Representatives from the private sector, federal government, academia, development institutions, and European partners met this Thursday (14), in São Paulo, for the meeting Industrial AI: The New Investment Frontier in Brazilian Industry, part of the series of Business Dialogues promoted within the scope of the Brazil-European Union Investment Dialogue project. Held at the headquarters of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, the event was promoted by the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), in partnership with the Delegation of the European Union to Brazil and ApexBrasil.
The agenda featured thematic tables that discussed the next steps of bilateral cooperation in strategic areas, such as digital transformation, technological infrastructure, industrial training, innovation financing, and artificial intelligence governance for the Brazilian industry. The meeting took place at a time of particular relevance for the Brazil-European Union agenda, marked by the entry into force of the Mercosur-EU Agreement on May 1st, by President Lula’s visit to the Hannover Messe, and by the expectation of the signing of the Brazil-European Union Digital Partnership.
The opening panel featured Sergio Fausto, Director-General of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, who highlighted the importance of bringing together the public sector, private sector, and civil society around long-term solutions to the challenges of technological transformation in Brazil. Next, Hussein Kalout, International Advisory Board Member of CEBRI, highlighted the theme of the frontier between artificial intelligence and industry as a fundamental matrix for the country’s development. On the European side, Johannes Klingberg, Head of the National Unit at GIZ, signaled the favorable moment of the bilateral partnership and recalled that 80% of the data currently collected by the industry is not used, a scenario that artificial intelligence is going to transform.
During the Keynote Speech, the panorama of the Brazilian artificial intelligence ecosystem was presented by Caetano Penna, Director of Strategic Projects and International Relations at the Center for Strategic Management and Studies (CGEE), linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. According to the expert:
“The bottleneck of the Brazilian industry is not the available technology. It exists. The technology is out there, it comes from Europe, the United States, Asia. It is available for licensing, for implementation, for integration. The bottleneck is what we call systemic coherence”, he stated.
For Penna, systemic coherence involves the articulation between technological infrastructure, the agents that connect research and production, the available capital, and the real production cycle. Presenting the Brazilian Artificial Intelligence Plan (PBIA), with an estimated investment of R$ 23 billion in five axes, the CGEE researcher highlighted its unprecedented nature in the context of Brazilian public policies for science and technology, and warned of the risks of a strategy focused solely on the adoption of imported technology.
The following table, moderated by Gabriella Seiler, Senior Fellow at CEBRI, brought together representatives from the private sector who presented concrete experiences of applying artificial intelligence in different productive sectors. The reports showed that connectivity is a structural condition for any industrial AI agenda, and that the expansion of 5G could add about 5% to Latin American GDP growth, provided that adequate public policies ensure the reach of the technology to small and medium-sized industries.
The cases presented revolved around some central lessons. The first is that Brazilian industries frequently already have data, but cannot give context to them, which decisively limits the value extracted from the technology. The second is that the value of AI is not in the isolated algorithm, but in its integration into the decision-making cycle and its orchestration with the company’s other operating systems. The maxim that summarized this learning was direct: artificial intelligence that does not change a decision hardly scales.
Relevant structural barriers for large-scale adoption were also highlighted. The average machinery in Brazilian industries is 14 years old, and the cost of connecting an old machine to the network is around R$ 50,000 to 60,000, a concrete obstacle, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. On the other hand, cases like the one in mining showed the potential for transformation: AI solutions applied to logistics reduced freight costs by 30% in one of the largest operations in the sector. The potential of including artificial intelligence as a criterion in the Productive Development Partnerships (PDPs) of the federal government was also presented, as a way to attract advanced models to Brazil via technology transfer linked to access to the SUS market.
On the financing side, the role of the BNDES was highlighted, having allocated around R$ 5 billion to AI projects since 2023 — being R$ 4 billion in credit and R$ 1 billion in equity participation — with special attention to the heterogeneity of the Brazilian industrial fabric, marked by companies at very different stages of digital maturity. One of the central points is that a large part of the companies do not even have structured data to work with, with information still dispersed in the routine of the production line professionals.
The second part of the meeting was dedicated to a dynamic of direct approximation among the participants, divided into three groups — demanding industries, technology providers, and financiers — for trilateral dialogues aimed at identifying concrete collaboration opportunities. The initiative is part of a systematic effort by CEBRI, the European Union, and Apex-Brasil to boost discussions of mutual interest in Brazil-European Union relations, with a focus on tangible results for the economy, innovation, and sustainable development.
