AI isn’t confined by geography; capital is. Let’s shift the map.

Before AI became everyone’s favorite buzzword, some founders were already proving what it could do in the real world.

InstaDeep built a system that could predict which new COVID variants might become dangerous. Kueski applied AI to extend credit to people with no traditional credit history, opening doors to financial access. ElevenLabs was developing technology to make all content instantly available in any voice or language

Not from Palo Alto. Not from Shanghai. This was all happening in Tunisia, Mexico, and Poland, respectively — all led by Endeavor Entrepreneurs long before the emergence of ChatGPT.

Still, US companies bagged almost 70% of the capital invested in AI. As momentum builds, can other ecosystems take center stage in the global narrative around AI?

Closing the gap between talent, capital, and businesses

Clearly, capital isn’t as abundantly available outside of the US. But on top of that, corporations have been slow to adopt AI in emerging markets.

“More risk-tolerant investment is required across the board. That said, my biggest concern is the lack of AI investment from large enterprises. The real risk isn’t just missing out on breakout startups — they will come — but rather seeing entire industries in LatAm and elsewhere become overly dependent on international platforms for AI infrastructure due to underinvestment at home.” Anderson Thees, Managing Director at Endeavor Brazil.

When large companies join the AI rush, they create demand for local solutions, fund pilots and proofs of concept, push the development of customized AI tools for their industry, and help create data flywheels.

Without that corporate demand, there are fewer incentives and resources for local AI development. That means local industries may become users — but not owners — of AI technology. 

To make matters more complicated, underinvested regions are also impacted by an intense brain drain to global markets. In fact, two of the examples we mentioned earlier, InstaDeep and ElevenLabs, moved their headquarters from Tunisia and Warsaw to London for its academic research environment and access to a deeper pool of diverse professionals in AI and tech. 

Though initiatives have been accelerating local development — such as Google’s AI Research Center in Ghana, or Argentina’s Globant, an Endeavor company, with its educational resources and CVC fund Globant Ventures — the volume isn’t enough to solve the talent shortage.

For Allen Taylor, Managing Director of Endeavor Catalyst, there’s hope that soon, this will be solved by AI itself. “I think it’s going to be increasingly easy to build a really big company with fewer resources in the next five or ten years, because AI is going to amplify the most talented humans. Just like this idea of a 10x engineer, we’ll have 10x people in all professions.”

Leveling the playing field with applications

So far, most AI investment has gone into infrastructure — things like GPUs, data centers, and large foundational models — which require tons of capital expenditure and are led predominantly by US and Chinese giants. 

But unlike cloud or mobile infrastructure, which needs to be built in each region, AI models don’t present many physical barriers. While developing foundational models does require significant resources, AI innovation can adapt and build on them at lower costs — especially if the rise of China’s DeepSeek means open source will triumph as the new normal. 

This enables markets to use their deep understanding of real problems close to home to create solutions for regional languages, customs, and challenges.

The big opportunity lies not in bringing disruption, but in bringing inclusion to an underserved population. Take Nubank or iFood, in Latin America. None of them invented the infrastructure they use, yet they’re multi-billion dollar companies with immense impact.

A positive signal is that the number of AI-native companies in Endeavor Catalyst’s portfolio, all from emerging markets, has tripled since 2017 and shows no signs of slowing down. By bridging international capital with powerhouses in emerging markets, Catalyst gives global investors access to companies they wouldn’t have access to, and vice-versa. You can take a deeper look into our latest Endeavor Catalyst annual report.

The future of AI isn’t about catching up to Silicon Valley or Beijing, but about building something entirely different. Though challenges persist, emerging markets have a historic opportunity to build with fewer resources, promoting inclusive growth, locally-driven solutions, and new economic realities. We’re confident that many more companies will appear to share the winnings in the years to come.