AI should be treated as a strategic priority, experts say
Although the United States and China are leading the global artificial intelligence race, Brazil needs to treat the technology as a strategic priority and can attract more investment not only in AI itself but also in related industries through sound public policy and fiscal responsibility. That was one of the conclusions of the “The new industry: AI, geopolitics, and competitiveness in the age of transformation” panel at the Fórum Agenda Global 2026, an initiative of Valor and Amcham Brasil (American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil) held Monday (21) in New York.
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“When Brazil understands that something is necessary, it manages to bring efforts together around that issue, and artificial intelligence is a consensus among all of us—it is a strategic issue for the country. In addition to the United States and China, there are other potential Asian partners, such as Japan and South Korea. Sound public policy, with fiscal responsibility, will be the path for us to attract investment in this area,” said Larissa Wachholz, a partner at Vallya and a senior fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (Cebri).
According to Wachholz, Brazil has important competitive advantages and, at a time of global geopolitical instability, its ability to engage in dialogue and its stability have become economic assets.
“The biggest effort Brazil needs to make right now is precisely to align public policies with its ability to train skilled professionals, including leveraging an existing industrial base that needs to be encouraged to use artificial intelligence to pursue greater competitiveness.”
In Wachholz’s view, another relevant discussion concerns how major Brazilian companies will prepare to develop their own AI language models. “Isn’t there an excessive concentration of this technology in a few companies? [In this environment], it also seems to make more sense for Brazil to favor an open-source ecosystem model, because our companies will benefit from it.”
The panelists said it is necessary to assess AI’s applicability to practical use cases and create an environment that encourages companies to innovate and adopt the technology, while also addressing regulation. In certain markets, such as cigarettes, AI could help combat the illicit market, said Miguel Matos, president of Philip Morris in Brazil.
For Matos, one of the major challenges posed by the new technology is ensuring that it delivers practical gains for industry. At the company he heads, one application addresses two problems facing the sector: the illicit cigarette market, which accounts for about one-third of cigarettes consumed in Brazil, and underage access to tobacco. In Europe, Philip Morris is testing a tool that identifies whether a person buying cigarettes from vending machines is underage, he said.
“Another example is the fight against the illicit market, using predictive analysis in the main distribution chains for these products. This is a major problem in Brazil, and it also affects the country’s competitiveness. If we all work together to try to improve the situation, it is possible to mitigate [the problem].”
During the panel, Rio de Janeiro’s secretary of finance and planning, Andrea Riechert Senko, said the public sector has been looking at new technologies to improve services and interactions with citizens, as is the case with Rio’s city government.
Senko also noted that the market is evolving rapidly, but that public-sector finances and analysis remain relatively conservative. “And that’s a good thing. The city of Rio de Janeiro has undergone a transformation in recent years. We have restored our investment capacity and regained the market’s confidence, because the private sector needs to trust the public sector in order to invest,” she said.
“In the same way that the country seeks to send these signals, cities that want to attract investment also need to do so. In that sense, I think talking a little about where companies will operate and invest also means bringing that competitiveness into the country itself,” she added.
In Wachholz’s view, if Brazil wants to add value to its vast natural-resource reserves rather than limit itself to increasing commodity exports, it should increase investment in education, particularly in mathematics, engineering and science.
“It will be essential to encourage Brazilian students to focus on these areas so that we can develop technical fields and a competitive industry for the future. There needs to be public policy for large-scale development, and there also needs to be encouragement within families. I spend a lot of time dealing with Asia, with China, Japan, and South Korea. I see how central education is to families’ lives, and education in fields that will have an impact on Brazilian industry will be essential,” she said.
