for industrial and technological sovereignty, what began as a European response to American dominance in commercial aviation became one of the world’s most successful examples of multinational industrial cooperation.¹⁷²

Joint investment vehicles

Co-financing and blended-finance mechanisms are essential. Models like the Canada–Brazil CIIP illustrate successful bilateral co-investment; multilaterals such as the IDB Venture Lab or CAF could co-host innovation funds with Singaporean or UAE capital.¹⁷³

Technology transfer mechanisms

Formal R&D partnerships, secondments, and co-located labs accelerate capability building, Chile–Korea on hydrogen and smart mining, Canada–Brazil in nanotechnology, and Japan–Brazil on mineral processing and semiconductor policy.

Talent mobility and ecosystem integration

Exchange programs, fellowships, and targeted visas foster skill development, the Korea–Chile technical committee, Canada–Brazil joint research fellowships, and Japan’s JICA-backed training initiatives.

Success will require new forms of technological diplomacy, coordinated regional action, and the political will to think beyond traditional alliance structures. The convergence of global technological competition, shifting geopolitical alignments, and LATAM’s growing capabilities creates a unique window of opportunity.

The new Chinese Digital Silk Road to LATAM could find greater space in the emptiness left by crumbling multilateralism and traditional alliances weakened by trade wars. The wave of export controls issued by the Trump administration is aimed at slowing China down on its path to Artificial General Intelligence.¹⁷⁴ But will that be enough contingency?

First, DeepSeek has stunned techies and markets by releasing competitive AI models at a fraction of the cost of American rivals, showing that the Chinese model for top-down execution can be equally effective and more resourceful. Second, the battle for chips is crucial yet only in front of the war for technological supremacy. China started building its policies of coercion and appropriation well before its rivals, anticipating that value-based alliances would be replaced by interest-based ones.

It is possible that some allies will decide that, although they prefer the US, China is at least more predictable. That would be an insane position for these countries to be in. But it would be the almost inevitable result of Trump’s gangsterish approach to international relations.

Martin Wolf Financial Times¹⁷⁵

The new Cold War is much hotter on more fronts and with more players than the US and China wanting to take the stage. Take India, which now ranks in the top 5 in 45 of 64 technologies deemed critical by ASPI.¹⁷⁶ Take Saudi Arabia and the UAE, spending hundreds of billions of petro-dollars to become technological and geopolitical hubs. This might change now, with geopolitics being more populous and driven by more selfish interests.

Regime type no longer appears to hinder a sense of shared interests. It is hard power only, and a return to the ancient principle that "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." In such a world, multilateral institutions such as NATO and the EU would be sidelined and the autonomy of smaller nations threatened.

Monica Duffy Toft Foreign Affairs¹⁷⁷

With less West and more Rest contending for tech dominance, Latin America will surely be a new battleground for innovation. Who appropriates what remains to be seen.

Our objective with the LADP is to present a holistic perspective on the state of Deep Tech and provide critical insights into the scaling challenges for the region. More importantly, we aim to present a practical series of recommendations on what we as a region must do to advance the investment landscape into the technologies that will shape our future. This process involves the meticulous development of robust intellectual property and a lengthy, strategic technology transfer from academia to the commercial sector, setting the indispensable foundation for groundbreaking, commercial innovation.

Successfully bridging this critical gap necessitates sustained investment and tailored support mechanisms, facilitating the arduous yet rewarding journey from scientific discovery to market-ready solutions. By systematically nurturing this intricate ecosystem, the region can unlock its full potential, transforming cutting-edge research into tangible economic growth and global leadership in Deep Tech.

The report draws on 177 numbered footnotes across its chapters. Every distinct work appears once below; each entry links back to the places it is cited.

