Latin America
9 itemsKapital raises US$125m in a round led by Tru Arrow Partners and Fasanara Capital.
The Mexico-based financial services platform for SMEs added Cervin Ventures, Niya Partners and Overlook Capital to the round. It is one of the largest Mexican fintech equity cheques of the year and shows growth capital still flows to businesses pairing software with a credit book.
A5X closes a BRL360m (~US$70m) Series D at a reported BRL2.7bn valuation.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Kaszek led the round for the Brazilian derivatives exchange in development, with IMC, Jump Trading, Optiver, XTX Markets and ABN AMRO Clearing participating. The investor list is a market-structure consortium: liquidity providers pre-committing to a B3 challenger before launch.
Monashees will manage a BRL500m (~US$96.5m) AI fund backed by BNDES and Finep.
The state development bank and innovation agency selected the São Paulo firm to run a vehicle dedicated to Brazilian companies applying artificial intelligence. It is a new public co-investment pool for Brazilian seed and Series A AI rounds.
Mexican credit lines: Nelo renews US$100m with Victory Park Capital; Gramercy backs Autocom.
Victory Park renewed a US$100m facility financing the buy now, pay later lender's consumer portfolio, and Gramercy invested in a senior secured facility for the automotive dealership group Autocom. Separately, Cuasar Capital and KA URBE IT agreed to invest in the Cuasar Data Center campus in Mexico.
Private credit reaches Colombia, Chile and Peru.
Gramercy Funds Management subscribed to the senior tranche of a COP195bn (~US$63m) issuance for Colombian fintech Kala; Addem Capital provided a US$15m revolving facility to Chilean food-trade fintech Loads for working capital to agricultural SMEs; and ImpactA Global put US$26.5m into Solartia via bonds issued by its Peruvian generation and distribution units to finance hybrid solar microgrids in the Amazon. Debt rather than equity is doing much of the region's growth financing.
Magnar raises a US$8m Series A co-led by 6 Degrees Capital and Hi Ventures.
The Chilean legal-AI platform for research, analysis and drafting also drew FEN Ventures, Platanus Ventures, Nascent Ventures and Argentine law firm Beccar Varela. A law firm on the cap table is a useful distribution signal for vertical AI.
Infrastructure and exits: Puerta de Oro sale, Ruta Bogotá Norte financing, Omega Azul exit, Mombak first close.
Ashmore Colombia and Patria Investments agreed to sell 100% of the 360 MWp Parque Solar Puerta de Oro to ISAGEN, subject to regulatory approval, while Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional, JPMorgan and MUFG provided US$381m to build the Ashmore-backed Ruta Bogotá Norte toll road. EcoEnterprises Fund exited Mexican aquaculture company Omega Azul to Baja Ferries Group, and Mombak announced a first close of its Amazon Reforestation Fund II, targeting US$150m. Avenue Capital and Astanor also led a US$140m+ investment in ProducePay, the agricultural financing platform serving Latin American growers.
Argentina's central bank will license Mercado Libre and Revolut as banks before year end.
The confirmation moves both into the formal banking system in one of the region's largest markets. Mercado Pago users in Argentina will also be able to invest in equities from the app, extending the super-app into brokerage as the licence approaches.
Macro: regional currencies fall for a second session as long US yields hit a 2004 high.
The 30-year Treasury touched 5.47% and markets now price three further Fed hikes over the next year; oil briefly exceeded US$106 before easing on signs of a US-Iran deal. Trump and Xi extended their trade truce to January. Fitch kept Pemex at junk, Colombia's market is split between a hold and a hike ahead of the central bank meeting, a US diesel-export veto floated by Trump would hit Brazil and Mexico hardest, and Ecopetrol has a new president, Joaquín Gutiérrez Caballero.
Fintech & payments
5 itemsSoFi is migrating its US$25bn-a-year card programme onto SoFiUSD settlement.
Settlement is live across SoFi Bank's Mastercard debit and credit book, and Galileo is expected to offer the option to its issuing clients. Bank-issued stablecoins now have a real, if captive, use case.
Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and HSBC complete interbank payments with tokenised deposits.
The UK trials included two mortgage transactions and conditional release of funds, with digital bonds on tokenised deposits planned for 2027.
Amazon blocks Meta's Muse agent, opening the "agent wars".
Amazon labels Muse an unauthorised agent and complains it does not identify itself and stores customer logins; Fintech Brainfood reads this as a fight over fee lines, fraud risk and customer ownership, and argues screen scraping will not win this time.
Prediction markets: Public launches agent-driven event contracts; New York sues Polymarket.
Public's product lets AI agents trade or trigger trades on contract probabilities, without sports. The state attorney general alleges Polymarket runs an unlicensed gambling business, joining cases against Kalshi, Coinbase and Gemini; Polymarket cites CFTC regulation.
Revolut customers hit by a breach at its US equities broker.
Sifted reports a fresh security incident via the third-party broker Revolut uses for US stocks; in the US, Avant applied for an OCC bank charter.
Venture & markets
5 itemsAnthropic's co-founders seek 50.1% of voting power ahead of a possible IPO.
Shareholders are being asked to approve a special share class for Dario Amodei and six co-founders. It will be one of the most closely watched governance votes of the cycle.
Bessemer raises US$5.75bn; DTCP closes €455m for defence.
Bessemer Venture Partners raised US$4bn for growth and US$1.75bn for seed and early stage. DTCP's debut defence fund, targeting €500m, arrives as European defence-tech funding hit €3.5bn in Q3 alone and €6.7bn year to date, more than double 2025.
Large rounds: Island US$400m at US$6.4bn, Precision Neuroscience US$250m, Baseten in talks at US$26bn.
Evolution Equity led Island's Series F; Pershing Square and the Ackman Oxman Institute led Precision's Series D at around US$1bn; Baseten is reportedly raising at double its June valuation.
Climate Week has become a speed-to-power week.
Investors and executives in New York are talking almost entirely about bringing electricity online for data centres, by any fuel; projected new US gas generation has doubled to 155 GW by 2035.
Databricks buys Row Zero; DeepSeek reaches a US$1bn run rate.
Databricks acquired the cloud-spreadsheet startup for undisclosed terms, and DeepSeek is targeting a US$7.45bn round at roughly US$74.5bn ahead of a possible Shanghai listing.
AI & technology
3 itemsAnthropic's biology lab reports its first discovery.
Around 950 Claude agents searching a DNA database in under a day identified a previously undescribed CRISPR-like system in bacteria-infecting viruses, which Amodei suggests could be a new class of gene editor.
Altman and Amodei address the UN Security Council on AI risk.
They urged coordinated action, while Australia's prime minister disclosed that an OpenAI model hacked a government website this year.
ElevenLabs at US$600m ARR and a reported US$22bn valuation.
The CEO says he will accept thinner margins for share. Meta launched a palm-sized Muse device and camera-free audio glasses.
Worth reading
3 itemsAgent Wars: Amazon vs Muse.
Simon Taylor on why the fight is about fee lines, fraud liability and who gets to be the agent's wallet.
Disbursements and the push-to-card blind spot.
A close read of the Kansas City Fed's B2B payments study and why it undercounts push-to-card.
Short selling is hard.
Russell Clark on the three stages of a short seller and why it remains a tool for expressing a view.