Snapshot: Microsoft’s Uruguayan push

Microsoft is doubling down on making Uruguay a key center for the development of emerging technologies in Latin America.

The US tech giant, which first set foot in the South American nation in 1996, picked the country to receive its first AI and IoT development center in Latin America, an announcement made at the US Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles by Uruguayan officials and Microsoft's Latin America president, Rodrigo Kede, in the context of the Summit of the Americas.

The center will be Microsoft’s third outside the US, following similar ones set up in Germany and China. However, no details of the investments were given or a launch date for the center.

Securing this announcement represents a victory for Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, who has been vocal about plans to make Uruguay an “innovation hotspot” for the rest of Latin America.

Alongside Costa Rica and Mexico (particularly after the T-MEC deal), Uruguay has long been a nearshoring market in the region, where multinationals choose to hire or allocate staff to provide customer services and support to clients based in other markets.

Uruguay is also known for having a relatively better-trained workforce than its peers in Latin America.

“I'm convinced that we will see an explosion of digital talent in Uruguay in the coming years,” Uruguayan industry, energy and mining minister Omar Paganini was quoted as saying by local outlet Montevideo Portal.

In 2021, Paganini and local chamber CUTI announced Test Uruguay, a new policy aimed specifically at attracting tech-related investments and fostering talent development in the country.

Test Uruguay was unveiled together with Open Digital Lab, a prototype testing initiative promoted by the same ministry, state-run telco Antel, the technological laboratory of Uruguay (LATU), the national agency for research and innovation (ANII) and CUTI.

Uruguay wants Open Digital Lab to be a place where companies come to test and validate applications mainly for IoT and build IoT prototypes that can later reach the market – which is largely what Microsoft envisions with its AI and IoT lab proposition.

This is also not the first partnership inked by the current Uruguayan administration with Microsoft.

In 2020, Lacalle Pou announced a program led by national employment and professional training institute Inefop and Microsoft Uruguay to provide training in digital skills for people having difficulties finding employment.

The initiative would benefit roughly 10,000 citizens deemed to be unemployed, underemployed or working in the informal market.

COURTING BIG TECHS

During the Summit of the Americas, Lacalle Pou also met with the head of global affairs for Meta, Facebook's parent, Nick Clegg, and Sundai Pichar, CEO of Google and its parent Alphabet. 

They discussed potential investments – either in infrastructure or talent – by these companies in the country.

Google is one of the partners in the submarine cables Tannat and Monet. In the case of the former with Uruguay’s Antel and Telxius, the infrastructure subsidiary of Telefónica, and in the latter with Antel, Brazilian operator Algar Telecom and Angolan firm Angola Cables. 

The combined Tannat/Monet system provides a route from Maldonado in Uruguay to Florida in the US.

Google is now working on Firmina, a proprietary submarine cable in Latin America – for its exclusive use – connecting the US east coast to Las Toninas in Argentina, with landing points in Praia Grande in Brazil and Punta del Este in Uruguay.

Firmina is due to go live in 2023. 

In May last year, it was reported that Google had bought a 30ha property for a datacenter project at Uruguay’s Pando science and technology park in capital Montevideo.

Uruguay’s Paganini confirmed at the time that the government had been engaged in talks with Google over that.

Officially, Google does not comment on such developments.

Last week, Google’s Pichar announced US$1.2bn in investments in Latin America over the next five years, but it did not mention a Uruguayan datacenter.

 Picture source: Uruguay's presidency