Latin America in focus: where are the large manufacturers moving and what professions would benefit?

It is no secret that China, the United States, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are some of the countries where device production is concentrated; However, in the last week the multinational Foxconn announced a new production center in Mexico.

This is a unique change. The Taiwanese company has as clients Apple, Nvidia, Sony, Amazon, HP, among other brands, and Mexico will receive the world’s largest plant for the manufacture of GB200 “superchips” for AI.

According to the AFP news agency, the megafactory will be built in the state of Jalisco. Governor Enrique Alfaro points out that the Mexican state is on its way to being “the main innovation hub in Latin America”.

And it’s not just Foxconn. A Forbes report indicates that four more multinational companies will invest in the construction of semiconductor, or chip, factories in Guadalajara. This region has been called the Silicon Valley of Mexico and, with the arrival of Foxconn and other companies, an investment of 900 million dollars is expected. In addition, it is estimated that they will generate more than 11 thousand direct jobs.

Why Mexico?

For Manuel Santillán, professor and researcher at the University of Lima, the decision to move the production centers may be due to a strategic and commercial decision.

“It may have to do with what happened with the pandemic: that the supply chain was destabilized and that from one day to the next the inputs for the production of electronic devices of all kinds, well, were harmed by the transportation of those inputs and materials from Asia to the American continent, North America in particular”commented in dialogue with The Commerce.

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However, it may also have geopolitical reasons, “a trade war between the United States and China”. Santillán explains that this trade battle is due to tariff issues, so it is more practical to make the transfer to countries close to the US market.

More investment in Latin America

Mexico It is not the only country that has attracted attention. Much further south of the American continent, Uruguay has also become an option, in this case for Google, which plans to invest 850 million dollars in the construction of its second data center (Data Center) in the region.

It is an establishment in which computer equipment and hardware that support internet services operate. In this case, the installation will support the Google search engine, YouTube, Maps and Workspace. This Data Center will be located in the Science Park, about 30 km from the Center of Montevideo.

But it is not Google’s only investment. The technology giant has a data center in Quilicura, Chile, which adds to the 28 it has worldwide.

Amazon is also another of the technology giants that moves its investment to South America. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will invest 1.8 billion dollars in Brazil in the next decade, according to the media El Economista. The investment will be aimed at expanding, building and maintaining its central data infrastructure. And not only that, AWS also announced at the beginning of this year the investment of 5 billion dollars in Mexico to have an infrastructure center to promote cloud computing services.

Another company that has announced investment in infrastructure for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) projects is Microsoft. According to the media Infobae, it is an investment of 2,420 million euros for a period of three years, in Brazil. The same will be done in Mexico, with an investment of 1.3 billion dollars.

And technology has become an object of interest for many countries. One of the cases has been carried out by the Argentine president Javier Milei, who in recent months has met with technological leaders such as Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, among others, to attract investment in his country.

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Demand for trained personnel

But, every investment requires people working. In the case of Uruguay, Santillán points out that “What benefits them is more their human capital that can respond to these technological demands with people capable of resolving those demands”.

This is an important factor. Companies that invest expect to have trained personnel, where universities, institutes and the government intervene.

“Before, it was very important to train young people in programming and now we see that programming can now be assumed by artificial intelligence quite accurately. If we see the intention of the companies that want to invest in Latin America, there we can find indications of where we could start training our young people. And if we realize, well, they are factories that assemble or produce automobiles, which can produce high-tech chips in a very short time that respond to the demand for artificial intelligence, or data centers.”he indicated.

With the emergence of AI there are new professions that become more necessary. For Santillán, specialists in machine learning will be required, who create and train AI models, data engineers who build systems to process large amounts of information, data scientists, and specialists in ethics and regulation to guarantee the responsible use of artificial intelligence.