Mexico is a technological jack of all trades, master of none

As Big Tech mulls investment, Mexico dithers over its role in the future of technology.

The Big News Breakdown. Unpacking this week’s most important news.

It was an embarrassing debacle. Last week, the governor of Nuevo León announced that Nvidia was building a billion-dollar factory in his northern industrial state. The only problem was it wasn’t true. The tech giant, which had indeed met with governor Samuel García earlier on, had to clarify that no such investment was taking place.

The size of the screwup illustrated an issue not just specific to García but to much of the Mexican government at all levels: A profound misunderstanding of what Mexico needs from Big Tech and what it can actually get.

With increasing frequency, top Mexican officials have been meeting with the world’s biggest names in tech. President Claudia Sheinbaum met with Ben Horowitz, the co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, last month to discuss the future of AI in Mexico. Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard is bullish about Mexico’s role as a hub for every technological buzzword one can think of: Drones, data centres, robots…

All of this is well and good, but Mexico is currently very much in “bird in the bush” territory as it tries to figure out where it fits in the world’s tech future.