1. "Finishing Schools" firm-demand training program, Uruguay XXI; INEFOP. Cited at: 129
2. 2023 Emerging Trends in Asia, Global Private Capital Association, 2023. Cited at: 142
3. AI Competition Amid Expansion of U.S. AI Chip Export Controls Into the Gulf, Middle East Council on Global Affairs, 2024. Cited at: 158
4. Alberto Cruz, Brazil and UAE Forge $2.5 Billion Partnership to Drive Strategic Mineral Exploration, Net Zero Circle, 2025. Cited at: 163164
5. Alvin Tan, Speech by MOS Alvin Tan at the Inaugural Latin America-Singapore Connect, Ministry of Trade and Industry Singapore, 2023. Cited at: 168169
6. An Investors Guide to Deep Tech, Boston Consulting Group, 2023. Cited at: 46
7. Anchal Vohra, Israel's Military-Technology Complex Is One of a Kind, Foreign Policy, 2023. Cited at: 72
8. Ángel Melguizo & Margaret Myers, Ahead of the curve: Why the EU and US risk falling behind China in Latin America, European Council on Foreign Relations, 2024. Cited at: 3151
9. Antonio Regalado, Inside the private country where a biohacker says he gave people gene therapy, MIT Technology Review, 2023. Cited at: 52
10. ASPI's two-decade Critical Technology Tracker: The rewards of long-term research investment, ASPI, 2024. Cited at: 176
11. Bastian Lange & Suntje Schmidt, Entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept, Growth and Change, 2021. Cited at: 91100
12. Benjamin Meier et al., A self-assessment tool for ecosystem builders, Swisscontact, 2021. Cited at: 104
13. Brazil Biotech Report, Endeavour, 2024. Cited at: 6985
14. Brochure BIGinBIO Program, The Ganesha Lab, 2025. Cited at: 42
15. C.P. Eveleens et al., How network-based incubation helps start-up performance: a systematic review against the background of management theories, The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2016. Cited at: 102103
16. Carmen Contreras Romero, Personal and business networks within Chilean biotech, Industry and Innovation, 2018. Cited at: 90
17. CCBC, Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce, CCBC, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 165173
18. CEPAL, Ciencia, tecnología e innovación: cooperación, integración y desafíos regionales (LC/TS.2022/156), Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, 2022. Cited at: 2
19. China's increasing presence in Latin America: Implications for the European Union, European Parliament, 2025. Cited at: 150
20. Christina Guenther et al., Referrals among VCs and the length of due diligence: The effect of relational embeddedness, Journal of Business Venturing, 2022. Cited at: 101
21. Christopher Freeman & Luc Soete, Developing Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators: What We Can Learn from the Past, Research Policy, 2009. Cited at: 157
22. Ciencia, tecnología e innovación: cooperación, integración y desafíos regionales, ECLAC, 2022. Cited at: 68
23. Claudio Cifuentes, Investors Roundtable: A Stronger Regional Coalition with Global Reach, LADP Blog, 2025. Cited at: 21
24. Colombia to build 3 datacenters with UAE support, BNamericas, 2025. Cited at: 159
25. Comisión Asesora Tecnologías Cuánticas, MinCiencia, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 67
26. Comisión de Hacienda aprueba Acuerdo de Asociación Económica Integral entre Chile y EAU, Agenda Logística, 2025. Cited at: 161
27. Corfo presenta nueva política pública para crear red nacional de hubs de emprendimientos de base científico tecnológica, Corfo, 2024. Cited at: 62
28. Costa Rica, Launched a semiconductor roadmap to attract FDI, UNCTAD Investment Policy Monitor, 2024. Cited at: 66
29. Costa Rica's Law No. 9728 (2019) and dual vocational education, GOVET (2024); INA, "Formación Dual"; OECD TVET working paper, 2024. Cited at: 128
30. Cristián Hernández Cuevas, Catalysts of Change: The Future of Biotechnology in Latin America, 2025. Cited at: 364349
31. David Cendon Garcia, EU-Inc calls on new Commission to turn the idea of a single pan-European startup entity into reality, EU-Startups.com, 2024. Cited at: 55
32. David Matthews, Europe overtakes Asia on Deep Tech investment, Science|Business, 2024. Cited at: 29
33. David Sacks & Adam Segal, Why Trump's Bullying Is Going to Backfire, The New York Times, 2025. Cited at: 134
34. Deep Tech Market Report, Future Market Insights, 2024. Cited at: 143
35. Deep Tech Overview: Latin America, Dealroom.co. Cited at: 25
36. Deep Tech Summit, EMERGE, 2025. Cited at: 38
37. Deep Tech, Venture Capital and Innovation, Draper Cygnus, LinkedIn, 2025. Cited at: 39
38. Directorio EBCT, MinCiencia, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 60
