The southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is also wrestling with an aging population and a serious skills gap. Those challenges could limit the state’s participation in Brazil’s booming digital economy, which includes thriving fintech, AI, and startup scenes.
“We are the state that’s getting older faster,” Raquel Teixeira, Rio Grande do Sul’s education secretary, said earlier this month. “We need young people to be able to solve all the problems that we face.”
Teixeira was speaking at an event hosted by Instituto Caldeira, a tech innovation hub in Porto Alegre, the state’s capital and biggest city. I’ve written previously about Caldeira, which connects corporations, startups, universities, foundations, and state government. More than 2K people work each day in the former textile-manufacturing facility, where hundreds of students get free tech training, a stipend, and work experience.
The hub’s tech education push is about responding to hundreds of local companies that were unable to grow due to a lack of available talent, says Felipe Amaral, director of the institute’s Campus Caldeira.
“Based on this need, we created a series of programs to identify, train, and employ thousands of young people from underserved backgrounds within the new economy,” he says. “We’re not creating something new. We’re replicating what works in other places.”
Philanthropy has played a crucial role in the growth of Caldeira, which opened in 2021. Its sponsors include locally based companies and foundations, including the philanthropic arm of Gerdau, a global steel producer.
U.S.-based Big Tech companies also are backers of the innovation hub’s training programs. Caldeira’s education partners include AWS, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Salesforce, which during the event announced a $250K donation to expand the hub’s AI-related upskilling opportunities.
IBM has committed to training 2M learners globally in AI by the end of next year. That effort is part of a broader goal of training 30M people in tech skills by 2030.
The company’s collaboration with Instituto Caldeira reflects a shift toward essential AI skills in tech training, says Lydia Logan, IBM’s VP of global education and workforce development. “Every student, regardless of their path, earns an IBM SkillsBuild AI Fundamentals credential and explores key topics like generative AI, AI ethics, and prompt writing.”
While Caldeira in some ways resembles regionally focused tech training partnerships in the U.S., the hub brings together an unusual range of partners—a deep connection with local public schools, for example. The urgency of the work was palpable during the gathering, which pulled in 16K people and had a SXSW vibe.
“This global connection is so important for our state and for opening up future prospects,” said Eduardo Leite, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul and a potential presidential candidate.
The location itself was part of the spectacle. Caldeira is expanding across warehouses and buildings in a former manufacturing district, and several of the spaces are operating while still under construction—and doing it with flare. The hub is named for two preserved coal-fired boilers that the former textile plant’s founder, A.J. Renner, brought over from Scotland a century ago and used to power parts of the city beyond the complex.
Last year, Porto Alegre was hit by Brazil’s worst floods in over 80 years. The water was above head level across Caldeira and most of the city. Yet the facility was back in action and better than ever in just months, a pace that would be ludicrous to expect in the U.S.
Strong demand is driving Instituto Caldeira’s rise, says Amaral, among both the thousands of students who apply for training slots and the hundreds of companies that view the hub as a boost for their bottom line.
“We sell the dream to transform the lives of young people,” says Amaral.