CIUDAD JUAREZ, Chihuahua, Mexico – September 19, 2026 – The AI Festival is scheduled to make its second stop in Mexico on September 24, 2026, at the Cibeles Events Center in Ciudad Juarez. This event, confirmed by the organizing body Connecta B2B, follows its Mexican debut in Monterrey on August 25 and concludes a tour that previously covered eight countries in Central America and the Caribbean as part of its 2026 circuit.
Focus on Practical AI Applications for Businesses
Unlike other technology events that often feature motivational keynotes, the AI Festival in Ciudad Juarez is specifically designed to showcase practical applications of artificial intelligence within organizations. The agenda includes seven keynote speeches, panels, practical workshops, and project demonstrations. The event is tailored for non-technical professionals, including business owners, executives, and teams seeking to identify areas where AI can generate tangible value.
Ciudad Juarez: A Strategic Choice for Industrial AI
The selection of Ciudad Juarez as a host city is deliberate. As the capital of Chihuahua and a prominent industrial hub in northern Mexico, the city boasts a robust manufacturing ecosystem, particularly its maquiladoras, which have historically driven regional employment and exports. Hosting an AI event here aims to engage a specific audience: operations managers, supply chain specialists, quality control professionals, and continuous improvement teams who manage large-scale physical processes. For these professionals, AI offers significant potential to accelerate repetitive tasks, enable predictive maintenance, and enhance visual quality control.
According to data published by El Español Invertia, based on KPMG reports, three out of four Mexican companies are already actively using artificial intelligence. Furthermore, 38% of the country’s business fabric-over 2 million companies-now employs AI, up from 29% a year prior, as reported by AWS in the same analysis. This rapid adoption rate positions Mexico as one of the fastest-growing markets in Latin America for AI, justifying the AI Festival’s decision to hold its second Mexican event in Ciudad Juarez.
Seven Speakers, Seven Angles of Enterprise AI
The program for Ciudad Juarez is unified by a common goal: to shift the conversation from theoretical technology discussions to identifying concrete value generation within organizations. The seven confirmed speakers will cover complementary aspects of AI in business:
- David Fernández (CEO and Founder of TDM Internacional) will open with “Future Lab: Anticipatory Design for Realities Yet to Come,” exploring how AI models can identify early signals and design strategic concepts before problems arise.
- Eduardo Santin (Director of Viati Consulting) will delve into corporate AI with “Strategic AI Implementation in Business,” focusing on architecture and processes beyond personal generative AI assistants.
- Magaly Masís, an independent specialist in IT law and cybersecurity, will present “If You Can No Longer Believe What You See, What Will You Believe?” a discussion on synthetic content and verifying authenticity in the age of AI.
- Joel Díaz (President and Co-founder of Popcorn Group) will conclude the data block with “From Reports to Decisions,” demonstrating how to convert vast amounts of information into validated hypotheses and strategic actions.
- Alejandro Medina (Founder of MedInA) will address a key topic of the year: “The Era of Enterprise Agentic AI,” detailing the evolution of AI from a consultation tool to agents that execute processes with limited human intervention and robust governance.
- Johnny Bermúdez (Founder of XY Estudios) will bring AI to marketing with “Videos and Images with AI to Attract Customers,” outlining a workflow for producing publish-ready audiovisual and graphic content.
- Marcelo Burman (General Manager of Connecta B2B) will close with “If Your Sales Team Isn’t Using AI, You’re Already Losing Sales,” applying AI to the sales funnel from prospecting to post-sales.
The Mexican Paradox: High Adoption, Low Governance
The AI Festival’s agenda highlights a tension identified in various analyses for Mexico in 2026. Renaiss AI, a Spanish startup recently launched in the country with its RenLayer platform, noted in statements to El Español Invertia that the challenge for Mexican companies is no longer merely adopting AI, but governing it. Many companies are implementing AI agents and models without proper observability layers, leading to risks of security breaches, sensitive information leaks, and uncontrolled spending. Sectors such as fintech, insurance, manufacturing, and financial services are particularly vulnerable, as AI agents are already involved in customer service, risk analysis, and critical processing.
This diagnosis explains why the AI Festival dedicates specific sessions to cybersecurity, synthetic content, and agentic AI with governance, moving beyond superficial discussions of “how to use ChatGPT.”
What This Means for Your Startup
- Attend with a specific case in mind: The agenda is designed for business profiles. Come prepared with a costly, slow, or repetitive process you wish to improve, and utilize the workshops and sponsor spaces to map out tools before committing budget. A single session with seven speakers can provide a matrix of potential vendors for a pilot project.
- Inquire about the governance layer from the first pitch: If an AI tool does not explain where your data runs, who audits the models, and how shadow IT use within the team is blocked, it is not suitable for production. In Mexico, where 66% of the population regularly uses AI according to Google data cited by Renaiss, most employees are already using ChatGPT or similar tools independently. Ignoring this presents a legal and security risk that can escalate rapidly.
- Measure productivity, not enthusiasm: Joel Díaz’s talk addresses the classic problem of abundant data yielding zero decisions. Before purchasing an analytics platform or an agent, define a single metric that will change within 90 days-such as sales cycle time, BackOffice hours saved, or visual QC defect rate-and evaluate the vendor against that number, not against a demo.
The AI Festival in Ciudad Juarez promises to be a pivotal event for businesses looking to harness the power of artificial intelligence effectively and responsibly.
Source: https://ecosistemastartup.com/festival-ia-llega-a-ciudad-juarez-con-7-speakers-confirmados/
