The Dominican Republic in the AI Economy starts with venture capital

By Jonathan Joel Mentor | @jonathanjmentor

The Dominican Republic wants artificial intelligence, nearshoring and technology-intensive industries as does the rest of Latin America. But it still lacks a coherent market for financing the companies expected to compete in them.

The Dominican Republic is becoming increasingly specific about the industries it wants.

We want artificial intelligence, software, financial technology, data centers, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and nearshoring. The country has launched a national artificial-intelligence strategy, entered a sovereign-AI collaboration with NVIDIA and begun positioning itself as a regional technology hub. ProDominicana now actively presents technology, artificial intelligence, nearshoring and semiconductor manufacturing as investment opportunities.

This is more than branding. It is an attempt to move the Dominican economy toward industries with greater productivity, intellectual property and export value. But there is a question hiding beneath the announcements:

Who will finance the Dominican companies expected to compete in those industries?

Not train them. Not invite them to a conference. Not give them a small-business loan after they already have revenue and collateral. Who will finance the uncertainty?

Because if the answer is always a foreign fund, a foreign corporation or an accelerator in another jurisdiction, the Dominican Republic may successfully attract the industries of the future while owning very little of the value they create. We could build the runway and still watch the plane take off from somewhere else.

Credit cannot finance every kind of company

The Dominican financial system knows how to discuss credit.

It understands interest rates, collateral, payment history, guarantees and predictable cash flows. Those tools are essential for established companies and many small and medium-sized enterprises. They are not designed for every stage of innovation.

A company developing artificial intelligence, proprietary software, advanced materials or a new financial technology may spend years building intellectual property before it becomes profitable. Its most valuable assets may be its code, data, research, team and future market position—not a building that can secure a loan.

Venture capital finances that uncertainty in exchange for ownership. That distinction is not cosmetic. Debt asks whether the company can repay. Venture capital asks whether the company can grow enough to justify the risk.

When both are placed under the broad category of “financing for entrepreneurs,” the market becomes confused. Founders pursue loans they are structurally unprepared to repay. Banks are asked to assume risks they were not designed to price. Investors struggle to identify the vehicles, protections and rules through which capital can be deployed.

The result is not simply less money for startups. It is less competition in the industries the country says it wants to build.

Competition begins before a company becomes dominant

Competition policy usually becomes visible when companies are already large.

A merger is proposed. A platform controls access to a market. Prices rise. A regulator investigates whether an incumbent is abusing its position.

But in technology-intensive sectors, the competitive outcome may have been shaped years earlier.

One company obtained enough capital to hire talent, acquire customers and survive several years without profit. Its potential challenger did not. The challenger disappeared before any competition authority had a reason to learn its name.

This matters in a region where market concentration, regulatory barriers and weak enforcement already restrict entry, innovation and opportunity, according to recent Inter-American Development Bank research.

Competition authorities across Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly confronting artificial intelligence, algorithms, digital platforms and economic concentration. These markets create unfamiliar challenges: network effects, control of data, enormous scale advantages and platforms that can become essential infrastructure for other businesses.

A modern competition agenda must therefore ask more than whether established companies are behaving fairly. It must also examine whether credible new competitors can enter, finance growth and remain independent long enough to challenge them.

Competition authorities should not become venture-capital funds. But venture-capital formation is increasingly relevant to the question they exist to protect: whether markets remain genuinely contestable.

The country has policies for entrepreneurs, but not yet a venture market

Public evidence shows activity, but not yet a measurable market. StartupBlink tracked 52 Dominican startups in July 2026. Santo Domingo-founded AlterEstate has attracted backing from 500 Global, while Inaru, built around Dominican cacao, reports roughly US$12 million raised.

Those examples do not answer the national question: how many Dominican companies have raised risk capital, how much has been deployed, at what stages, or through which vehicles?

The country has entrepreneurship, foreign-investment and securities-market frameworks, investment funds, trusts and sophisticated financial institutions. What it does not yet have is a coherent, measurable venture-capital architecture.

