Latin American enterprises are accelerating AI investment and shifting toward core business integration, with Mexico reaching 65% adoption maturity. According to IDC, this impacts telecom, finance, and manufacturing. Regulatory gaps and data governance challenges remain critical as hybrid infrastructure and Agentic AI scales across industries.

 

Ninety seven percent of organizations in Latin America plan to increase their AI budgets over the next 12 months, reports IDC. This strategic commitment is expected to result in an average growth rate of 14% for the region. Regional enterprises are transitioning from experimental phases toward systematic adoption of the technology to drive business reinvention.

This investment surge occurs because executives now view technology as a fundamental engine for business reinvention rather than a simple tool for back-office efficiency. The CIO Playbook 2026 report, commissioned by Lenovo and made by IDC, says the race for enterprise AI has begun and will redefine the future of organizations. This transition places the CIO at the center of organizational transformation.

Traditionally, AI initiatives in the region focused on internal back-office elements such as efficiency, automation, and cost reduction. However, the report indicates that AI is now innovatively redesigning the core of the business. The technology is expanding into customer-facing functions, including marketing, sales, and product development.

This change is driven by the maturation of four primary categories of the technology. First, predictive AI analyzes large data sets to discover long-term behavior patterns for forecasting. Second, interpretive AI processes unstructured data, such as images and language, to obtain insights. Third, Generative AI utilizes Large Language Models (LLM’s) to create new content or code. Finally, Agentic AI represents the next wave, demonstrating autonomous capability to define goals, take decisions, and execute actions.

The investment is supported by clear financial expectations. Ninety-two percent of organizations in Latin America anticipate a positive return on investment from their initiatives. On average, these corporations expect to generate US$3 in value for every US$1 invested in projects.

Adoption Maturity and Financial Models

The state of adoption has evolved significantly in the last few years. In 2024, according to the IDC report, only 39% of organizations in the region had reached systematic adoption or pilot testing phases. By 2025, this figure increased to 62%. Now, only 16% of organizations remain in the early stages of consideration or planning.

The financing of these projects is also shifting. In 2025, 50% of projects will be funded through departmental budgets rather than centralized IT funds. This decentralization emphasizes the integration of the technology across all business units. Now, 45% of organizations already report that departmental budgets contribute to implementations.

Infrastructure for Scalability

To support this growth, organizations are modernizing their technical foundations. The IDC report shows that 83% of organizations will utilize deployments on-premises or at the edge as part of a hybrid environment. Only 17% of organizations prefer a public-cloud-only deployment for their primary workloads.

The primary drivers for on-premises deployments include the need to ensure data privacy, regulatory compliance, and security protocols. Corporations also seek greater control over operations and data. Furthermore, as the focus shifts from training to inference, 80% of companies will deploy distributed edge infrastructure to improve latency and application responsiveness by 2027.

Hardware priorities are also changing. For the next 12 months, the number one IT investment priority is the deployment of AI devices for local inference and productivity. IDC predicts that by 2027, 50% of professional PC purchases in the United States and the United Kingdom will be AI PCs. In Latin America, the expected adoption is 30% for small and medium enterprises and 50% for large segments.

The Rise of Agentic AI

Agentic AI is emerging as a critical priority for the next phase of the strategy. More than 50% of organizations are exploring or implementing these autonomous systems, says IDC. These agents will act as strategic partners, reducing limitations in access to specialized talent while accelerating time-to-value.

The adoption of agentic systems is expected to grow by 80% interannually in the region. Key use cases for these autonomous agents include:

Cybersecurity: Automated threat detection and response.

Customer Service: Enhancing patient or client experiences through personalization at scale.

Quality Control: Maintenance and operational oversight in industrial settings.

The Governance and Trust Gap

Despite the rapid increase in spending, a significant gap remains in governance and security. Only 20% of companies in Latin America have established solid foundations for governance and security in their initiatives. Sixty-one percent of organizations are still developing comprehensive policies.

Top trust concerns among CIOs include: deficient data security, lack of a responsible AI framework, open-source vulnerabilities, and shadow AI risks.

The level of maturity varies across markets and industries in Latin America. Brazil leads the region in systematic adoption, with 67% of organizations in advanced stages. Argentina follows with 66%, and Mexico is next with 65%.

In terms of budget growth, Brazil and Peru show the highest projected average increases at 15%. Colombia and Mexico follow with 14%, and Argentina reports a 12% projected growth.

The telecommunications and cloud service provider vertical is the industry with the highest systematic adoption rate at 76%. The banking and finance sector follows with 69%, while manufacturing reports 67%.

While the government sector lags in systematic adoption, it shows the highest growth in strategic interest for Agentic AI, with a projected increase of 1,075%, says IDC. This growth is driven by maturing regulatory frameworks and public-sector efficiency initiatives.

To achieve the expected three times return on investment, the report identifies several critical success factors. The top factor is the training and upskilling of talent to develop internal expertise in areas such as MLOps and prompt engineering, says IDC.