Opportunities, Challenges & Recommendations
Executive Summary
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 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.
Foreword
Leonardo Quattrucci & Marcus Alburez · Co-founders of the LADP
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.
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.
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The Data
Drawn from a database of 2,566 LATAM deep tech ventures (data cutoff March 2025), benchmarked against global sources. Every figure links back to the report.
Showing figures current to July 22, 2026.
How little reaches the region, and how fast that is changing.
LATAM invests about half of Europe’s (≈EU) level and a tenth of the United States’, per person. Asia is the whole continent, so that bar is not a like-for-like density.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesLatin American Dynamism Project (LADP), Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave; Sling Hub & Itaú, LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review; Atomico, State of European Tech Report 2024
Methodology: Cumulative deep tech investment per person, in US dollars, as of September 2024. LADP divides each region's cumulative investment by its population; none of the cited sources publishes this per-person figure directly. The population bases are not the same kind of geography: "Asia" is the whole continent (about 4.8 billion people) while "Europe" is counted roughly as the EU (about 450 million). Read the ranking as directional; do not treat the exact multiples between regions as precise.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| United States | $153 |
| Europe (≈EU) | $31 |
| Latin America | $15 |
| Asia (continent) | $3 |
In absolute terms the gap is starker still: roughly USD 2.5bn for all of LATAM.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesInter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave; Dealroom.co, Deep Tech in Europe, Dealroom Deep Dive
Methodology: Cumulative deep tech investment by region, in billions of US dollars, counted to September 2024 as reported by Science|Business and the IDB. The series is deliberately not extended to 2025 or 2026: current public trackers use incompatible definitions of deep tech (Tracxn puts the United States near $179bn against Dealroom's $20.3bn for Europe), and mixing them would produce a comparison none of them supports. For scale, Europe alone recorded $20.3bn of annual deep tech venture capital in 2025, so these four bars are one cumulative 2024 snapshot and should not be read as a live comparison.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| United States | $52.0B |
| Europe (≈EU) | $14.0B |
| Asia (continent) | $13.0B |
| Latin America | $2.5B |
Investment grew ~600% between 2019 and 2023, reaching USD 2.5bn by late 2024. The BID projects a 20× expansion of the ecosystem by 2032.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesInter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave; Sling Hub & Itaú, LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review; Latin American Dynamism Project (LADP), Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America
Methodology: Cumulative deep tech investment in Latin America, in billions of US dollars. Only the three points the report states are plotted: under $300m in 2019, $2bn in 2023, and about $2.54bn to September 2024. Nothing between them is interpolated. The $2.54bn endpoint comes from a source that reports an annual flow, so it is an approximate cumulative level, not an exact stock. The series has not been extended past September 2024.
| Year | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | $0.30B |
| 2023 | $2.00B |
| 2024 | $2.54B |
The recovery the report only saw the start of. 2026 is the first half annualised, not an actual. All technology, not deep tech alone.
Not in the published report. Added since.
SourcesDealroom.co, Latin America, Dealroom Deep Dive; LAVCA (Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America), 2025 Latin American Startup Ecosystem Insights; LAVCA, 2026 LAVCA Trends in Tech
Methodology: Latin American venture funding by year, in billions of US dollars. All technology, not deep tech alone. The series follows Dealroom's Deep Dive so the years stay comparable to each other. 2026 is the first half ($3.1bn actual) annualised to a $6.2bn full-year projection, and is marked as projected. LAVCA's equity-only figures run lower, around $4.1bn for 2025; the difference is debt and structured instruments, which Dealroom counts and LAVCA does not. Current to July 2026.
