IEEE Region 9 has announced the winners of its Entrepreneurship Ambassadors Program 2025. Three of the four categories went to Brazil — and all three came out of the same event, organised in Rio de Janeiro by Hal-AI's founder and CEO.
On December 10, 2025, IEEE Region 9 — the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers region covering all of Latin America and the Caribbean — published the results of the Entrepreneurship Ambassadors Program 2025, the programme that brings together, over the course of the year, the technology entrepreneurship events run by IEEE volunteers across the region.
The IEEE AI Pioneer Summit, held in September at CEFET/RJ, was named Best Event 2025 among the 144 events the programme gathered across the region. Its organiser, engineer Marcos Moreira Alves, founder and CEO of Hal-AI and IEEE Entrepreneurship R9 Ambassador, took first place among the best ambassadors. And Sokrates.AI, the startup that won the Summit's own pitch competition, was named Best Startup of the programme.
From Region 9 to the world: an event born in Rio de Janeiro took the best event, the best ambassador and the best startup of the year in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The full results
The official announcement published by IEEE Region 9 listed the winners in four categories:
- Best Event — IEEE AI Pioneer Summit (Brazil), organised by Marcos Moreira Alves;
- Best Ambassadors — 1st Marcos Alves (Brazil), for the IEEE AI Pioneer Summit; 2nd Sheila Sierralta Pinedo (Peru), for IEEE Entrepreneurship R9 — Trujillo La Libertad 2025; 3rd Rodolfo A. Carrillo-Betancourt (Mexico), for Photon Innovation Mexico;
- Best Startups — 1st Sokrates.AI (Brazil); 2nd IFlow Prepay (Panama); 3rd SumaqRefuel (Peru);
- Best Mentor — Suraj Shinde Sarkar (Mexico).
The awards are not merely symbolic. Under the rules published by IEEE Region 9, the best event receives up to US$500 for the organising unit, the best ambassador is granted a travel grant of up to US$2,000 to attend an international IEEE event, the best startups receive up to US$2,000 to attend global entrepreneurship events, and the best mentor is recognised with an IEEE plaque and certificate.
What the AI Pioneer Summit was
The IEEE AI Pioneer Summit 2025 took place on September 24 and 25, 2025, at CEFET/RJ — Maracanã campus, in Rio de Janeiro, as an official chapter of IEEE Entrepreneurship R9. It ran for two days of talks, panels, mentoring sessions and a pitch competition for early-stage artificial intelligence startups.
The programme featured speakers such as Ronan Damasco, Microsoft's National Technology Officer, on "How AI is reprogramming the world"; Cezar Taurion, on "AI: myths and truths"; and Professor Carlos Eduardo Pantoja, of CEFET/RJ, on responsible autonomous artificial intelligence systems. The panel "AI — from research to market" put CEFET/RJ faculty and IEEE entrepreneurs around the same table.
The event was organised by IEEE Entrepreneurship R9, the IEEE Rio de Janeiro Section and the IEEE CEFET/RJ Student Branch, with support from the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE PES, IEEE IES, IEEE Young Professionals, the IEEE Brazil Council, CEFET/RJ and ACT360. Hal-AI was one of the sponsors.
The startup: Sokrates.AI
The Summit's pitch competition ended with Sokrates.AI in first place, Stepps second and Umami third. The win earned Sokrates.AI a place in the Latin American regional stage of IEEE Entrepreneurship, held online on October 25 — and it was from there that it went on to take the programme's best startup award.
Sokrates.AI is a Socratic knowledge platform developed at the LINE laboratory of PESC/COPPE/UFRJ, coordinated by Professor Geraldo Xexéo in partnership with RNP's InoveLab. Instead of handing out ready-made answers, it guides students through questions, counterexamples and structured mentoring to encourage active learning, intellectual autonomy and critical thinking. In announcing the award, the international jury noted that the proposal showed "exceptional innovation, clarity and a high-impact proposal that stood out among all participants".
What the award means for Hal-AI
For Hal-AI, the recognition means more than a trophy. The company sponsored the Summit and gave up its own CEO's time to organise it — an investment in the ecosystem, not in a campaign. The result is a chain that worked end to end: an event in Rio de Janeiro selected a Brazilian university startup that, months later, was named the best in Latin America and the Caribbean by the IEEE.
It is also Marcos Alves's second international distinction in 2025. In May he was elevated to IEEE Senior Member, an honour reserved for professionals whose technical achievements are recognised globally for their impact and originality. Hal-AI also holds a patent filed with the USPTO for its architecture of autonomous agents with memory and context.
The 2026 edition of the IEEE AI Pioneer Summit is already in preparation. Details about the event, the organising committee and the participating startups are available at aipioneersummit.com.
