ILIA 2026 AI index: Chile leads with 71.4 points across 20 countries
By Alexander SchekGo-to-market and sales leadership in Latin America
1 min readIn CEPAL and CENIA's ILIA 2026, Chile leads with 71.4 points and 27.6% of large firms in the region use AI, against 66% in five comparison countries. The region has 8.5 GPUs per million inhabitants, and Brazil holds 87.7% of them.
The fourth edition of the Latin American AI Index (ILIA), prepared by CEPAL and Chile's national AI center Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial, was presented in Santiago on October 20. It covers 20 countries. Chile leads with 71.4 points, followed by Brazil with 68.4 and Uruguay with 67.0, Laura Suárez reported in Mobile Time.
By company size, 27.6% of large firms in the region use AI, against 12.8% of medium firms and 6.8% of small firms. The five comparison countries in the index (Germany, Spain, Estonia, Portugal and Singapore) show 66%, 41% and 24% for the same three groups.
Share of firms using AI, by company size
On computing, those five countries average about 245 GPUs per million inhabitants and Latin America 8.5. Brazil holds 87.7% of the region's identified GPUs. Chile, first in the ranking, holds 2.1%. Only Brazil and Colombia have a budget assigned to their national AI strategies.
The coverage I read does not say how "use of AI" was defined. A company using an AI feature built into software it already pays for may or may not count as a user.
Sources: Mobile Time Latinoamérica, ILIA 2026 coverage by Laura Suárez Bernal; La Tercera, Chile leads the Latin American AI Index for the fourth time; TeleSemana, ILIA 2026 presented at CEPAL
Publication: Originally published on my professional LinkedIn on October 27, 2026.