Scanntech lands US$180m as Brazilian credit funds deepen and inflation rattles LatAm assets

ScanntechRound🇧🇷 Brazil

Scanntech raised a US$180m Series F co-led by L Catterton and Partners Group.

The 34-year-old São Paulo company turns point-of-sale data into retail intelligence for retailers, consumer-goods groups and distributors; Bradesco and SPX joined alongside existing backers Warburg Pincus, Hindiana, IFC and Endeavor.

Global private-equity names will still pay growth-stage prices for proprietary Latin American datasets with recurring revenue.

AsaasDebt🇧🇷 Brazil

Asaas raised roughly US$55.6m through a new FIDC to fund receivables advances for its SME customers.

The Brazilian payments and financial-management platform had already raised BRL100m through an FIDC in 2025 and BRL50m in 2023, after a ~US$146m Series C led by BOND.

Brazilian securitisation structures keep letting software companies scale credit without diluting equity.

WellhubDebt🇧🇷 Brazil

Wellhub expanded its credit fund for Brazilian partner gyms and studios by BRL100m.

The FIDC, structured and managed by Galapagos Capital, finances the supply side of the corporate-wellness marketplace, a retention tool other Brazilian platforms are copying.

Endeavor CatalystFund🇧🇷 Brazil🇲🇽 Mexico🇦🇷 Argentina

Endeavor Catalyst closed an oversubscribed US$320m Fund V, above its US$300m target.

LPs include Itaú Ventures, whose commitment is the first under the Itaú Unibanco CVC's new fund-of-funds strategy, and Endeavor entrepreneurs make up roughly 30% of LPs by number. Latin America is Fund V's largest regional allocation so far, with US$21.5m across 14 investments; the platform reports US$850m+ in AUM across 437 companies.

Giraffe Bio raised a US$6.4m seed round led by Orion Industrial Ventures, with BHP Ventures and Twynaz.

The Buenos Aires company develops biomolecules to recover critical minerals such as copper.

A strategic mining investor backing an Argentine biotech at seed suggests the region's resource base can seed deep-tech, not only fintech.

TripWip raised a US$4.2m seed round from Latin Leap, CrossBoundary, Yango Ventures and others.

The Uruguay-based peer-to-peer car-rental platform operates in Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina; Promotora Social México, Satrack Ventures, Epic Angels and Angel Hub Ventures also participated.

Neocrop Technologies raised US$2.75m led by Zentynel Frontier Investments to commercialise gene-edited crops.

The Chilean biotech, which is taking a high-fibre wheat to market, drew CITES (its first Chilean investment), Grupo Inder and Carozzi Ventures, with follow-on from Südlich Capital.

Latin American founders kept raising through US-domiciled vehicles.

Base10 Partners led a US$27m Series A for Flai, a dealership-automation AI platform co-founded by three Uruguayans; Monashees led an undisclosed seed for Skalar, a Colombian-founded platform that has committed US$125m+ to fund customer acquisition for regional tech companies; Hi Ventures led US$6m for Konko AI, which automates patient coordination for Latin American providers; Norwest led US$7.3m for Beltic; and Chingona Ventures led US$6m for Miami-based Dapta with Cometa and Fen Ventures.

The Delaware-topco, LatAm-operations model is now the default for the region's AI startups, which complicates how regional activity gets counted.

Three new regional funds went to market: Fen Ventures IV, Vox Tech for Good Growth II and Yield Lab's RAIZ Fund.

Chile's Fen Ventures is targeting US$30–50m for an AI-leaning Fund IV; Vox Capital wants BRL200m for its fourth flagship impact vehicle; and The Yield Lab Latam launched RAIZ, a BRL200m Brazil-only agtech fund. Separately, Tivit has set aside up to R$1bn for acquisitions of proprietary software and hardware now that its integration into Italy's Almaviva is complete, with a first deal likely in 2027.

A hot US inflation print hit Latin American assets, with the Mexican peso the worst performer against a dollar at its strongest since May 2025.

