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24 September, 2025
Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America: Opportunities, Challenges, and Recommendations
Haga clic aquí para leer este artículo en español.
Latin America is at a crucial juncture for its economic and technological development. The convergence of abundant natural resources, specialised talent in cutting-edge fields, and the global reconfiguration of geopolitics presents an unprecedented opportunity for the region to evolve from a mere consumer of technology to a strategic player in the realm of frontier technologies – or deep tech.
In this context, the Latin American Dynamism Project (LADP) report is essential for understanding the obstacles to realising this regional potential, as well as for examining how frontier technologies have developed in the region – particularly in terms of investments, areas of concentration, and regional development nodes.
Public policies associated with technology often pose challenges for policymakers, and those concerning frontier technologies can be even more complex. For this reason, five recommendations are presented below from a public policy perspective, based on the content of the LADP report.
These recommendations aim to mitigate identified bottlenecks, provide analytical elements for targeted interventions, and, ultimately, assist the various stakeholders in promoting regional development through rigorous, relevant, and robust public policies.
1. Harmonisation and modernisation of the regulatory framework
Latin America would benefit from establishing a regional regulatory or public policy forum – similar to those in industries such as telecommunications – to harmonise laws and regulations affecting deep technology enterprises. This would include standardising intellectual property regulations, facilitating technology transfer, and creating regulatory sandboxes for experimentation in sectors such as biotechnology, biomaterials, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), among others.
Regulatory fragmentation reduces the investment appeal across comparable markets, limiting the ability of Latin American start-ups to scale regionally or internationally. In this sense, a harmonised regulatory framework based on fundamental enablers would help attract capital and offer certainty to investors, providing a more predictable and unified market.
2. Promotion of global corporate structures
A key factor in strengthening conditions for technological development in the region is the promotion of medium- and long-term fiscal incentives that are targeted, differentiated, and sustainable, ensuring that investments in frontier technologies or incremental innovations operate within realistic contexts.
Governments and regulators can support this by offering fiscal incentives or grants to start-ups that establish corporate structures in jurisdictions that are favourably regarded by international venture capital funds. Such interventions could even be leveraged alongside other policies promoting industrial development, education, or the sophistication of the productive apparatus.
In this context, the volatility and uncertainty often associated with Latin American markets could be mitigated through differentiated investment support measures designed to protect venture capital linked to the development of frontier technologies.
3. Encouraging Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and Corporate Venture Capital (CVC)
Latin America enjoys a wide range of logistical and technological capabilities, predominantly supported by government interventions. It is therefore desirable to expand investment and support channels from the public sector, for example, by using PPPs for frontier technology development or by establishing and strengthening public venture capital investment funds.
Regional regulators and policymakers have extensive capacity in economic development and could allocate strategic resources to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation through solving fundamental social challenges aligned with sustainable development goals.
Similarly, public entities responsible for science, technology, and innovation policy could act as integrators among the various stakeholders – for example, by defining strategic areas for scientific development, allocating investment resources, and creating platforms for advisory, negotiation, compliance, and evaluation.
4. Evaluating the impact of current policies
Although investment in and development of frontier technology initiatives are not new, Latin America still relies on traditional public policy frameworks, typically measured through scientific development indicators such as number of patents, publications, researchers, or certified research centres.
To better capture modern dynamics in frontier technology R&D and venture capital investment, additional measurement elements are needed. It is well documented that modern innovators often prioritise rapid access to capital, sometimes foregoing patents or even formal registration of intangible assets, which are instead protected through competition, copyright and industrial property mechanisms.
As a result, the impact of scientific development policies may be either underestimated or overestimated. It is therefore recommended to conduct impact evaluations of current policies to assess the actual state of technological development and to propose new indicators that better reflect current dynamics – for example, levels of venture capital investment in frontier technologies.
5. Strengthening specialised infrastructure
Research and development in frontier technologies is a complex, capital-intensive process that depends on multiple enabling elements – from human capital training and regulatory frameworks to specialised infrastructure.
It is no secret that technologies such as AI, biotechnology, clean energy, robotics, semiconductors, and quantum computing require highly specialised hard (hardware) and soft (software) infrastructure, including computing capacity, security, stable energy sources, access to materials, licensing, and connectivity.
Access to this infrastructure must be commensurate with investment in human capital and vice versa. For instance, if centres of high computational complexity are promoted for digital technology development, they must be equipped with the minimum enabling conditions for their required technical performance – reliable electricity, cooling and ventilation, transport links, and connectivity – while ensuring that the workforce is adequately trained. Any asymmetry in investment between infrastructure and human capital can cause major capital inefficiencies and the loss, or leakage, of talent.
Shaping the future
The actions that authorities and governments take today will determine Latin America’s technological and social development in the coming decades. The recommendations presented here aim to bolster the elements already identified in the LADP report, while also seeking to shift technological policy cycles from reactive, fragmented approaches to ambitious, coordinated regional strategies with sustained execution, robust financing, and an active role in defining international technological governance. This challenge is at once technical, political, and social, and its resolution will decide the region’s capacity to capture the economic, social, and geopolitical value of frontier technologies.
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