| Year | Value |
|---|---|
| 2023 | $4.2B |
| 2024 | $4.5B |
| 2025 | $4.8B |
| 2026 | $6.2B |
Business covers about 35% of R&D in Latin America, against 60% or more across the United States and Europe and nearly 80% in China. Thin private research funding is a structural brake on deep tech.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesECLAC / CEPAL, Ciencia, tecnología e innovación: cooperación, integración y desafíos regionales (LC/TS.2022/156); UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2026 R&D Data Release
Methodology: Who pays for research and development, as a share of national R&D spending, from ECLAC using 2019 data. The 25% government figure for the United States and Europe is the midpoint of the 20–30 range the report gives; the report publishes no point value. This measures the composition of R&D funding, not its size: on level, UNESCO's 2026 data puts Latin America and the Caribbean at 0.57% of GDP spent on R&D against a world average of 1.92%.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Latin America | 35% |
| United States & Europe | 60% |
| China | 80% |
Corporate venture capital into the region’s deep tech peaked at USD 119M in 2022, then cooled with the wider funding market. The base is set for the CVC Bridge the report proposes.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourceDealroom.co, Deep Tech Overview: Latin America
Methodology: Corporate venture capital into Latin American deep tech, in millions of US dollars, from Dealroom as cited in the report. 2021 is reported as not available and is left empty, because a zero there would claim a year with no corporate venture capital at all. The series peaked at $119m in 2022 and fell about 70% by 2024, which still leaves it around four times the 2020 base. It has not been extended past 2024.
| Year | Value |
|---|---|
| 2020 | $9.0M |
| 2022 | $119.0M |
| 2023 | $73.9M |
| 2024 | $36.5M |
A partial, sourced list of vehicles committed or launched since September 2025. Note the asymmetry: the two LATAM-facing funds together are USD 80m against China’s USD 17.5bn already committed out of a USD 138bn vehicle.
Not in the published report. Added since.
SourcesScenius LATAM (via LinkedIn), GridX: The Matchmaker for Scientists & Business; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), IDB Lab Approves Investment to Boost Deeptech Ventures in Latin America (GridX Fund II, RG-Q0095); The Quantum Insider, China Launches $138 Billion Government-Backed Venture Fund, Includes Quantum Startups; The State Council, People's Republic of China, China unveils national venture capital guidance fund to boost innovation
Methodology: Deep tech capital vehicles committed or launched since the report closed in September 2025, in millions of US dollars. The list is partial and every entry is sourced; it is not a complete count of regional fundraising. The China figure is the roughly $17.5bn committed to date out of a $138bn twenty-year state vehicle, not the vehicle's full size. Current to July 2026.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| GRIDX Fund II | $30M |
| Draper Cygnus | $50M |
| China NVCGF (committed) | $17,500M |
Where the ventures are, what they build, and where they stall.
On the LADP map Brazil hosts 41% of the region’s ventures, more than the next four countries combined. EMERGE’s narrower map puts Brazil near 72% — different inclusion rules, not a single “true” share.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesLatin American Dynamism Project (LADP), Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America; Tracxn Technologies, Tracxn, LATAM deep tech company database (LADP extract); EMERGE (Emerge Brasil) & Cubo Itaú, Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025
Methodology: Company counts by country from the LADP Tracxn-based map at its March 2025 cutoff. On that map Brazil is 1,048 of 2,566 ventures (40.8%). EMERGE's Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025, which uses a narrower inclusion rule, counts Brazil as 952 of 1,316 companies (72.3%). The two percentages disagree because they measure different universes, not because one count is wrong. This page publishes the LADP map; EMERGE is named so the definitional gap is visible.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Brazil | 1,048 |
| Mexico | 358 |
| Argentina | 256 |
| Chile | 251 |
| Colombia | 219 |
| Rest of LATAM | 434 |
Biotechnology and AI alone account for 72% of mapped ventures, a reflection of the region’s biological-sciences talent and biodiversity.