JPMorgan has revised its regional strategy to anticipate a strong rebound in Brazil while downgrading Chile; Argentina posted the region's second-highest monthly inflation after Venezuela, and Economy Minister Caputo is discussing expanded funding with the World Bank. Banco de Bogotá expects Colombia's 2027 minimum wage to rise 8.5%, and the IMF warned that rising sovereign-bond costs are squeezing fiscal space. In fintech, XTransfer launched cross-border collections for SMEs in Chile after registering with the UAF.

Mollie🇳🇱 Netherlands🇪🇺 Europe

Mollie is offering €50m in equity to a founding team that will build banking for AI agents on its infrastructure.

The team would start with Mollie's rails, a budget and 350,000 existing customers, with the equity tied to milestones.

Payment incumbents are now trying to buy agentic-commerce teams outright rather than waiting for startups to emerge.

JPMorgan ChasePolicy🇺🇸 United States

JPMorgan Chase is blocking outside AI agents from directly accessing customer accounts.

CEO Jamie Dimon told analysts that external agent access is too risky, a line that will shape how agent-commerce startups reach US deposits. Bank of America, meanwhile, faces a US$1.2bn penalty over anti-money-laundering failures, including a record US$750m OCC assessment. Polymarket is weighing an IPO and a native token at a valuation that could top US$20bn.

AnthropicIPO🇺🇸 United States

Anthropic told prospective IPO investors that third-quarter revenue rose 45% quarter on quarter to US$16.8bn.

The company is preparing a listing as soon as next month that could raise more than US$100bn at a US$2tn valuation, according to the New York Times.

A listing of that size would reset comparables for every AI-exposed growth round, including in Latin America.

CoreWeaveMarkets🇺🇸 United States

CoreWeave shares fell 16% as yields on its bonds approached 15%, dragging Oracle, Nebius and Dell lower.

Credit investors are repricing the debt behind the AI build-out even as ASML says it cannot keep up with demand.

ModalRound🇺🇸 United States

Modal raised a US$750m Series D at a US$15.75bn post-money valuation led by Accel.

Kleiner Perkins joined with insiders Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Redpoint, Lux Capital, Amplify and Bain Capital Ventures; other large rounds included Icon's US$200m Series D and Salience Labs' US$125m Series B.

US September inflation surprised to the upside, reviving bets on Fed rate hikes as Brent topped US$106.

US stocks and Treasuries sold off, and total US public debt passed US$40tn for the first time; the IMF warned that growing out of the deficit will not work fast enough.

The British Business Bank put £180m into six AI and deeptech venture firms, and Nvidia took minority stakes in five UK startups.

The BBB allocations include Evantic and Entrepreneurs First; Nvidia's stakes are in Boltz, Foresight, Hiverge, Riverlane and Prima Mente. Siemens separately invested more than US$100m in Skeleton Technologies, Europe's newest unicorn.

OpenAI🇺🇸 United States

US prosecutors charged an OpenAI engineer with hiding a recording device in an executive meeting room.

The employee, also a venture partner at Saudi firm Raed Ventures, was fired and is in federal custody; OpenAI says its own models helped trace the device. Separately, OpenAI alleges a former employee took files on an unreleased product to Apple, and eight US states have sued the company over ChatGPT's handling of vulnerable users.

Anthropic🇺🇸 United States

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark moved his projection for fully self-improving AI forward to 2027 from 2028.

He cited a benchmark in which Anthropic's Opus 5.5 planned AI-research experiments at roughly 30 times lower cost per attempt than former frontier-lab researchers; the company says daily code merges are up more than tenfold since May.

DeepSeek is leading a round in robotics startup Winverse AI, founded by a former Tencent scientist.

The Chinese model developer wants to be the intelligence layer for robots, its first notable move into physical AI.

Kenvue's founding CTDO on forward-deployed engineers: enterprise buyers want a date when your FDEs leave.

On what a US$40bn+ buyer expects from AI vendors, and how he used VCs to source startups.

What a national trust bank charter does and does not change, with Modern Treasury's founders.

Framing on charters, FedNow, RTP and stablecoin rail adoption.

Where are we with GLD/TLT?

Russell Clark revisits his long-gold, short-Treasuries trade and asks whether it is time to retire it.