39. Dongxin Gao et al., Establishing a New Benchmark in Quantum Computational Advantage with 105-qubit Zuchongzhi 3.0 Processor, Physical Review Letters, 2024. Cited at: 146
40. Early Stage Tech Fund, Corfo, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 73
41. Eduardo Baptista, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek pushes US rivals with R1 model upgrade, Reuters, 2025. Cited at: 144
42. Eduardo Baptista, China offers Latin America and the Caribbean billions in bid to rival US influence, Reuters, 2025. Cited at: 154
43. Edward Luce, How Silicon Valley turned China into its lifeline, Financial Times, 2025. Cited at: 174
44. EMERGE, Deep Tech Radar LATAM 2025, EMERGE, 2025. Cited at: 2047
45. EMERGE, Relatório Deep Techs Brasil 2024, EMERGE, 2024. Cited at: 65
46. En Puerto Varas se inauguró "Patagonia Biotech Hub": el Primer Centro de Innovación Biotecnológica, El Heraldo Austral, 2024. Cited at: 88
47. Enrique Dussel Peters, Monitor de la OFDI china en América Latina y el Caribe 2024, Red ALC-China, 2024. Cited at: 149
48. Estefania Vergara Cobos & Hualong Diao, From Fiction to Reality: How Latin America became the world's most critical cyber battleground, World Bank Blogs, 2024. Cited at: 11
49. European Consortium Creates Airbus Industrie, EBSCO Research Starters, 2025. Cited at: 172
50. Eva Gálvez & Giacomo Casari, Promoting the digitalization of small and medium-sized agrifood enterprises in Asia and the Pacific, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2024. Cited at: 115
51. Fausto Carbajal Glass, Strategic Reconfiguration of North American Competitiveness: Mexico's Role in Regional Value Network Integration, ISF Voices, Special Competitive Studies Project, 2025. Cited at: 15
52. Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2024, ECLAC (United Nations), 2024. Cited at: 148
53. FTZ Impact studies; Intel and Databricks company releases, CINDE & PROCOMER. Cited at: 23123
54. Future industry development trends, spatial and temporal layout, and policy recommendations, People's Republic of China, 2024. Cited at: 140
55. Global EV Outlook 2023: Electric car sales break new records with momentum expected to continue through 2023, International Energy Agency, 2023. Cited at: 147
56. Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2025, Dealroom, 2025. Cited at: 112
57. Hello Tomorrow, Deep Tech Investors Mapping, Public version, Hello Tomorrow (Google Sheets), n.d.. Cited at: 27
58. Hello Tomorrow, Unlocking Innovation through Corporate-Startup Collaboration, Hello Tomorrow, 2025. Cited at: 105110
59. Ian Lane, 'Deeptech sector primed to benefit from pensions investment proposals', FTAdviser, 2025. Cited at: 79
60. IDB Invest and Japan's JICA announce $1 billion fund to boost private investment in Latin America, Inter-American Development Bank, 2025. Cited at: 167
61. Indira Romero & Jesús Antonio López Cabrera, Nearshoring in Mexico: Seizing Opportunities and Facing Challenges, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, 2024. Cited at: 1618
62. Industry 4.0: Opportunities Behind the Challenge, UNIDO, 2017. Cited at: 114
63. Inter-American Development Bank, Latin America and the Caribbean in PISA 2022: How did the Region Perform, IDB, 2022. Cited at: 7
64. Inter-American Development Bank, Deep Tech: The New Wave, IDB Lab, 2023. Cited at: 192628303270106156
65. Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), IAI, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 48
66. International Labour Organization, Executive Summary, ILO, 2025. Cited at: 9
67. Is China's Manus a Game Changer for Agentic AI?, Booz Allen Hamilton, 2025. Cited at: 145
68. Israeli Innovation Ecosystem, Startup Nation Central, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 93
69. Itaú BBA Equity Strategy Team, Latam & Brazil Equity Strategy: Thematic Book, Itaú BBA, 2024. Cited at: 33
70. Jack D. Farchy, Honduras's Free-Zone Experiment Is Failing, Foreign Policy, 2024. Cited at: 53
71. Jenny Lin, Reviving Argentina's Small Business, Perspectives on Business and Economics, 2021. Cited at: 64
72. Josemaria Siota & Mª Julia Prats, Open Innovation: How Corporate Giants Can Better Collaborate with Deep-Tech Start-ups. The Case of East and Southeast Asia, IESE Business School, 2021. Cited at: 1107108
73. Jurisdictional benchmark sources. Gulf States: UAE Federal Decree-Law 45/2021 text and government explainer. US/EU/UK: EMA vs FDA timelines; EU trial-delay studies. China: Section 301 reports and 2024 update. Hong Kong: NSL + Article 23 legislation, EU statement and press coverage. Cited at: 126
74. LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review, SlingHub, 2024. Cited at: 31111
75. Lim Jeong-won, Chile keen on collaborating with Korea on critical minerals: Chilean mining minister, Korea JoongAng Daily, 2024. Cited at: 171
76. Lithium: Here's why Latin America is key to the global energy transition, World Economic Forum, 2023. Cited at: 12
77. Madrid-based Strong by Form secures €4.8 million to bring a sustainable alternative to concrete, CMPC Ventures, 2023. Cited at: 119120
78. Margaret Myers, Ángel Melguizo & Yifang Wang, Emerging Trends in Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, The Dialogue, 2024. Cited at: 136
79. Markus Berger-de León, Karel Dörner, Hannes Erntell & Tobias Henz, European Deep Tech: What investors and corporations need to know, McKinsey & Company, 2024. Cited at: 4
80. Martin Wolf, Predictability is the victim of Trump's tariff threats, Financial Times, 2025. Cited at: 175
81. Matt Swayne, China Launches $138 Billion Government-Backed Venture Fund, Includes Quantum Startups, The Quantum Insider, 2025. Cited at: 153
82. MERCOSUR y Alianza del Pacífico dan un paso clave para agilizar la logística regional, Infobae, 2025. Cited at: 58
83. Michael Leatherbee, Boulevard of Broken Behaviors: Socio-Psychological Mechanisms of Entrepreneurship Policies, Social Science Research Network, 2014. Cited at: 95
84. Microsoft and Harvard Recognize Uruguay as an Innovation HUB, Uruguay XXI, 2024. Cited at: 75
85. Mike Dolan, Emerging markets face 'why bother?' problem, Reuters, 2024. Cited at: 35
86. Minicircle Gene Therapy Case Study, Próspera, 2024. Cited at: 51
87. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, MOFA Japan, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 166
88. Monica Duffy Toft, The Return of Spheres of Influence: Will Negotiations Over Ukraine Be a New Yalta Conference That Carves Up the World?, Foreign Affairs, 2025. Cited at: 133
89. More than 140 million denied access to health care in Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization. Cited at: 6
90. MSCI, MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index (USD), MSCI, 2025. Cited at: 34
91. MSME Financing Instruments in Latin America and the Caribbean During COVID-19, Inter-American Development Bank, 2020. Cited at: 113
92. NATO, Foreign Affairs, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 177
93. Newlab, Newlab, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 89
94. Nir Reuven, Is Israel the "Start-Up Nation" Because of Its Unique Security Situation?, BESA Center, 2023. Cited at: 71
95. Non-paper: How can a 28th regime company status help young and innovative companies to scale in Europe?, France Digitale, 2024. Cited at: 56
96. OECD, Government at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2024, OECD Publishing, 2024. Cited at: 8
97. Open Labs, Uruguay Innovation Hub, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 86
98. Paloma Durán, Mexico, UAE Seek to Deepen Economic Ties, Mexico Business News, 2025. Cited at: 162
99. Panorama of Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, 2024. Cited at: 59
100. Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Progress in Latin America: Uruguay Becomes the Newest Contracting Member, Mayer Brown, 2024. Cited at: 45
101. Pau Castells, Lucrecia Corvalan & Facundo Rattel, Connectivity Gaps in Latin America: A Roadmap for Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador, GSMA, 2023. Cited at: 10
102. Pension Markets In Focus: Preliminary 2024 data, OECD, 2025. Cited at: 82
103. Pensions & Private Capital Expert Panel, BVCA, 2025. Cited at: 84
104. Philippe Tibi, Financing the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Solving the financing grid-lock for technology companies, French Ministry of Economy and Finance, 2018. Cited at: 8183
105. Programa de matching funds: el nuevo instrumento del UIH, Uruguay Innovation Hub, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 74
106. Próspera, Próspera, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 50
107. Próspera and others v. Honduras, UNCTAD, 2022. Cited at: 54
108. Sara Frykstrand, Patrik Sobocki & Mattias Bertolino, Deep Tech funding landscape in Sweden, Industrifonden, 2024. Cited at: 109
109. Scenius LATAM, GridX: The Matchmaker for Scientists & Business profiles in Latin America, LinkedIn, 2024. Cited at: 37
110. Sci-tech cooperation hailed with Latin America, China National Science & Technology Innovation Office, 2024. Cited at: 152