Re-checked against a current source. Unchanged from the published report. (EMERGE (Emerge Brasil) & Cubo Itaú)
SourcesInter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave; EMERGE (Emerge Brasil) & Cubo Itaú, Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025
Methodology: Share of Latin American deep tech companies by sector, measured by company count, from the IDB's 2023 mapping. EMERGE's independent Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025 finds the same shape (biotech 61%, AI 11%), which is why the 2023 split is still published as current. It measures the stock of companies, not where money is going now: AI is 11% of companies but took roughly 70% of the rounds closed by companies founded between 2023 and 2025. The named sectors sum to 99% because the report prints the smallest bucket as under 1%.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Biotechnology | 61% |
| Artificial Intelligence | 11% |
| Nanotechnology | 6% |
| Cleantech | 5% |
| Spacetech | 4% |
| Advanced Mobility | 4% |
| Robotics | 2% |
| Advanced Manufacturing | 2% |
| Healthtech | 2% |
| Advanced Materials | 1% |
| Medical Devices & Others | 1% |
The ecosystem is front-loaded: 72% of ventures sit at Seed, only 19% reach Series A, and just 22 (10%) have raised Series B or beyond. Median ticket sizes jump an order of magnitude at each stage.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesLatin American Dynamism Project (LADP), Accelerating Deep Tech in Latin America; Tracxn Technologies, Tracxn, LATAM deep tech company database (LADP extract); Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave
Methodology: Share of mapped ventures at each funding stage, with the median round size in millions of US dollars, from the LADP Tracxn-based database at its March 2025 cutoff. The report's own prose and chart disagree slightly on Series B: the prose says 10% (22 startups); the chart says 9%. This page carries the chart figure.
| Stage | The scale-up funnel | median round |
|---|---|---|
| Seed | 72% | $0.6M |
| Series A | 19% | $8.3M |
| Series B+ | 9% | $17M |
Deep tech took 6% of Latin America’s tech funding in 2024, USD 536M of USD 8.8bn. Fintech still dominates the total, but deep tech’s share is climbing.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesSling Hub & Itaú, LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review; Dealroom.co, Latin America, Dealroom Deep Dive
Methodology: Share of total Latin American technology funding by market in calendar 2024, from Sling Hub. The report names fintech at 55%, energy at 13% and deep tech at 6%; the 26% "other" slice is the remainder to 100 and is not itemised. Fintech's dominance has held since, with Dealroom putting it near 58% of Latin American venture capital in the twelve months to Q2 2026. The deep tech share is a reported figure that has not been independently verified.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Fintech | 55% |
| Energy | 13% |
| Deep tech | 6% |
| Other verticals | 26% |
By equity funding, deep tech reaches 11%, level with energy and second only to fintech. Investors are already putting real ownership behind the sector.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourceSling Hub & Itaú, LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review
Methodology: Share of Latin American equity funding by market in calendar 2024, from Sling Hub. The report names fintech at 41%, deep tech at 11% and energy at 11%; the 37% "other" slice is the remainder to 100 and is not itemised. Equity only, so it excludes the debt and structured instruments that make up a growing share of regional funding.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Fintech | 41% |
| Deep tech | 11% |
| Energy | 11% |
| Other verticals | 37% |
The mispricing the report sets out to close.
Latin American assets trade far below global and emerging-market peers, and well beyond the historical average. The report’s core claim: this is a solvable mispricing.
Refreshed June 30, 2026, MSCI.
SourcesMSCI, MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index (USD), Index Factsheet; Itaú BBA Equity Strategy Team, Latam & Brazil Equity Strategy: Thematic Book
Methodology: Price-to-book valuation gap, in per cent, computed from the MSCI EM Latin America Index factsheet dated 30 June 2026: Latin America at 1.99 against the ACWI at 3.86 gives −48.4% versus the world, and against emerging markets at 2.58 gives −22.9%. The report published −51% and −27.7% from an Itaú BBA 2024 read; the gap narrowed after Latin American equities returned 55.67% in 2025. This is a market price and it moves daily, so the as-of date follows the factsheet, not the day of reading.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| historical average | −13.9% |
| vs. emerging markets | −22.9% |
| vs. the world | −48.4% |
Why the discount narrowed. A 55.67% year in 2025 re-rated the region, closing the gap to the world from -51% to -48.4%. 2026 is year to date. This is the report’s "temporary mispricing" thesis partly playing out.
Not in the published report. Added since.
