Mexico ranks eighth among 20 economies in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 2026 Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA), with 52 points out of 100, according to the report published by CEPAL and the Chilean center CENIA on October 20. The country is seeking to move from consuming AI tools to developing its own technology.

The figure arrives days before the second edition of Mexico IA+, the gathering to be held on November 4 and 5 and which, according to El Universal, will include an NVIDIA AI Day for the first time in the country. Jessica Peña, director of Mexico IA+, explains that the challenge goes beyond having high-performance computers or access to models: it also involves capabilities in energy, data management, security and technological knowledge. The ILIA evaluates 126 sub-indicators across 20 countries; it places Chile in first position with 71.4 points and reports that Brazil concentrates 87.7% of the GPUs identified in the region.

In an interview, Peña notes: "When we talk about artificial intelligence in depth, we talk about energy, infrastructure, data and security. Also about not having this foreign dependency and developing our own technological capabilities." The specialist, founder of Monarca Lab, adds that the first edition of the gathering trained 250 people, among students, academia and government representatives, including the Navy, and that this year the goal is to reach one thousand participants. The agenda features agentic artificial intelligence, robotics and the NVIDIA AI Day training sessions. Peña identifies the automotive industry, given its track record in automation, and healthcare, given the volume of information its institutions generate, as the sectors with the greatest potential to build their own solutions.

The November 4 and 5 gathering will put on the table the conditions that, according to Peña, the country needs to take that step: trained talent, computing infrastructure and links between government, universities, startups and SMEs. Peña sums it up this way: "Integrating is the most important thing." The question that follows is how many of those tables turn into concrete projects.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.