111. Science and Technology Progress Law of the People’s Republic of China, People's Republic of China, 2021. Cited at: 138
112. Sciencepreneurs, Deep Tech Colombia Report 2024, Olarte Moure, 2024. Cited at: 63979899
113. Shenzhen GDP and employment figures, ECNS (2025); Shenzhen Government Online (2020). Shenzhen's economy reached 3.68 trillion yuan (≈US$510 billion) in 2024 per the city's government work report; over 11.7 million employed as of June 2020, contributing on the order of ~3% of China's national output. Cited at: 122
114. Shenzhen hits national firsts in 2024, targets 5.5% GDP growth in 2025, ECNS, 2025. Cited at: 22
115. Shenzhen’s "20+8" industrial cluster launches version 2.0, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, 2024. Cited at: 139
116. Startup Campus, primer hub de emprendimiento de base científico-tecnológica de Chile, Fundación Chile, 2025. Cited at: 117
117. Startup Capital Berlin, Business Location Center, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 94
118. Startup Chile, Startup Chile, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 96
119. StartupLab 01, Fundación Chile, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 87
120. State of European Tech Report, Atomico, 2024. Cited at: 767778
121. Stephen Ezell, Assessing the Dominican Republic's Readiness to Play a Greater Role in Global Semiconductor and PCB Value Chains, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, 2024. Cited at: 124
122. Stephen Ezell; UNESCO-UNEVOC, ITIF Dominican Republic report (2024); Funding of Training: Dominican Republic (2020), ITIF; UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2024. Cited at: 127
123. Steven Jacobs, Lukas Leitner, Nicolas Autret & Lorenzo Chiavarini, The 2025 European Deep Tech Report, Dealroom.co, 2025. Cited at: 5
124. Tercer Estudio de caracterización de Empresas de base científico-tecnológica en Chile, MinCiencia, 2024. Cited at: 61
125. The 14th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the PRC and the Outline of the Vision for 2035, People's Republic of China, 2021. Cited at: 135137
126. The Alliance for Development in Democracy (ADD). A sub-regional forum created in September 2021 by Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama (Ecuador joined in June 2022) for political coordination and economic cooperation among like-minded democracies. Cited at: 130
127. The Cambridge Cluster, Cambridge Network, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 92
128. The Ganesha Lab, The Ganesha Lab, last accessed 2025. Cited at: 116
129. The International Technology Security and Innovation (ITSI) Fund. A $500 million, five-year fund created by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and led by the U.S. Department of State to secure and diversify semiconductor supply chains with allies. Cited at: 131
130. The Tibi Initiative: Phase-2 and Perspectives, DG Trésor, 2024. Cited at: 80
131. The Venture Capital Panel, The Venture Capital Panel, 2025. Cited at: 40
132. The Venture Capital Summit, MenteX, 2025. Cited at: 41
133. Thomas L. Friedman, Why Trump's Bullying Is Going to Backfire, The New York Times, 2025. Cited at: 132
134. Thomas Monteiro, Latin America: Nearshoring Boost, Global Finance Magazine, 2024. Cited at: 17
135. Tim Sweijs & Michael J. Mazarr, Mind the Middle Powers, War on the Rocks, 2023. Cited at: 155
136. UAE, Costa Rica committed to developing resilient economies, Emirates News Agency (WAM), 2024. Cited at: 160
137. UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2025: International investment in the digital economy, United Nations, Geneva, 2025. Cited at: 1314
138. UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2019: Special Economic Zones, United Nations, 2019. UNCTAD's inventory lists 5,383 SEZs across 147 economies; Table IV.2 reports China = 2,543 zones, just over half the global total. Cited at: 121
139. UNDP Global Deep Tech Ecosystems, United Nations Development Programme, 2025. Cited at: 44
140. Uruguay facilita trámites de energía y agua para inversores brasileños con un proceso 100% digital y seguro, Uruguay VUI, 2023. Cited at: 57
141. Uruguay XXI reports; Satellogic and Newlab announcements; Ministry of Economy trade data, Uruguay XXI. Cited at: 24125
142. Wayra and TheVentureCity to co-invest in Latin American Deep Tech startups, LatAm List, 2019. Cited at: 118
143. Weijing Ye & Jack So, Deep Tech Series Vol. 5: Science, Not Fiction, Insights from Singapore's Deep Tech Venture Building, UNDP Global Centre Singapore, 2024. Cited at: 170
144. Xu Weiwei, Shenzhen to grow as hub of innovation, China Daily, 2023. Cited at: 141

