Brazil seed activity persists as El Niño and a strong peso reshape regional outlook

AMentoria raises a R$1 million seed round led by Triaxis Capital and Crescera Capital.

The Natal-based edtech, which sells ENEM and university-entrance preparation courses and one-to-one mentoring, took the money through the FIP Nordeste Capital Semente vehicle set up to back early-stage companies in Brazil's Northeast. Angel networks Insper Angels and Anjos do Brasil joined, alongside operators including the CEOs of B55 and Alura, and existing backer WOW increased its stake. The capital is earmarked for the learning platform, a B2B2C push and an opening in São Paulo. Small in dollar terms, but a useful data point on regional-development capital reaching founders outside the Southeast.

Cognition opens a Brazil office to scale its enterprise base.

Fresh from a $2 billion raise, the AI software-engineering company has formally set up in Brazil with both a commercial team and an engineering hub. Its Latin American head of strategy and operations says the company reached ten regional enterprise clients without a local presence, including Nubank, Itaú, Santander and Natura, and expects growth to accelerate with a team on the ground.

Brazil's largest banks are now reference customers for frontier AI developer tooling, which raises the bar for local competitors.

Klar Empresarial opens a $10 million credit line for self-employed and small-business taxpayers in Mexico.

The product targets PFAEs and RESICOs, segments that traditional banks largely underserve. It extends Klar's push from consumer credit into SME lending at a time when Mexican fintechs are competing on business banking.

Cepal warns a Super El Niño could cut 2% from Latin American GDP and push 4.8 million people into poverty.

Bloomberg Línea's coverage pairs the estimate with a look at the vulnerabilities of Colombia's electricity system in what may be the strongest El Niño in decades. Agtech, insurance and energy portfolios should expect volatility in food prices, hydro output and FX over the coming quarters.

Bank of America publishes its stock picks for Latin American banks heading into 2027.

The bank argues that wide gaps in valuation, profitability and loan growth make selection central: Brazil screens as cheap, Mexico combines returns, capital and credit expansion, Peru stands out structurally, Chile and Colombia require more selectivity, and Argentina keeps upside with higher macro risk. A useful map of where incumbents are strongest, and therefore where fintech challengers face the hardest fight.

Argentina's Caputo tells investors at JPMorgan the country will not tap international debt markets.

The message came a year after the US Treasury's support package for Argentina; Bloomberg Línea reviews how the dollar, country risk and the Merval have moved since. Retail sales data are due on Wednesday.

Mexico's strong peso is making the country expensive in dollar terms.

At roughly 17 pesos per dollar, a Big Mac costs almost $6.50 and the new iPhone 18 Pro lists at about $1,765, close to 50% above the US pre-tax price. The column argues there is no easy path to weakening the currency. For dollar-based investors this flatters Mexican revenue but squeezes exporters and nearshoring cost arguments.

Regional markets and politics.

The Nasdaq 100 set another record on AI enthusiasm while Brent slipped back below $100 after US-Iran talks; Latin American currencies were mixed against the dollar. Trump threatened to "militarise" Latin America citing Venezuela, and Bolivia's inflation projections are rising after the removal of the diesel subsidy. Xi Jinping's Washington visit, with trade and AI on the agenda, is the next test. Separately, Brazilian private-credit fintech AmFi named Edna Kohigashi, formerly of VERT Capital and DMCard, as its new credit director.

Adyen upgrades Authenticate to route each transaction to the best authentication method in real time.

The module chooses between 3DS, Google SPA, Mastercard and Visa payment passkeys or data-only flows through one integration; Too Good To Go reported an 11% lift in payment conversion and Just Eat Takeaway 12% on eligible traffic. Authentication is becoming a conversion lever rather than a compliance cost.

SoFi becomes the first US national bank to settle live transactions via stablecoin on Mastercard's network.

In the same edition, GoCardless processed the UK's first agentic account-to-account payment, Moov launched a debit-card-based P2P product and PhonePe won in-principle approval in the UAE for its first international licence.

Kalshi faces CFTC scrutiny after nearly one million near-identical $5,500 trades in a single ether market.

The activity accounted for more than $5 billion in volume; Kalshi says it found no evidence of wash trading. Prediction markets are drawing the regulatory attention that follows scale.

Revolut weighs a dual listing in London and New York.

Sifted also reports that founder Nik Storonsky has denied owing money in a €350 million superyacht dispute, and that the Tink founders have emerged from stealth with an AI startup. Egypt's Paymob raised $35 million led by Mubadala and the EBRD.

The SEC opens tokenised stocks to permissioned AMMs, with RFQ execution alongside.

The Tokenized episode with Circle's Nikhil Chandhok and Elliptic's Simone Maini covers institutional execution constraints, Circle's Arc chain and compliance agents for machine-generated finance.

Wall Street's appetite for data-centre IPOs is cracking.

SB Energy delayed its listing amid resistance to a $50 billion-plus valuation, Holtec paused indefinitely and Aggreko slowed its plans, while Nscale's $103 billion contract book relies 85% on Microsoft and Anthropic. Oura, meanwhile, launched an IPO that could raise $2.2 billion, with Forerunner selling its entire stake.

AI mega-rounds continue regardless.

Snorkel AI raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation co-led by Insight Partners and S32; Cyera added a $400 million Series G extension from Goldman Sachs Alternatives; Verda raised $189 million led by Emergence Capital; and Mirendil, founded this year, is in talks to raise up to $1 billion at $5 billion with Kleiner Perkins. Heidi Health combined $100 million of equity with $240 million of non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst.

Mistral bought adtech startup Pimento for €12.7 million in cash and shares, and Connect Ventures held a $55 million first close on its fifth fund.

Both point to a European market where AI acquirers and seed funds are still finding capital.

Paramount Skydance settles with 12 state attorneys general, clearing its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover.

Concessions include $1.5 billion of additional US production spending, 30 theatrical releases a year and an editorial board for CNN and CBS News.

Corporate borrowers are pricing central-bank asymmetry into credit.

Russell Clark argues that SoftBank borrowing at 8–9% and high-yield rising from 5.5% to 7% this year reflect AI capital competition, not imminent default, because issuers expect intervention before any bankruptcy cycle.

Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent from shopping on its site twelve days after launch.

Amazon says the agent browses without identifying itself and appears to store customer credentials; Meta disputes this. Muse had overtaken ChatGPT as the top free iPhone app in the US with 730,000 downloads in about five days. The fight is over who controls checkout and the ad revenue attached to it.

Washington's AI posture hardens.

Trump dismissed AI safety fears and floated an "AI Force" to protect the US lead, while Treasury Secretary Bessent said developers should not expect a federal liability shield. AI remains the main fault line ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.

Advanced evals for AI products.

Hamel Husain and Shreya Shankar on the error-analysis step most teams skip before writing metrics.

Did instant payments give Europe an edge?

A sober review of whether real-time rails changed payment mix in the pioneer countries.

The hard road to stopping the super peso.

Juan Pablo Spinetto on why Mexico has become expensive in dollars.