Behind LatAm's $4.1B Asymmetric Opportunity
Ep. 168: Ualá $195 million funding round, ARQ $70 million Series B, and more!
Your weekly newsletter on technology, startups, and VCs in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
The Latam VC Report 2026 was released last week and it revealed that total VC funding in Latin America reached US$4.1B in 2025, up 13.8% YoY from US$3.6B in 2024, even though the number of rounds slightly declined.
With 2025 deployment clearly above pre‑2020 levels, it’s now clear that the 2021 bubble has now normalized into a higher structural baseline rather than collapsing back to the past cycle’s size.
Brazil and Mexico together represent 78.5% of all VC investment in the region. Brazil alone captured US$2.0B (52.9%) across 363 deals, while Mexico secured US$980M (25.5%) across 86 deals. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that Brazil's dominance is declining relative to Mexico's ascent, creating an arbitrage opportunity to invest in Mexico where valuations are 20–30% lower despite comparable traction and infrastructure.
Fintech remains the dominant investment theme by far. Fintech accounted for 29% of all deals but 61% of total capital invested in 2025, showing that it still consistently attracts the largest rounds and investor attention across the region. Sorry AI.
The report also published the Latam VC Confidence Index (LVCI), based on responses from more than 100 investors. Results show that about 58% of them have medium-to-high confidence for the next six to eighteen months, while 47.2% are planing to increase investment activity in 2026.
My reading of the report is that Latin America is now in a “post-correction” market phase with valuations still at an attractive level. After the 2021 boom and the 2022–2024 reset, founders are now building more capital-efficient startups leading to an asymmetric opportunity where the gap between perceived risk and actual opportunity can produce strong returns for investors entering during this cycle.
You can find the full report here:
Follow The Money
🇦🇷 Ualá raises a fresh US$195 million funding round
Argentine fintech Ualá has raised a fresh US$195 million round at a US$3.2 billion valuation to accelerate its expansion across Latin America. Founded in 2017, the company operates across Argentina, Mexico and Colombia with over 11 million customers, offering payments, credit, merchant acquiring and investment products. This round also deepens its partnership with lead investor Allianz X around embedded insurance, following the recent launch of life and accident coverage for Argentine users. Today’s round follows a Series E closed in March 2025 that totaled US$366 million, bringing Ualá’s cumulative funding to over US$900 million.
Sector: FinTech
Founders: Pierpaolo Barbieri
Investors: Allianz X, Stone Ridge, Tencent, Table Holdings, Soros Fund Management, D1 Capital Partners
🇲🇽 ARQ raises a US$70 million Series B round
Mexican fintech ARQ, formerly known as DolarApp, has raised a US$70 million Series B round to expand its stablecoin-based financial platform across Latin America. The startup connects traditional banking infrastructure with digital wallets, multi-currency accounts and debit cards, allowing users to hold funds in digital dollars while transacting in local currencies, a model designed to protect against currency instability. With over two million users and more than US$10 billion in annualized transaction volume, ARQ plans to use the fresh capital to move beyond cross-border transfers and build out a full-service digital bank offering wealth management, high-yield local currency accounts and credit card products.
Sector: FinTech
Founders: Fernando Terrés, Zach Garman, Álvaro Correa Gallardo
Investors: Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund
🇺🇾 Zapia raises a US$7 million Seed extension round
Uruguayan AI startup Zapia has raised US$7 million in a seed extension round, bringing total funding to US$19.3 million, to launch Zapia Max, an autonomous AI agent designed for everyday users across Latin America. Zapia Max is built to execute digital tasks autonomously on behalf of users, including browsing websites, comparing prices, organizing emails, identifying active subscriptions and completing online reservations, all within user-defined permission levels. Founded in 2023, Zapia claims over 6 million users in Latin America and recently accelerated the migration of its user base to its own app following Meta policy changes that restricted third-party AI assistants on WhatsApp.
Sector: AI
Founders: Martín Alcalá Rubí, Juan Pablo Pereira, Nicolás Loeff
Investors: Prosus Ventures
🇸🇻 Propi raised a US$4.2 million seed round
Salvadoran proptech Propi has raised a US$4.2 million seed round to expand its end-to-end digital real estate transaction platform across Central America. The startup integrates property search, reservations, contract signing, down payments, digital compliance and bank disbursement support into a single platform. Its database currently covers around US$4 billion in residential inventory across El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama. With the fresh capital, Propi plans to enter Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, while deepening its mortgage digitization capabilities.