SourceMSCI, MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index (USD), Index Factsheet
Methodology: Annual gross return of the MSCI EM Latin America Index, in per cent, from the factsheet dated 30 June 2026. 2026 is year to date and is marked as such. The 55.67% return in 2025 is what narrowed the price-to-book discount shown in the LATAM Discount dataset.
| Year | Value |
|---|---|
| 2022 | +9.51% |
| 2023 | +33.54% |
| 2024 | −26.02% |
| 2025 | +55.67% |
| 2026 | +10.75% |
Momentum has already begun to build.
In 2024 deep tech outgrew every other tech vertical in LATAM, by funding and by equity.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourcesSling Hub & Itaú, LATAM Startup Market 2024 in Review; Dealroom.co, Deep Tech Overview: Latin America
Methodology: Year-over-year growth in 2024 against 2023, from Sling Hub's 2024 review, plus a corporate venture capital multiple of 4× reported by Dealroom. Three of the four figures are percentages and the CVC one is a multiple, which is why the unit is recorded as mixed. Both sources cover calendar 2024 and neither has been extended to 2025.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Deep tech funding growth | +219% |
| Equity funding growth | +189% |
| Overall tech rebound | +37% |
| Corporate VC growth (2020–24) | 4× |
The single biggest change since the report. The sector split by company count barely moved, but AI-core companies founded 2023-2025 took roughly seven in ten of the rounds their cohorts closed. Stock and flow now tell different stories.
Not in the published report. Added since.
SourcesEMERGE (Emerge Brasil) & Cubo Itaú, Radar Deep Tech LATAM 2025; Dealroom.co, Latin America, Dealroom Deep Dive; Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab), Deep Tech: The New Wave
Methodology: Two different measures of AI's weight in Latin American deep tech, both in per cent. The stock share of 11% is AI's share of companies, stable from the IDB's 2023 mapping through EMERGE's 2025 Radar. The flow share of about 70% is the share of rounds closed by companies founded between 2023 and 2025 that had AI at their core, per Dealroom's 2025 data. The two answer different questions: how many companies exist, and where recent money went.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Share of companies | 11% |
| Share of recent rounds | 70% |
What a coordinated push looks like elsewhere.
China shows the other end of the spectrum: deep tech leapt from 15% to 71% of domestic tech investment in five years, backed by a USD 138bn state fund.
Re-checked against a current source. Unchanged from the published report. (The State Council, People's Republic of China)
SourcesGlobal Private Capital Association (GPCA), 2023 Emerging Trends in Asia; The Quantum Insider, China Launches $138 Billion Government-Backed Venture Fund, Includes Quantum Startups; The State Council, People's Republic of China, China unveils national venture capital guidance fund to boost innovation
Methodology: Deep tech's share of domestic technology investment in China, 15% in 2017 rising to 71% in 2022, per GPCA. The $138bn state venture fund is a separate figure in US dollars, announced in 2025, of which about $17.5bn has since been committed across three regional sub-funds. Context not shown in the chart: China accounted for 66% of Asian tech funding in 2024, down from 69% in 2023, and Chinese deep tech funding fell about 26% in 2025 from roughly $6.2bn across 241 rounds. The 19.2% growth forecast that appears on the projected-growth chart is a commercial vendor projection and is not counted in this dataset.
| Year | Value |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 15% |
| 2022 | 71% |
China’s deep tech market is projected to compound at 19.2% a year through 2034, outpacing the United States and trailing only Australia & New Zealand.
SourcesFuture Market Insights, Deep Tech Market Report; Global Private Capital Association (GPCA), 2023 Emerging Trends in Asia
Methodology: Vendor forecast. China’s 19.2% CAGR through 2034 is a Future Market Insights projection; the US (15.6%) and Australia & NZ (22%) comparison points are as cited by GPCA. Treat as an estimate, not a verified figure.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Australia & NZ | 22.0% |
| China | 19.2% |
| United States | 15.6% |
Biotech investment in China fell from ~$22bn to $10bn by 2022 while EV, autonomous and automotive rose from $7.9bn to $11.1bn, capital rotating toward strategic hardware. Bars show 2022; the table carries both years.
