Madrid's digital minister visits Silicon Valley and Miami, signs letter with Plug and Play

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Miguel López-Valverde, the Community of Madrid's regional minister for digitalisation, has toured Silicon Valley and Miami with an eye on what the region will need by 2040. The first stop produced a letter of intent with Plug and Play to connect Madrid's future AI Centre of Excellence. It commits both sides to work out priorities and possible forms of collaboration. There is not yet a centre or a finished programme, which is more or less what a letter of intent is for.

At Cloudflare, co-founder and president Michelle Zatlyn proposed a collaboration protocol covering training for public officials, support for start-ups, automated public procedures and possibly a European operations centre in Madrid. Illumio discussed tools to detect and contain cyberattacks.

In Miami the delegation visited The Hub Miami, The LAB Miami and Mana Tech, and met Miami-Dade county and a federation of binational chambers of commerce. The federation heard that Madrid has over 345,000 ICT professionals and 2,600 tech firms. Commvault chief executive Sanjay Mirchandani discussed how to control AI agents' access to data. DataDirect Networks founder Paul Bloch discussed the region's Sovereign AI Cloud, launched in August. The Miami Dolphins were shown the Madrid Innovation District. "Madrid is being a bridge for all of South America too," López-Valverde said.