Puerto Rico Is the Second-Best AI Market in Latin America (and We Deserve a Power Grid to Match)

Puerto Rico’s AI adoption rate just hit 46.2%, up from 40% last year. We rank second in Latin America and the Caribbean for AI services. AWS signed a deal with the Puerto Rico government to provide free AI, cloud, and cybersecurity training to up to 50,000 people.

By every metric that matters, Puerto Rico is becoming an AI hub. Except the one where electricity comes out of the wall.

The Grid

Puerto Rico’s power infrastructure cannot support the kind of AI development the island is attracting. We can barely keep the lights on during hurricane season (and sometimes during non-hurricane season, which is arguably more embarrassing). The idea of powering a data center with a grid that runs on aging diesel generators and deferred maintenance is, to put it gently, aspirational.

I run the Puerto Rico AI Community, which has grown to over 850 members. I’m co-chairing the Caribbean AI Summit this October, the largest AI conference Puerto Rico has ever hosted. I see the momentum firsthand. The talent is here. The interest is here. The capital is arriving (thanks in part to Act 60). What’s not here is the electrical infrastructure to match.

Semiconductor R&D center proposals have been shelved because the energy costs aren’t feasible. Companies that would happily set up AI operations on the island look at the power situation and set up in Miami instead. That’s not a technology problem. That’s an infrastructure problem with a technology consequence.

What’s Working

The growth is real and worth celebrating. AI usage increasing 6 points in a single year is significant for any market, let alone an island of 3.2 million people. The AWS training program could create a generation of cloud-literate professionals here. Universities are adding AI curriculum. Startups are forming.

And Puerto Rico has structural advantages that most AI hubs don’t: US jurisdiction (important for enterprise clients), a bilingual workforce, favorable tax treatment for knowledge workers, and proximity to both the US mainland and Latin American markets. The value proposition is obvious to everyone who visits. (It’s also obvious to the people who live here, but we’re still waiting for the power grid to get the memo.)

The Caribbean AI Summit on October 9-10 is bringing together executives, investors, policymakers, and technologists to talk about applied AI in the Caribbean context. Not theoretical AI. Not “someday AI.” The kind you deploy on Monday morning for a problem you had on Friday afternoon.

What Needs to Happen

The power grid needs investment that matches the island’s ambitions. Not a marginal improvement. Not another patch on a patch. A real commitment to the kind of energy infrastructure that supports advanced computing workloads.

Solar makes geographic sense here. We get more annual sunshine than most of the continental US, which feels like an obvious clue. Battery storage technology has reached the point where grid-scale deployment is economically viable. The path is clear. The funding mechanisms exist. What’s been missing is the political will to execute at the speed the market demands.

I’m not an energy policy expert. I’m an AI company CEO who lives here and is trying to build here. But I can tell you what happens when an island has world-class AI talent, growing adoption, international investment interest, and a power grid that can’t support any of it: the talent leaves. The investment goes somewhere else. The adoption numbers plateau. And the island misses the one economic transformation that could change everything.

Puerto Rico is second in Latin America for AI readiness. Imagine where we’d rank if we could actually plug things in.