Latin America
9 itemsEndeavor Catalyst closes Fund V at $320m, above its $300m target, with Itaú Ventures as a strategic LP.
The vehicle is the largest the co-investment arm of Endeavor has raised and takes its assets under management past $850m; it has already deployed $55.7m into 30 companies and expects to commit a further $25m–30m before year-end. Itaú Ventures' ticket is the first from the fund-of-funds strategy it launched earlier this year. It writes $1m–3m cheques alongside institutional leads and plans 40–50 investments a year, a useful counterweight for Latin American founders while venture dollars concentrate in Silicon Valley AI.
Yduqs agrees to merge with Afya, creating a Brazilian education platform with a medical-education core.
Afya shareholders will hold 69% of the combined company and Yduqs shareholders 31%. The deal consolidates two listed Brazilian education groups.
BBVA Spark extends a $55m credit facility to Galgo, the Chilean motorcycle-financing platform, to grow its loan book in Mexico.
IFC invested $30m in Brazilian healthtech dr.consulta to expand from 32 to 80 clinics beyond São Paulo and Rio, Blockchain Capital led a $15m investment in Brazilian fintech NG.Cash, and Citrino Ventures led a BRL30m (around $5.8m) Series A for Stay, a corporate private-pension fintech, with Norte, 17Sigma and BTV participating. Debt and development-finance capital continue to carry much of the growth-stage load in the region.
Private equity and real assets were active across the region.
Grupo Pegasus acquired Villazul, a Mexican senior-living residence, through its new Mexico Senior Living Management platform, its first direct investment in the country; Colca Capital acquired Giga.uno, a Colombian enterprise-content-management specialist; BlueOak acquired the senior-living arm of Brasil Senior Living; and Axxon began structuring its first club deal to consolidate clinical research centres in Brazil. JPMorgan launched a $200m forestry platform in Paraguay, and Davivienda provided COP75bn (about $22.5m) in project financing for Clic 80, a Colombian industrial and logistics development backed by Yellowstone and Visum.
Saudi Eksab, IDB Invest, CAF and IDC Network launched an impact fund targeting Central America and the Caribbean.
The Saudi Eksab, IDC Impact Fund will back established, high-growth consumer-driven businesses with Valante Capital as fund manager. Gulf capital paired with multilaterals is rare for a sub-region that seldom sees dedicated vehicles.
Skalar, backed by General Catalyst and monashees, committed $125m in growth financing to seven startups over the next twelve months.
A pledge rather than closed rounds, but a sizeable pool of growth capital aimed at the region.
idwall, acquired by Serasa for roughly R$400m–450m in May, says its priority under Experian's umbrella is internationalisation.
The deal has now cleared Cade. The antifraud startup had been preparing a Series D with Itaú BBA to fund expansion abroad before the bank suggested the sale; it now rides Experian's presence in 33 countries, chasing Caf and unico abroad.
Colombian fintech Fronte raised a pre-seed round co-led by Rally Cap VC and Bankless Ventures to build a shared financial system for transnational families.
Separately, SoFi Tech Solutions, Orbi and Mastercard are launching a crypto-linked card in Mexico with fiat conversion at checkout, and Gr4vy's partnership with Unlimit gives global merchants Pix, Mercado Pago and OXXO without separate integrations.
Brazil's ban on sports betting and online casinos is pushing the rest of Latin America toward tighter rules, though not outright prohibition.
Lawyers quoted by Bloomberg Línea describe a regional trend toward increasingly intense regulation, with Colombia and Mexico watching Brazil closely. On the macro side, Latin American currencies mostly weakened on Thursday as oil held above $100 and the S&P 500 fell, and Brazilian inflation data is due Friday. Capital Flows notes that Brazil's 10% budget deficit, the widest outside Covid since the 1990s, has not weakened the real, which sits near levels first seen in 2002.
Fintech & payments
5 itemsSamsung is putting USDC transfers inside Samsung Wallet and Samsung Pay on Solana rails, with Coinbase as custodian.
The feature launches in the US in late October across 82 million Galaxy devices, with more markets to follow; Solana claims more than $5.25tn in stablecoin volume in 2026. Distribution at this scale moves stablecoins from infrastructure to consumer habit.
Modern Treasury and Rain applied for OCC trust charters three days after the ICBA sued to strike down the rule behind them.
Both keep custody inside the proposed bank and payments in separate entities, the reverse of Wise's rejected structure. ICBA counts 21 trust banks approved under this administration, at least 13 of them crypto firms; the suit only asks the court to cancel Protego's approval.
ICE and OKX filed with the SEC to launch OKXICE, a venue for 24/7 trading of tokenised US stocks.
The filing sits under the SEC's September innovation exemption, which runs until 2031 and spares qualifying AMM-based venues from registering as exchanges.
Simon Taylor's Rant: when anyone can launch a neobank on stablecoin rails, who answers when the money stops moving?
Whop's one-click neobank prompts a return to the Synapse collapse, where the CFPB found a $60m–90m gap between bank balances and ledger records, and to why the trust-bank layer is being separated from payments.
Revolut favours a US primary listing for an eventual IPO and will add credit cards and loans once it holds a full banking charter.
Mastercard will require new European cards to support offline chip-and-PIN payments of up to €200 from February 2027.
Venture & markets
4 itemsUS venture reached $516bn invested year-to-date after a $98bn third quarter, 44% above 2021's full-year record.
AI took 82.7% of deal value and about 45% of deal count; 90% of dollars went to rounds of $50m or more, up from 77% in 2025. Emerging managers face harder fundraising and exits remain scarce.
OpenAI told investors annualised revenue reached about $50bn at end-September, well below the $68bn reported last month.
Nvidia fell 3%, Oracle 6% and CoreWeave 8% on the news. The Trump administration also froze pending labour-certification applications involving Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, TCS, Wipro and others.
Mega-rounds continued: Manus raised more than $500m, Oratomic $475m at a $5.4bn–5.5bn valuation, Arena $200m at $3.1bn, Ledgebrook $200m and Universal Quantum $100m.
Spectrum Equity closed its eleventh fund at $2.5bn, and Hone raised a $60m seed at a $285m valuation from Benchmark and Index.
Prediction markets are being powered by longshots.
Bloomberg's analysis of more than a billion Kalshi and Polymarket trades found roughly two-thirds of recent Kalshi contracts involve a sub-10% outcome; longshot bettors lost 15% of stakes on Kalshi and 27% on Polymarket before fees, and Mexico and US World Cup contracts alone traded $165m.
AI & technology
1 itemBiohub expanded its Virtual Biology Initiative from $500m to $1.8bn with the NIH, the Energy Department, DeepMind and Meta.
The goal is a "universal virtual cell" that predicts how cells respond to drugs before lab testing; DeepMind and Meta contribute $300m with Isomorphic Labs, which is separately reported to be in talks to raise at a $40bn-plus valuation.
Worth reading
3 itemsWhy are macro investors so dumb?
Russell Clark on a decade of failed consensus trades, from the yen to Brazilian fiscal deficits to AI over-investment fears.
What if consumers saw every payment option at checkout?
Jas Shah on Hick's law, local payment preferences from Pix to iDEAL, and whether checkout optimisation survives agentic commerce.
Europe's fintechs changed banking, but did they change the world?
Sifted's reflection on Wesley Chan's challenge to Revolut, N26 and Monzo, alongside its ranking of the most capital-efficient startups in Europe.