What remains unclear to many investors is the category connecting them.

• Who is responsible for national venture-capital formation?
• Which local institutions can allocate capital to the asset class?
• How should early-stage investment funds, convertible instruments and cross-border portfolios be treated?
• What tax consequences apply when a company is sold and the capital is reinvested?
• Can foreign fund managers enter efficiently?
• How can public or multilateral capital reduce early losses without replacing private investment?

The absence of clear answers does not necessarily mean venture investment is prohibited. It means the market is difficult to read. And foreign capital does not require the elimination of risk. It requires risk to be legible.

Other Caribbean markets are confronting the same gap

The Dominican Republic is not alone.

A 2025 IDB study of five Caribbean countries described major parts of the regional venture-capital ecosystem as nascent or emerging. It identified limited investment, financing gaps, weak exit mechanisms and the need for regulatory progress, stronger investment networks and financial de-risking.

The timing is important because global capital is becoming more selective.

LAVCA reports that Latin American venture investment is increasingly concentrated into fewer transactions and larger checks. Between 2023 and 2025, follow-on rounds represented half of early-stage checks, suggesting that investors are devoting more capital to companies they already know rather than constantly creating new positions.

At the same time, investment in the digital economy is growing but remains geographically concentrated. UN Trade and Development reported that digital foreign investment grew by 14%, while only ten countries captured 80% of new digital projects. Declaring an ambition to become a technology hub is therefore not enough.

Countries are competing to provide the infrastructure, talent, regulation and capital that allow technology companies to form and scale locally.

The missing national map

Before designing incentives or changing laws, the Dominican Republic needs to establish what market actually exists.

That means examining venture capital as infrastructure connecting strategic industries, investors, regulation, customers and exits.

A Venture-Market Competitiveness Map

No single institution owns every layer.

For ProCompetencia, the questions touch market entry, concentration and contestability. Export and investment agencies see foreign capital and internationalization. Industrial-development institutions see modernization and productivity. Financial regulators see vehicles and investor protection. Multilateral institutions see productivity, private-sector development and financial inclusion. Banks, fund managers and corporations see capital allocation and growth opportunities.

The opportunity is to give those institutions a common evidence base connecting their decisions, budgets and interventions.

The missing national evidence base

Before deciding whether it needs tax incentives, new investment vehicles, regulatory amendments or public-private funds, the Dominican Republic first needs answers to several basic questions.

• How much venture capital is currently being deployed?
• Into which sectors?
• At what stages?
• From which countries?
• Through which structures?
• Where do promising companies fail to obtain their next round?
• Why do founders incorporate abroad?
• Which regulatory frictions discourage local and foreign investors?
• How does the financing gap affect competition in artificial intelligence, financial technology, logistics, advanced manufacturing, tourism technology and other strategic industries?

Answering them requires transaction data, legal analysis, investor interviews, regional benchmarking and a credible institutional process. A national State of Venture Capital and Innovation baseline could give competition, investment and development institutions a shared basis for future decisions and interventions.

Competition for the future

The Dominican Republic’s ambition is correct.

It should pursue artificial intelligence, nearshoring, semiconductors, advanced services and technology-intensive exports. It should modernize competition law and attract more foreign investment.

But new industries do not emerge from ambition alone. They emerge when talent, regulation, customers and capital can operate as a system.

Without that system, Dominican founders will continue building companies here and financing them elsewhere. Foreign technology will enter more easily than Dominican technology can scale. The country will consume innovation while other jurisdictions accumulate the intellectual property, equity and exit value.

Competition in the next Dominican economy will not begin when the first dominant artificial-intelligence company appears before a regulator. It begins now—with the market architecture that determines whether a Dominican challenger can be financed at all.

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Jonathan Joel Mentor is the CEO of Successment and architect of the Digital Nomad Summit™, scaling startups and challenging institutions to evolve. UN World Summit Award Nominee  & ADOEXPO National Excellence in Exportation Award Winner  www.jonathanjmentor.co | digitalnomadsummit.co