Latin America
10 itemsAD Ports completes US$835m acquisition of a controlling stake in Brazil's CLI.
The Abu Dhabi port operator bought the position in the Brazilian export terminal operator from Macquarie Group and IG4 Capital. It is one of the larger infrastructure exits for a LatAm private equity sponsor this year and underlines Gulf appetite for Brazilian logistics assets.
Kapital gets initial approval for a bank in Colombia.
The Mexican business-lending fintech, which serves about 350,000 customers and carries a US$2bn valuation, would be able to offer deposit accounts, savings and credit in its second market. A Colombian licence moves Kapital from lender to full-stack bank outside Mexico, a path few LatAm fintechs have completed.
Plata reaches a US$1bn annualised revenue run rate in Mexico.
September revenue of US$85m set the run rate three and a half years after launch, according to CEO Neri Tollardo; the company operates as a full bank with 3.5m active credit-card customers. The pace puts Plata among the fastest-scaling consumer lenders the region has produced.
Clara Argentina MexicoClara launches commercial operations in Argentina.
The corporate payments and spend-management platform also introduced Clara Global in the country and is recruiting a country manager; the product automates 80–90% of expense approvals. Argentina is a further step in Clara's regional build-out beyond Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
dLocal Brazil Peru UruguaydLocal data shows local payment methods lift merchant volumes by up to 55%.
One merchant in Brazil saw total volume rise 55% within five months of adding Pix, while in Peru Yape overtook cards and drove volumes up more than 25% in six months. Account-to-account rails, not cards, now decide conversion for cross-border merchants in the region.
Nexa bets on AI-built, hyper-personalised investment products.
The Brazilian wealthtech launched Nexa Genesis, which lets advisers describe a client's goal in natural language and receive a bespoke product in about two minutes. Founder Lucas Danicek says the company has grown 25% month on month for two years and targets five-fold growth by 2027.
Brazil could overtake the US as the world's largest agricultural exporter in 2026.
ECLAC executive secretary José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs told Bloomberg Línea the country could significantly strengthen its agro-export position, though weaker global demand, weather and US trade policy are the risks.
Mexican peso loses ground as Banxico rate-cut questions and Q3 earnings loom.
Bloomberg Línea asks what a further Banxico cut would do to the currency, and previews a heavy reporting week on the Mexican exchange from Cemex to Walmex, with América Móvil also due. Mexico's international reserves data is published today.
Colombian credit to stay expensive until mid-2027.
High policy rates are expected to persist until June 2027, while the peso holds steady around COP$3,150 per dollar. Tight money keeps pressure on consumer lenders' funding costs and growth-stage valuations.
Argentina's country risk refuses to fall; US-listed bank stocks in focus.
Bloomberg Línea looks at why the sovereign spread is not compressing and which drivers investors are waiting for, alongside the upside case for Argentine banks listed in New York. Country risk remains the gating factor for any re-opening of the local venture market.
Fintech & payments
4 itemsSalmon raises US$140m to expand lending in the Philippines.
The banking and lending platform, backed by a licensed rural bank, will fund motorcycle and MSME credit products; its AI credit engine decides in minutes and the app has 9m downloads.
Mastercard United StatesMastercard launches stablecoin risk intelligence at Money20/20.
Stablecoin Security, debuting in North America with Borderless.xyz and Keyrails, flags fraud, scam and sanctions risk before funds move on-chain; separately JPMorgan brought its JPM Coin deposit token to Ethereum for institutional clients.
RevolutMarkets United KingdomRevolut marked at a US$121.2bn valuation as IPO talk hardens.
Forge Global priced shares at US$2,125 on 15 October, up from a US$115bn secondary in July; CEO Nik Storonsky says a listing is about two years away.
Crypto.comPolicy United StatesCrypto.com and Novig sue Missouri over sports event contracts.
Both argue the Commodity Exchange Act gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction after the state demanded licensing and a 10% wagering tax; Kalshi, Polymarket and Robinhood held off, and a Kentucky magistrate recommended sending a similar case back to state court.
Venture & markets
6 items
TenstorrentRound United States CanadaTenstorrent raises US$1.5bn Series E at a US$6.2bn valuation.
Trace Capital and Innovation X co-led the round for the RISC-V inference chipmaker, with Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, ARK Invest and T. Rowe Price among others; the company turned down approaches from Intel and Qualcomm earlier this year.
OpenAIRound United StatesOpenAI races to close a US$30bn round above a US$1.4tn valuation before Anthropic's IPO.
Reuters reports the company wants to lock in overlapping investors before Anthropic's expected mid-November listing invites direct comparison.
CoreWeaveMarkets United StatesCoreWeave becomes the stress test for AI neoclouds.
Shares fell more than 15% last week, 2030 bond yields jumped 500bp to near 16% and credit default swaps reached about 1,200bp against US$50bn of debt; Gartner estimates 80% of roughly 100 neoclouds will not survive independently by 2030.
Nscale faces investor pushback on its US$30bn IPO target.
Some prospective buyers are urging a US$16–19bn range for the Nvidia-backed data-centre developer, and Microsoft pulled out of a UK data-centre deal with the company as borrowing costs rise.
Goldman SachsMarkets United StatesGoldman warns the US rally is narrower than it looks.
The S&P 500 sits 2% below its record while the median stock is down 15% from its own high; Goldman still projects 8,700 in twelve months but recommends 23 defensive names, while Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson sees a buying window in financials, industrials and consumer.
Qonto FranceFrench unrest hits Qonto's new Paris headquarters.
The fintech's recently opened office was vandalised and set alight after cost-of-living protests turned violent, with more than 2,000 arrests nationally; operations continue, but founders and VCs told Sifted they expect prolonged political and fiscal uncertainty ahead of next year's election.
AI & technology
3 items
Anthropic United StatesAnthropic commits 5% of equity to a Public Benefit Fund.
The company-owned LLC, worth about US$48bn at the May valuation, could fund nonprofits or direct distributions to groups such as workers displaced by AI, with further 2% tranches possible as the valuation rises; Elon Musk followed with a pledge of one SpaceX share per US child.
MiniMax releases M3.1 Flash, claiming parity with frontier US models at 70% lower cost.
The Chinese lab says the update runs nearly three times faster and beats GPT-5.6 Sol and Claude Opus 5 on some agentic benchmarks; the same day DHS ordered US civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek technology from their systems.
OpenCode breach runs up charges on developers' AI accounts.
The open-source coding agent said attackers hit 1.4% of OpenCode Console users in what it called a distillation attack, with developers reporting unauthorised OpenAI, Anthropic and Google spend; the episode highlights the exposure created by stored API keys.
Worth reading
3 itemsThe True Meaning of CoreWeave
Russell Clark's working-out of why a 1,100bp CDS and a stock at six times book can coexist, and what it says about the AI capex chain.
State of Prediction Markets, Q2 2026
a free 70-page report on a quarter in which prediction markets traded US$111bn, more than 2024 and 2025 combined.
Sifted AI 100
the ranking of Europe's next wave of standout AI startups, useful for pattern-matching against LatAm applied-AI deal flow.