Artificial intelligence in Costa Rica

Artificial intelligence did not arrive in Costa Rica as a trend. It arrived as a test.

A small country does not compete on size. It competes on judgment. And faced with a technology that moves faster than most people can understand, the question for Costa Rica is not whether it will have artificial intelligence. It already does. The question is who is thinking about it seriously, who is building it with their own hands, and who is caring for it responsibly.

This section answers that question. Not with hype or inflated lists, but with real people, verifiable achievements, and sources. Because the best way to understand a country’s AI is not to look at its announcements, but to look at its people.

A country that chose not to stand by

Costa Rica did something uncommon in the region: instead of waiting for artificial intelligence to roll over it, it sat down to put it in order. On October 24, 2024, the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology, and Telecommunications (MICITT) presented the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA) 2024-2027. With that step, Costa Rica became the first country in Central America with a public policy dedicated to guiding the use, adoption, and development of AI.

It was not an isolated gesture. The strategy was built in alignment with UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which the country committed to through a letter signed in 2023, and with the OECD principles. The underlying idea is consistent with the national story: technology is not adopted to show off, but to serve, and it comes with limits before those limits become urgent.

To explore it in detail, read the summary of the ENIA and its seven pillars.

But a strategy builds nothing on its own. Behind every policy there are people. And in Costa Rica those people fall into three fronts worth looking at separately.

The three pillars of Costa Rican AI

A country’s artificial intelligence rests on three distinct forces. None is enough alone. Academia produces the knowledge. Industry turns it into product. Public policy sets the rules of the game. When the three talk to each other, a small country can play in a big league.

Academia: where judgment is formed

Serious AI research in Costa Rica is concentrated in three institutions, and it has names.

• Oldemar Rodríguez — pioneer of data mining and founder of PROMiDAT.
• Francisco Siles Canales — founded the PRIS-Lab at the University of Costa Rica.
• Saúl Calderón Ramírez — leads the PARMA group at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology.
• Erick Mata-Montero — connects AI with Costa Rican biodiversity.
• Edgar Casasola Murillo — researches natural language processing in Spanish.
• Esteban Meneses — directs national supercomputing at CeNAT.

Industry: where AI becomes product

The Costa Rican AI company is no longer a promise. It has award-winning founders, products on the market, and at least one international acquisition.

• Alejandro Zamora — co-founder of Neural Coders, recognized by MIT.
• Pedro Gutiérrez — CEO of Avify, also on the MIT list.
• Rodolfo Zamora — founded Hikru, acquired by a U.S. company.
• Carlos Araya — CEO of Singularities and a pioneer of symbolic AI in the country.

Policy and society: where the course is protected

Technology without governance multiplies disorder. These figures work to give the country’s AI rules, ethics, and purpose.

• Paula Bogantes Zamora — MICITT minister who presented the ENIA.
• Vanessa de Paul Castro Mora — legislator behind the first AI bill.
• Jensy Campos Céspedes — researcher on the ethics of AI in education.

How to read this section

Each profile answers the same things: who the person is, what they do in artificial intelligence, and why it matters. The facts are verified against sources and written to age well: we talk about achievements, not figures that expire.

This is not a ranking. It is a map. A country is better understood when you know the people building it.

Sources

• National AI Strategy: MICITT.
• AI ethics: UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.