Industry leaders in Latin America discussed the economic and technological growth occurring across the region at TIME’s Impact Dinner: Leading LATAM’s Next Chapter of Growth in Brazil on Friday.
Speaking on a panel at the dinner were Paula Bellizia, the vice president of Amazon Web Services in Latin America; Henrique Dias, co-founder and CEO of NoHarm.ai, an artificial intelligence healthcare platform; and Athina Kanioura, the CEO of Latin America for PepsiCo, which sponsored the event.
Kanioura called Latin America “the place to be” for many businesses.
“We see a lot of white space for big companies to invest, drive growth, drive differentiation, drive innovation,” Kanioura said. She said that PepsiCo has been growing at a faster pace in Latin America than in any other region in the world.
Brazil, Dias noted, is full of skilled workers, especially in the engineering, computer science, and AI sectors. He said, however, that without outside investment, it’s difficult to make the most of that workforce and stoke economic growth.
“We have very talented people. What we don’t have here is money” said Dias, whose company operates in Brazil as a non-profit that provides free AI services to the public health sector.
With funds, he contended, “we can build a Silicon Valley in Brazil.”
“But we don’t have that kind of money that [is] in North America,” he added. “But we have very clever people, very clever companies.”
In addition to a talented workforce, the corporate leaders asserted that emerging technologies will be a key ingredient in Latin America’s future growth.
“Technology is hitting us, is coming towards us in a positive way in terms of really bringing more wealth and bringing opportunity for people,” Bellizia said.
To illustrate the vital role technology is playing in Brazil, she explained that 12 million companies in the country—which she said represents roughly half of all the businesses there—said they are using AI in their work, and that the rate of AI use is growing at a fast pace of 30% year over year.
When asked what is required to continue Latin America’s steady pace of economic and technological growth, Bellizia said: “What this continent lacks is infrastructure. It doesn’t lack talent. It doesn’t lack drive. It doesn’t lack resilience. But for you guys to have the technology that you need, you need data centers. For data centers to be there, you need infrastructure. You need water.”
Dias added that there needs to be a larger investment in national technology and a movement away from “importing AI technology” from industry giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.
“We need to invest in national technology to be more independent from the rest of the world and to be independent ourselves,” he said.
TIME Impact Dinner: Leading LATAM’s Next Chapter of Growth was presented by PepsiCo.
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