As published in the report, September 2025.
SourceGlobal Private Capital Association (GPCA), 2023 Emerging Trends in Asia
Methodology: Private capital into China's two largest deep tech verticals, in billions of US dollars, from GPCA's 2023 Asia report. Biotech is shown at its pre-2022 peak of about $22bn against $10bn in 2022, while electric, autonomous and automotive rose from $7.9bn to $11.1bn and overtook it. The series ends in 2022 and has not been extended.
| Category | Current |
|---|---|
| Biotech | $10.0B |
| EV / AV / Automotive | $11.1B |
Global corporate venturing grew 2.8× and corporate–deep tech collaborations 4.2×; 71% of firms expect deep tech to weigh more in their portfolios.
As published in the report, September 2025.
Methodology: Growth multiples for corporate venturing from IESE's 2021 open innovation study, measured over 2017 to 2021. These are multiples across that whole period, not a year-by-year series, and the 71% figure is the share of surveyed firms expecting deep tech to weigh more in their portfolios over the following five years, which is why the unit is recorded as mixed. Context not in these numbers: Latin American corporate venture activity roughly doubled between 2020 and 2023, and AI is now its leading theme at about 41% of funds.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Overall corporate venturing growth | 2.8× |
| Corporate–deep tech collaborations | 4.2× |
| Of firms expect deep tech to grow in their portfolio | 71% |
What the data says about the risk everyone assumes.
Hello Tomorrow’s European dataset finds deep tech ventures fail no more often and exit no slower than regular tech. Whether their exits are larger is still inconclusive.
SourceHello Tomorrow, Deep Tech Investor Mapping (LATAM) & The 2025 European Deep Tech Report
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Do deep tech companies fail more often? | No |
| Do they need more time to exit? | No |
| Do they have larger exits? | Inconclusive |
The raw inputs the region already holds.
The raw inputs for frontier science are abundant: biodiversity, lithium, clean power and a deep pool of researchers.
Re-checked against a current source. Unchanged from the published report. (Ember)
SourcesUN Environment Programme / World Economic Forum, Latin America & the Caribbean biodiversity share (UNEP / WEF / IDB); U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Lithium; Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026; UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), 2026 R&D Data Release; RICYT (Ibero-American Network of Science and Technology Indicators), Science, Technology and Innovation in Latin America, the Caribbean and Ibero-America in 2024
Methodology: Four natural and human endowment figures. Renewables at 65% of regional electricity generation is confirmed against Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026. Biodiversity at 42% sits inside the range UNEP and the WEF give for the region, around 40% of global biodiversity and up to roughly 60% of terrestrial life on a broader measure. Lithium at 58% is the region's share of global lithium resources, not reserves; the report says reserves, which is an error. The researcher count is best read as a range of roughly 700,000 to 865,000: RICYT reports more than 700,000 for 2024 against the IDB's 865,000, and full-time-equivalent counts run materially lower than headcount. The researcher value is stated in thousands.
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Biodiversity | 42% |
| Lithium resources | 58% |
| Renewable electricity | 65% |
| STEM researchers | 865k |
Recommendations
The report’s recommendations cover what companies must do to become investable, what would give investors confidence, and the regional coalition that ties the two together. Filter by theme or audience.
Isolated wins will not move the region. The report argues for a neutral coalition across countries and verticals, “the European Union, minus the bureaucracy.”
The science-to-startup pipeline
Scientific founders often lack entrepreneurial training, so frontier science stalls before it becomes a company. Embed venture builders inside universities and labs to pair scientists with seasoned operators.
65%LATAM deep tech startups still pre-seed or seed with under US$1m raised, to 2022
A repeatable route from lab bench to fundable company, with an operator in the founding team and a corporate pilot waiting at the other end.
A deep tech KPI framework
Two 2024 LATAM deep tech funding totals circulate, US$138m and US$536m, a 4× gap with no reconciliation. Build a KPI framework with agreed definitions so the region can be priced like for like.
