LatAm Startup Funding Sees A Modest Uptick
Funding to Latin American startups appears to have stabilized in recent quarters. However, investment remains far, far below the record highs reached a few years ago.
That was the broad finding from a Crunchbase overview of funding to South America and Central American companies in the third quarter. Funding was flat to up across stages, with a few big rounds in the mix.
In total, we tallied $884 million in known seed through growth-stage investments to the region. That’s a gain of about 14% from the prior quarter and year-ago levels. However, it’s still less than a quarter of what companies secured during the peak quarter in early 2022.
Fintech is still huge, but a bit less dominant
As usual, fintech and fintech-adjacent startups brought in many of the largest rounds. However, we also saw good-sized investments in other sectors, including B2B commerce and digital health.
The largest financing went to Mexico City-based Stori, a provider of credit cards and online financial services that raised $212 million in an August financing that was roughly half debt and half equity. With the latest round, the 5-year-old unicorn plans to expand into Colombia.
Another Mexican company, OCN, or One Car Now, secured $86 million in a July debt and equity round to expand its business of offering flexible car rentals, targeted to gig workers.
From São Paulo, Brazil, meanwhile, Cayena, an online procurement platform for restaurants and other food purveyors, secured a $55 million September Series B.
On the fintech front, Colombian payments platform Cobre landed $35 million in Series B financing. And one of Brazil’s best-known unicorns, online banking platform Neon, picked up a $26 million investment led by Microsoft‘s venture fund, M12.
Moving in a positive direction
Overall, startup investment didn’t show a major gain in Q3. But it was a bit better than Q2, which was itself a bit better than Q1. So, things at least are moving in a positive direction.
Looking ahead, it seems likely that momentum will continue, given the strong pipeline of growth companies and reserves of capital by investors who sat things out in 2023 and early this year.
Read the full article: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/latam-startup-funding-recap-q3-2024/
