Alice raises US$40m as CNP buys Prudential's Brazil and Mexico units

AliceRound🇧🇷 Brazil

Alice raises a US$40m Series D led by the IFC to reposition as an AI-first health operator.

The World Bank's investment arm led, joined by Germany's DEG and Finland's FinnFund, with Kaszek, ThornTree Capital and Canary following on; Canary also bought the stake SoftBank took when it led the 2022 Series C.

Development finance institutions are underwriting late-stage Brazilian healthtech while a 2021-vintage lead exits, a template other cap tables may follow.

Inner AI extends its seed round with a strategic cheque from Vivo Ventures.

The undisclosed investment comes six months after a R$30m seed co-led by Canary and ONEVC at a R$500m valuation and targets Squad.com, the startup's autonomous-agent platform, which Vivo may distribute to its SME customers.

Brazil's largest telco is choosing to distribute a local agent platform rather than build one.

Prudential Financial (Brazil and Mexico units)M&A🇧🇷 Brazil🇲🇽 Mexico

Prudential Financial sells its Brazil and Mexico units to CNP Assurances for US$4.03bn in cash.

The French insurer takes two of the region's larger foreign-owned life franchises in one transaction.

One of the largest financial-services exits in Latin America this year, and a signal of continued European appetite for under-penetrated insurance markets as US groups simplify.

Hello Clever partners with Infinia to open local payment rails in eight Latin American countries.

Announced at Money20/20 USA, the deal gives the Australian payments company virtual accounts and local payouts in markets including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina through one integration.

Regional rail aggregators keep winning as foreign fintechs enter LatAm without building country by country.

Tala🇧🇴 Bolivia

Tala embeds credit in El Dorado's digital wallet, starting in Bolivia.

Loans settle in USDT on Tempo, customers move from offer to funds in seconds, and the lender plans to expand across the region.

Stablecoin-settled consumer credit is landing first in dollar-scarce markets, where it solves an FX problem rather than a speculative one.

Abra Group, parent of Avianca and Gol, says a 2026 IPO looks "very difficult" because of fuel costs.

The comment lands as Aeroméxico shares fell sharply on disappointing results, with jet fuel elevated by Middle East tensions.

The region's airline consolidation was meant to culminate in a listing; that window is slipping into 2027.

Colombia's central bank has completed more than a quarter of its dollar-purchase target while the Chilean peso led regional FX gains.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index slipped 0.2% as oil retreated; Colombian trade, Mexican retail sales and Argentine activity data are due today.

Bogotá and Santiago are both using a soft dollar to rebuild buffers.

Brazil votes in its presidential runoff on Sunday as investors weigh the entry point.

Bloomberg Línea's positioning guide notes both outcomes have been traded extensively, while Startups.com.br reports founders counting down to a return to normal dealmaking.

Brazilian venture activity compresses before a runoff and releases afterwards, whichever way the vote goes.

Revolut🇬🇧 United Kingdom

A Google Cloud power failure in London took Revolut offline and disrupted Lloyds, Halifax, the NHS app and UK courts.

Cards were declined and transfers failed for hours before Google reported services mostly restored by mid-afternoon.

With 80m customers Revolut is critical infrastructure, and single-region cloud dependence is now a regulatory conversation.

JPMorganPolicy🇺🇸 United States

JPMorgan says AI agents may not operate its digital channels for customers and has begun blocking known agents.

The stated concern is Reg E and Reg Z liability when an agent using a customer's credentials errs, a replay of the aggregator wars that ended in CFPB Rule 1033.

Agents hold a weaker legal hand than aggregators did, so contracts and tokenised access, not scraping, will define agentic banking.

Visa🇺🇸 United States

Money20/20 USA opened with a wave of agentic-payment launches.

Visa, BILL and Billtrust ran the first live pilot of agents paying approved supplier invoices with tokenised credentials, Mastercard opened early access to Agent Pay for Machines, and Evervault launched short-lived browser tokens for agent checkout.

The networks are standardising agent identity and spend controls before banks are forced to.

RampRound🇺🇸 United States

Ramp raises US$1.85bn at a US$60bn valuation and applies for an OCC trust charter.

Dragoneer led with Thrive, Founders Fund, Sands Capital and Avenir as co-leads; Ramp has reached US$2bn in annualised revenue, while rival Mercury crossed US$1bn.

Business-banking challengers are now valued and chartered like banks.

TrumidM&A🇺🇸 United States

Tradeweb agrees to acquire credit-trading marketplace Trumid for US$1.97bn.

Trumid had raised more than US$700m, including at a US$2.4bn valuation in 2021 from Dragoneer, DST Global, TPG and BlackRock.

An exit below the last private mark, but a clean one in a year of scarce fintech liquidity.

UK startups raised US$6.1bn in Q3 and UK funds a record US$6.9bn.

Mega-rounds were 58% of capital invested, and Index Ventures accounted for half of fund closes with US$3.5bn across three vehicles; the UK took 25% of European venture dollars.

Capital is concentrating in a handful of managers and mega-rounds across Europe, mirroring the US.

CoreWeaveMarkets🇺🇸 United States

The AI-infrastructure sell-off deepened: CoreWeave fell 15.5%, its bond yields neared 15% and data-centre firm Elice dropped 32% on its Seoul debut.

Nscale faces pushback on a US$30bn IPO valuation and hedge funds cut tech exposure at the fastest pace in a decade, per Goldman Sachs.

The debt-funded build-out is being repriced first, and that flows straight into private neocloud and chip valuations.

BrazeM&A🇺🇸 United States

Salesforce agrees to buy Braze for US$5.66bn in cash.

The US$47.50-per-share offer is a 58% premium but below Braze's 2021 IPO price of US$65.

Salesforce is back in large-cap M&A, a signal for other public SaaS names trading below their listing price.

Character.AIM&A🇺🇸 United States

Character.AI files for bankruptcy with Disney as US$20m stalking-horse bidder for its IP.

The platform was losing US$8–9m a month despite roughly 12m active users and faces lawsuits over harm to children.

Consumer AI companions without a distribution partner are proving uninvestable at scale.

Anthropic🇺🇸 United States

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told IMF and World Bank meetings that the singularity has "now begun".

He cited benchmark jumps since 2025, a model scenario of US$44tn US GDP by 2030, disruptive job effects and a window of a few years to decide on an intelligence ceiling.

The framing is now being delivered to finance ministers, which will shape 2027 regulatory agendas.

Nvidia🇩🇪 Germany🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Nvidia widens its European spree with stakes in four German startups and a US$250m compute pledge for UK AI-safety research.

The German deals coincide with Jensen Huang's GTC keynote in Berlin today.

Nvidia is becoming Europe's most active strategic investor just as public markets question the AI build-out.

Pete Florence on why dexterity is robotics' equivalent of coding

a 66-minute conversation on one-shot task learning and what changes when machines can do most physical work.

Inside European fintech's transactional-foundation-model arms race

how Revolut's PRAGMA became the blueprint for Lloyds and Starling, and why scale is the real moat.

CoreWeave panic looks more like 2023 than 2007

John Authers on why the AI-debt scare resembles a regional-bank wobble rather than a systemic crisis.