17% vs 10%Average net IRR, deep tech funds against traditional tech funds, 2003 to 2020 vintages
Definitions agreed before numbers, so one 2024 total replaces two and an investor can price a LATAM venture against a global one.
Educate privately, convene publicly
Deep tech takes 6% of LATAM tech funding and the region runs six competing convenings. Educate the roughly 40 active funds privately, and consolidate the events into one flagship.
6%Deep tech share of LATAM tech funding in 2024, US$536m of US$8.8bn including debt
One stage instead of six, and a nameable list of roughly 40 funds moved from unaware to educated, with the return evidence flagged as still missing.
Deep tech for the SDGs
“Facts alone don’t move hearts, or wallets,” says Cristián Hernández of Zentynel. Frame the science as a societal outcome tied to a measurable indicator, without slipping into greenwashing.
65% vs 41%Clean share of LATAM electricity against the global average, 2025
An SDG frame with an indicator behind every claim, so a mission reads to long-term partners as a differentiator rather than as a discount on returns.
Language first, structure next
Single-country markets are too small and too volatile to carry a breakthrough venture. Build for a global market from day one: English as the working language, then international structures and early filings.
158PCT contracting states recognising a single application, at 1 June 2026
Diligence that clears on an English data room and a structure investors already underwrite, and a PCT route available in more than 14 of 33 countries.
Vertical peer-review panels and a portable endorsement seal
Investors told the LADP roundtables they discount science from universities they do not recognize. Convene vertical advisory boards that peer-review TRL 3–5 ventures and issue a seal investors can read.
17% vs 10%Average net IRR of 115 deep tech funds against 1,572 traditional tech funds, vintages 2003–2020, Europe and North America
Diligence that starts from an independent review of the science instead of from the reputation of the university on the founder’s CV.
Three routes out of a five-regulator patchwork
LATAM has no central regulator: review times run from 70 business days at Argentina’s ANMAT to 18–24 months at Brazil’s ANVISA. Choose a route early, global-first, parallel jurisdiction, or reliance.
≤70 business daysArgentina’s ANMAT review time, cut from roughly 160 business days since 2017, as reported in 2025
One dossier more than one LATAM regulator will accept, so a biotech can reach a regional market without repeating the same review five times.
33 countries, one optional 34th regime
A company crossing a LATAM border meets duplicative approvals, and only about 14 of the region’s 33 countries are in the PCT. Constitute a voluntary 34th regime as a plurilateral compact on existing rails.
14 of 33LATAM countries that are PCT contracting states, against 158 worldwide at 1 June 2026; WIPO’s live list checks out at 14 to 15, with Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela outside
One startup status a founder can carry across borders, so entering a second LATAM market stops meaning starting the paperwork from zero.
A neutral bridge to corporate capital, and a way to measure it
By 2021 only about 40% of LATAM corporates were engaged in CVC, against roughly 90% in the US, and access runs on personal introductions. Stand up a neutral CVC Bridge with an observatory to measure it.
40% vs 90%LATAM companies engaged in corporate venture capital by 2021, against US corporates operating venture arms
Corporate capital reached through a published intake process instead of an introduction, and a public record of how long each deal actually took.
Mixed cohorts and shared-service operators, with an anchor
LATAM has run programs that built networks and then let them dissolve when the cohort ended. Run curated mixed cohorts with retention incentives, tracking and an institutional anchor funded from day one.
US$607m vs US$216m2024 private deep tech investment in Chile against Brazil, which holds most of the region’s companies; Argentina drew US$486m
Cohorts that leave an institution behind, so the introductions, the shared services and the alumni are still there after the program’s funding ends.
Public R&D budgets on an infrastructure footing
LAC spends 0.57% of GDP on R&D against a 1.92% global average, in short annual cycles. Put strategic deep tech on infrastructure footing and turn the R&D budget line into multi-year co-financing.
0.57% vs 1.92%LAC R&D expenditure as a share of GDP against the global average, 2023
Public R&D money committed on the timescale hardware and biology actually take, with one matching-fund term sheet a venture can file across three countries.