Sector: PropTech
Founders: José Mario Ávila, Eduardo Francés
Investors: Second Century Ventures
🇨🇴 Quipu raises a US$1.1 million pre-Series A round
Colombian fintech Quipu has raised a US$1.1 million pre-Series A round to build credit scoring infrastructure for microentrepreneurs in the informal economy. The startup analyzes non-traditional data signals including SMS patterns, geolocation, computer vision and social media activity to assess creditworthiness, and licenses its scoring system via API to banks, and digital wallets. The capital will be used to expand its API integrations with financial institutions and strengthen its data and technology team. To date, Quipu has generated credit scores for over 300,000 users, facilitated more than US$7 million in direct loans, and counts Nequi, Claro, Bancóldex and ProMujer among its institutional partners using their API.
Sector: FinTech
Founders: Mercedes Bidart, Juan Cristóbal Constain, Viviana Siless, Eduardo Carrasquilla
Investors: Impacta VC, Decelera, Vertical Partners, Corteza Capital, Comfama
Startups News
🇨🇱 Reuse reaches US$30 million revenue in 2025
Chilean tech refurbishment startup Reuse doubled its revenue from 2024 to 2025, reaching US$30 million. The company operates a trade-in model allowing consumers to exchange used devices for credit toward new products, with the collected hardware going through professional reconditioning and certification before being resold through marketplaces and its own e-commerce platform. During 2025, Reuse expanded its retail partnerships in Mexico, Chile and Peru, and secured Samsung as a client for trade-in programs across more than 100 stores in Mexico and Peru.
🇨🇱 Vita Wallet to operate with crypto assets in Bolivia
Chilean Fintech Vita Wallet has become the first international institution to receive authorization to operate with crypto assets in Bolivia under the country’s new fintech regulation, regulated by the ASFI. The regulation, approved in May 2025, formalizes fintech companies as complementary financial services providers covering wallets, payments, blockchain and crypto assets. The authorization allows Vita Wallet to operate freely between fiat and crypto, and the company plans to soon enable Bolivian boliviano (BOB) deposits on its platform.
VC - M&A News
🇨🇴 Carryt acquired ecommerce logistics startup Paket
Colombian logistics startup Carryt has acquired Chilean ecommerce logistics platform Paket, gaining access to 10,000 active customers in Chile and accelerating its regional expansion into the Southern Cone. Founded in 2014, Paket started as an Instagram-based store before evolving into a full logistics platform offering shipping, tracking and delivery services to small and medium-sized ecommerce businesses. The deal follows an acquisition-driven growth strategy, having previously acquired Treggo’s Colombian and Mexican operations in 2024 and Liftit’s Brazilian operations in 2023. The move reflects a broader maturation of the Latin American startup ecosystem, where regional buyers are emerging as viable exit routes alongside traditional corporate acquirers and international funds.
🇨🇴 Banco Serfinanza acquires a 30% stake in Tpaga
Colombian bank Banco Serfinanza has acquired a 30% stake in fintech Tpaga, in a deal aimed at accelerating its digital transformation across payments, embedded finance, AI-powered financial services and digital wallets. The transaction integrates Tpaga’s technology infrastructure with Serfinanza’s regulatory standing and retail banking experience, with the goal of designing, testing and scaling new financial products through flexible API architectures. Part of the Grupo Empresarial Olímpica retail conglomerate, Serfinanza also expects the partnership to directly benefit its retail chain by embedding financial services into point-of-sale and digital channels. The transaction amount was not disclosed.
Expansion Plans
🇩🇪 Fintech Mambu expands into Mexico
German cloud banking platform Mambu has expanded its Payments Hub to Mexico, responding to growing demand from banks and fintechs operating across multiple payment schemes and regulatory frameworks. The product is an API-first modular platform that integrates payment processing, orchestration, liquidity management and reconciliation, allowing financial institutions to launch and scale services while connecting to both local schemes like SPEI and global payment rails.
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Abrazo,
Arnaud
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