Second Annual Survey · 2025
From experimentation to integration — tracking how Puerto Rico's organizationsare embedding AI into their operations, strategy, and culture.
For the second consecutive year, V2A Consulting surveyed Puerto Rico's business leaders across 14 industries to measure the depth, breadth, and trajectory of AI adoption. The market has moved decisively past whether to adopt AI — organizations are now grappling with how deeply to integrate it.
More organizations are adopting AI, but the real story is depth, not breadth. Those who experimented in 2024 are now embedding AI into core workflows, decision-making, and customer-facing operations. The 2pp headline increase understates a much larger shift happening beneath the surface.
94% of organizations are expressing some willingness to invest. Of this group, 68% indicate readiness for more substantial investment — whether through continued investment, custom tool development, or adaptation of existing solutions — while 26% preferred a minimal approach such as basic subscriptions to publicly available tools. Only 6% were unwilling to invest altogether, suggesting broad receptivity to AI adoption across varying levels of organizational commitment.
Return on investment is becoming the defining question. Organizations that have already invested are doubling down, signaling that early adopters are seeing measurable results worth replicating. For those still at the minimal-investment stage, the pressure to scale will intensify as competitors deepen their AI capabilities.
Across eight business functions, most organizations are either actively considering or already developing AI applications. Sorted from highest to lowest combined positive intent — Marketing and Sales lead, with Risk and HR showing the most resistance.
Marketing, Sales, Service Operations, and Strategy are quickly moving towards full AI integration — each showing 79–85% combined positive intent. These revenue-generating and client-facing functions are leading Puerto Rico's enterprise AI transformation. HR and Risk show the most measured pace, reflecting the higher compliance and change-management thresholds typical of those functions.
AI adoption is broadly distributed across Puerto Rico's economy, but depth of integration varies significantly by sector. Several industries have reached near-universal adoption, while others are still in early stages of deployment.
AI adoption in Puerto Rico is strongest in knowledge-intensive and service-oriented industries, with Tech & Telecom, Education, Manufacturing, and Food & Beverages all reaching 100% adoption. Professional Services and Healthcare & Pharma follow closely at 91%, while Advertising & Marketing sits at 89%. The drop-off becomes more notable in some traditionally regulated or resource-constrained sectors — Finance & Financial Services and Public Sector both stand at 75%, Insurance at 70%, and Nonprofit at just 50%, likely reflecting tighter budgets and regulatory caution.
While general AI tool adoption is broad, dedicated AI agents — purpose-built systems that act autonomously on behalf of organizations — remain the domain of early movers. Two distinct pictures emerge: who has agents, and among those who do, which types they've deployed.
Do organizations use dedicated AI agents?
Among those with agents — which types are deployed?
Only 37% of organizations have deployed dedicated AI agents, but those that have are moving quickly into customer-facing and operational automation. Creative & Generative agents dominate because they offer the lowest barrier to entry. The real competitive signal is in Customer Interaction and Workflow agents, where organizations are beginning to automate processes that directly touch revenue and efficiency.
The barriers to deeper AI adoption are consistent and structural — pointing to a talent and readiness gap rather than a lack of interest or willingness to invest.
The top three barriers — expertise gaps, data security, and limited understanding — are all solvable through targeted investment in human capital and governance. These are not technological barriers; they are organizational readiness gaps that strategic consulting and training can directly address.
Puerto Rico's AI landscape is entering a new phase. Not a sudden transformation, but a clear and building momentum toward deeper, more strategic integration. There is significant work ahead, but the direction is right. Organizations that deepen their commitment now will be disproportionately positioned to lead.
"The future of AI in Puerto Rico is no longer about trying. It is about delivering impact."
Puerto Rico has crossed an important threshold. AI adoption is no longer the central question. The question now is how deep, how strategic, and how sustainable each organization's commitment will be. Those that move beyond surface-level usage and embed AI into their core operations, talent model, and decision-making architecture will be the ones that lead the next decade. The 86% adoption rate reflects willingness. What comes next requires discipline: investing in the right talent, preparing data infrastructure for AI readiness, designing use cases with measurable business outcomes, and managing organizational change with intention and leadership buy-in. Puerto Rico is moving in the right direction, and with the right strategic focus, the potential for meaningful, lasting, and competitive impact across every sector is significant.