A fund-of-funds for domestic deep tech
LATAM holds roughly US$1 trillion in pension assets, much of it deployed abroad. Route 1%, about US$10bn, into an independently managed fund-of-funds through vetted specialist GPs under fiduciary safeguards.
~US$1tn → US$10bnPension AUM across Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay, and the 1% redirect proposed
A senior-tranched, rules-based channel that lets a trustee back domestic deep tech without breaching mandate, sized to real manager capacity rather than a headline.
Map the flows, then broker the corridors
Capital, standards and supply chains are being re-routed around LATAM with no shared regional read on it. Stand up a working group to map technology flows and broker corridors with superpowers and middle powers.
15% → 71%Deep tech’s share of China’s total domestic tech investment, 2017 to 2022
One reconciled read of who is committing what, plus model annexes a trade ministry can attach, so corridors spread risk across partners instead of concentrating it.
An open data commons and a funding catalogue
Two independent 2025 mappings of the same ecosystem disagree by a factor of two on Brazil’s share. Build an open regional data commons and a normalized catalogue of public funding programs.
1,048 / 40.8% vs 952 / 72.3%Brazil’s count and share of LATAM deep tech in two independent 2025 mappings of the same ecosystem
Published definitions and a dated, contributable record set, so a disagreement about Brazil’s company count becomes information, not two unfalsifiable numbers.
One flagship, one annual KPI release
The report names seven separate regional deep tech convenings, none of them a reference point for allocators. Consolidate them into one rotating flagship carrying the region’s annual KPI release.
7 conveningsRegional deep tech events named in the report, each with its own organiser, sponsor set and no shared output
One dated annual release the market can diary, carried by a rotating flagship that co-brands the region’s existing summits instead of competing with them.
A versioned registry the community can audit
Two mappings of LATAM deep tech investors disagree by inclusion rule and neither tracks family offices or sovereign funds; build one versioned, auditable registry.
65VC funds with at least one LATAM deep tech investment, IDB mapping, 2023
A single versioned registry that records how often each investor backs LATAM deep tech, at which stages, and with what follow-on behaviour.
An MSCI-style instrument for a gap only measured in listed equities
Listed LATAM equities traded at −48.4% to the world at 30 June 2026 and deep tech probably mirrors the gap, but nothing measures it; build a repeatable, open-methodology index.
−48.4%LATAM price-to-book discount to MSCI ACWI at 30 June 2026, P/BV 1.99 against 3.86
A dated, reproducible number for the deep tech discount, so policy and capital argue about a measured gap instead of a borrowed listed-equity statistic.
Whether corporate backing lowers failure, measured rather than assumed
European startups with corporate backing go bankrupt at 1.24% against 2.58% without, a raw comparison on one secondary source; LATAM has no equivalent, so build the matched study.
1.24% vs 2.58%bankruptcy rate of CVC-backed against non-CVC European startups, a ratio of 0.48
Evidence on whether corporate backing actually lowers failure in LATAM, matched rather than raw, so founders and CVCs price the relationship honestly.
A LATAM benchmark, starting with what can actually be measured
Deep tech funds returned 17% net IRR against 10% for traditional tech across Europe and North America; LATAM has no comparable series and almost no exits, so build the benchmark on gross MOIC first.
17% vs 10%average net IRR, deep tech funds against traditional tech funds, Europe and North America, 115 funds against 1,572, vintages 2003 to 2020
A defined fund universe and a gross return series LATAM can actually report, and a net IRR benchmark the day the region has exits to compute it on.
What a dollar committed to LATAM deep tech actually returned
SOSV/IndieBio’s 72% gross return on 2015 to 2023 LATAM investments is one manager’s portfolio-level number; build the per-dollar comparison bottom-up under a single taxonomy.
72%SOSV/IndieBio gross average return on LATAM deep tech investments made 2015 to 2023, reported via the IDB
A per-dollar return for LATAM built from company records under one taxonomy, so the regional case stops resting on one manager’s gross number.
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