Santiago
Latin America's richest per-capita economy — 91% of Chile's startups, two unicorns, and the world's largest copper-lithium play feeding an energy transition.
Chile has the highest GDP per capita in Latin America — $17,181 — and Santiago hosts 91% of its startups. The city sits in a valley between the Andes and the coastal range, squeezed into a geography that traps both smog and ambition. The country's first public startup accelerator, Start-Up Chile, is now 15 years old and has helped produce two unicorns (NotCo and Betterfly, collectively valued above $2.5 billion). For a country of 20 million people, that is disproportionate output.
Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago in 1541 on a hill beside the Mapocho River, and the city has served as Chile's capital continuously since — one of the longest unbroken runs of any South American capital. The colonial grid is still visible in the centro, and the Andes provide both the city's dramatic backdrop and its economic logic: the mountains contain 24% of the world's copper and the largest known lithium reserves on earth. Chile's mining sector contributes 10.5% of GDP and over half of export revenue. An estimated $83 billion in mining investment is planned between 2025 and 2033.
The Wikipedia entry describes Santiago as Chile's cultural and financial centre. What it doesn't capture is the scale of Chile's resource paradox. The country earns its foreign exchange from copper and lithium — the raw materials of electrification — while simultaneously building Latin America's most sophisticated startup ecosystem. HIF Global raised $480 million for synthetic carbon-neutral fuel production; NotCo uses AI to reverse-engineer animal proteins from plants. These are not generic tech companies; they are direct responses to Chile's resource identity.
Santiago's roughly 7 million residents (8 million in the metro area) generate the bulk of a $347 billion national economy. The OECD projects 2.4% growth in 2025 with investment surging 6.8% — one of the sharpest investment recoveries in the region. Inflation dropped from 12% in 2023 to 4.3% by end of 2024. Chile leads Latin America in the Global Innovation Index, economic freedom, and perceived anti-corruption.
The biological parallel is a pioneer species colonising a harsh niche: Chile's narrow strip between ocean and mountain constrains its options, forcing specialisation in exactly the resources the world needs for the energy transition. Santiago is the organism's nervous system — processing information and capital while the extraction happens in the Atacama Desert, a thousand kilometres north.