LatAm venture funding rebounds 65% as Televisa buys AT&T México

EndeavorMarkets🇧🇷 Brazil🇲🇽 Mexico🇨🇴 Colombia

Latin American startups raised US$4.7bn in 2025, up 65% and the most since 2022.

A report from Endeavor and Glisco Partners puts the average round at US$8.5m, against US$6.6m in 2024, with capital returning under a markedly more selective logic.

The recovery is real but concentrated, which favours funds with differentiated access rather than a broad market beta.

Televisa and David Martínez's investment firm agreed to buy AT&T México for US$2bn.

The deal would fold the country's third mobile operator into a Televisa-led group in a market long dominated by América Movil.

Carrier consolidation changes distribution for every Mexican fintech and consumer app that relies on telco channels.

PayJoy acquired Mexican fintech Finia to deepen its credit underwriting.

The device-financing lender will apply Finia's technology to its credit models; terms were not disclosed.

PayJoy is buying underwriting capability rather than distribution, a sign of where value sits in Mexican consumer credit.

Tether invested in EFY Finance's seed round to push institutional stablecoin use in Latin America.

EFY settles into local bank accounts in 17 countries and serves more than 25,000 active accounts; the amount was not disclosed.

Issuers are now funding the on- and off-ramp layer directly, competing with regional fintechs for B2B flows.

Vela LatAm, controlled by Constellation Software, is acquiring Brazilian IT and cybersecurity services firm Penso.

The deal awaits approval from competition authority Cade.

Constellation's roll-up vehicle keeps buying Brazilian software and services assets at a steady clip, offering a credible exit path for sub-scale B2B companies.

Uruguay's Zapia rebuilt itself as a standalone app after WhatsApp banned general-purpose AI chatbots.

A year after the API change, which Zapia and others took to Cade, the assistant passes 8 million users with all usage on its own app, from more than 90% on WhatsApp. Separately, Brazilian fintech Barte hired former Mercai co-founder Rodolfo Bizinoto Neto as strategy director.

Platform risk on Meta's rails remains the central question for LatAm consumer AI.

Copper's record run, weaker regional currencies and Colombia's politics dominated the macro tape.

The copper rally is read as a windfall for Chile and Peru, most major LatAm currencies lost ground against the dollar, Milei faces a trade-off between reserves, inflation and activity, and Bank of America flags protests among the obstacles to De la Espriella's plan in Colombia; the IMF also revised its 2026 regional growth outlook.

FX pressure feeds straight into dollar-denominated fund returns.

ID FinanceRound🇪🇸 Spain

ID Finance raised €545m in debt and equity to take Spanish lending app Plazo into payments.

Backers include Spice Expeditions, WashU, Kingsway Capital and i80 Group; Plazo turned profitable in 2025 with more than 400,000 users and has launched Turrón, an e-money account with debit card and BNPL.

Converting profitable borrowers into payments customers is the playbook several LatAm neobanks are running.

SpikoRound🇫🇷 France

Spiko raised a US$90m Series B led by New Enterprise Associates.

The Paris tokenised money-market fund manager now runs about US$2.7bn and takes live USDC subscriptions through Coinbase.

Tokenised treasuries are becoming the default cash leg for 24/7 markets.

OKX🇺🇸 United States

OKX and ICE filed for round-the-clock US tokenised stock trading.

The joint venture proposes 63 companies, each paired against USDC, USDG or USDT, raising the question of who supplies 24/7 cash and liquidity.

American Express published an Intent Intelligence framework for agentic commerce, and Revolut is adding agentic shopping to its assistant.

Amex captures and authenticates a customer's instructions, spending limits and merchant preferences before an AI agent transacts.

The card networks and the largest neobank are moving to own the trust layer before agents do.

Visa won approval to prepare a domestic card business in China, and OPay filed for a US$500m NYSE IPO.

Lagos-based OPay reported US$91m of net income on US$467m revenue for the first half of 2026.

A fresh chip selloff dragged tech lower as investors weighed a Chinese memory breakthrough.

Reports of a CXMT memory-chip advance sent South Korean shares down more than 7% at one point; Bank of America says investors hold their largest tech exposure since the post-Covid rebound, the IMF named surging bond yields the top emerging risk, and Ray Dalio warned the worst for US bonds is still ahead. Russell Clark argues that if DeepSeek did not break the AI trade, CXMT is unlikely to either.

Firmus pulled a US$30.6bn Sydney IPO, exposing the credit layer beneath AI infrastructure.

The data-centre operator, valued at US$10.5bn in August, was losing US$77m a half while projecting US$5bn in annual profit, and investors balked at insiders selling at listing; Nvidia meanwhile is mobilising more than US$500bn of third-party, largely off-balance-sheet capital for customers' build-outs.

The race is shifting from who gets chips to who gets credit to buy them.

TypeSafe AI (Jev) raised about US$870m at a US$7.5bn valuation, led by a16z.

Atlas Atomics, a heavy-water reactor startup founded this year, raised roughly US$400m at US$1.9bn led by General Catalyst, and Oxide Computer raised a US$445m Series D led by Eclipse.

AnthropicIPO🇺🇸 United States

Anthropic will show Q3 financials to institutional investors ahead of a potential US$2trn IPO, while Iambic Therapeutics tests the AI-biotech window.

Iambic would raise about US$160m at US$900m at the top of its range, even as comparable Isomorphic Labs is reported in talks at US$40bn-plus; Blackstone's AirTrunk delayed its Singapore listing.

BumbleM&A🇺🇸 United States

Bumble agreed to go private with Ithaca Holdings for US$1.3bn, and Koch is buying Getty Images via a prepackaged bankruptcy.

Bumble's price is a steep comedown from its US$14bn IPO valuation; Koch and the Getty family will put in US$533m of equity. Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 with a US$20m asset sale to Disney, and Decagon has hired a bank after early talks with ServiceNow.

Sprints, backer of Revolut and Vinted, raised a US$725m fund, and Nvidia plans billion-dollar investments in European tech.

A UK fund for refugee founders also launched with Atomico's backing.

Meta🇺🇸 United States

Meta's Muse Wonder lands at the frontier, second only to Claude Opus 5.5 on Artificial Analysis.

Wonder Full scores three points clear of Gemini 4 Argon, GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1, is closed rather than open-weight, and is priced to undercut rivals.

A credible third frontier lab with billions of users changes the pricing calculus for every application company.

Apple🇺🇸 United States

Apple unveiled a US$299 HomeView display and a smart-home line built around the new Siri.

Refreshed Apple TV and HomePod hardware ship in November, with cameras, locks and thermostats from December.

OpenAI🇺🇸 United States

The FBI arrested an OpenAI employee accused of planting a recording device in an executive conference room.

A judge separately ordered OpenAI to hand over hiring records in Apple's trade-secrets suit.

Lenny Rachitsky and Dan Hockenmaier on how to tell whether a startup has a moat

, with data effects now the compounding advantage AI makes common.

Andrew Dresner asks whether banks need "optimizer firewalls"

as AI agents turn promo arbitrage from a hobby into an automated default.

Sifted on why fintech sovereignty won't work in Europe

, from hyperscalers to the Visa and Mastercard duopoly.