To shape our findings, we conducted interviews and roundtables with nearly 100 contributors who generously shared their time, insights, and perspectives. We extend our deepest thanks to them.

• Alejandra Martínez Foundation Capital
• Andrea Rochaix Argentine Association of Founders
• Andy Pavia Glassnode
• Annika Klump German-Argentine Chamber of Commerce
• Ariel Muslera Borderless Capital
• Beatriz Botero Sciences Po
• Cameron Houser Actionworks
• Camila Russo The Defiant
• Carla Goglia Fundación Empretec
• Christopher Storaker Arch Finance
• Claudia Aparicio Olarte Moure & Alianza Deep Tech
• Claudio Coconi Barceló Foundation
• Cristian Hernández Zentynel
• Cristóbal Díaz VSPT
• David García Borderless Capital
• Diana Silveira University of Palermo, Center for Startups
• Diego Albúrez Max Planck Institute
• Diego Fernández City of Buenos Aires, Secretary of Innovation
• Elivan Álvarez Ripio Ventures
• Erick Chacón Asafintech
• Fausto Carbajal Miranda Partners
• Florencia Gordillo ProtoTipas
• Francis Sanchinelli U3Tech
• Gabriel Bottos Vesper
• Gabriel Pérez Pitanga
• Geusseppe González Access Partnership
• Idoia Ortiz de Artiñano Goñi Gobe
• Ivone Padilla INCmty
• Javier Bernal La Turbina Ventures
• Javier Larragoiti Creative Food Labs
• José Ignacio Torreblanca European Council on Foreign Relations
• José Rodríguez Legalítika
• Juan Soria SF500
• Juan Vargas MenteX
• Kun Peng Stanford Blockchain Accelerator
• Kyle Becker JP Morgan, Former Researcher
• Lisa Ocampo Emprear
• Lucas Delgado Emerge Brasil
• Lucas Toledo Universidad Nacional del Chaco Austral
• Luis Barletta FEEDVAX
• Manuel Leiva Facttic
• Marilia Monteiro Nubank
• Mark Veer Mantle
• Markus Schreyer The Ganesha Labs
• María Fernanda Andrés Aceleradora Litoral
• Matías Peire GridX
• Maxi Grande ADENEU
• Nick Cohen International Strategy Forum
• Nicolás Robinson Andrade OpenAI
• Nicolás Salazar Cardona Inter-American Development Bank, GovTech
• Orlando Ramírez Hello Tomorrow
• Pablo Fernández Venturance
• Pablo Cardozo Centro de Emprendedores UADE
• Peter Bruck World Summit Awards
• Ricardo Espinosa Tumo
• Roberto Loehnert Zentynel
• Rodrigo Vásquez Etherealize
• Rogelio Marín Rómpela a la Mexicana
• Said Saillant Societas Sapiens
• Sandra Sinico ScaleupLatam
• Sebastián Díaz Startup Chile, Former CEO
• Sofía Quilici Forbes Magazine
• Susana García Robles Capria VC
• Tomaz Vicente Catalize Social
• Toomas Ilves Former President of Estonia
• Valentina Kraiselburd Asclepii
• Vicente Pavani Startuplab.01
• Zack Guzmán Yahoo/CNBC, Former Reporter
• Óscar Mario Jiménez Academic Researcher
• Franco Kraiselburd AVentures
• Balint Pataki Center for Future Generations
• Jean García Periche Center for Public Intelligence
• Henry Woodfine Wood Mackenzie
• Viviana Hermosilla CMPC Ventures
• Nina Ploger Associate IPDES
• José Brito Deep Tech Specialist
• Carmen Contreras University of Oxford
• Stephen Nordin International Strategy Forum
• Clemente Gilardini Fusion Industry Association
• Rafael Bottos Vesper Biotechnologies
• Adilson Silva N7V
• Sarah Morrill Activate
• Danielle Moraes N7V