Latin America
9 items
TractianRound Brazil United StatesTractian raises US$130m Series D at a US$1.4bn post-money valuation.
The São Paulo-founded industrial-AI company, now headquartered in Atlanta, sells sensors and software that monitor machinery and predict failures. Sapphire Ventures and M&G's Catalyst co-led, with N47, General Catalyst, Bosch Ventures, 53 Stations, Monashees, Endeavor Catalyst, Norte Ventures and Y Combinator participating. LatAm founders who relocate to the US are still carrying their early local backers to the unicorn stage.
BoldDebt Colombia PeruBold secures roughly US$11.3m in credit from BBVA Spark.
The Colombian payments company will use the bilateral facility to expand lending to SMEs; it already serves more than 700,000 merchants in Colombia and Peru. Bank credit lines are becoming the default way for acquirers to add lending without diluting equity.
Nubank Brazil Mexico ColombiaNubank opens Nu Global to its first customers.
The new global account pays 3.50% APY on USDC and 2.20% on EURC and offers fee-free transfers to more than 35 countries across Latin America and Europe. It is Nubank's clearest move yet to use stablecoins as the rails for cross-border savings and remittances rather than correspondent banking.
Colibri buys Qnow and Cannoli and says more acquisitions are coming.
A year after being acquired by RS Solutions, the Brazilian restaurant-software group is assembling an ecosystem around Colibri Pay (payments), Qnow (queue management and hospitality) and Cannoli (customer relationship tools), targeting dine-in restaurants with revenue above R$300,000 a month. Management says it has cash and appetite for further deals, positioning itself as the in-venue alternative to iFood.
Bolivia emerges as a live test bed for stablecoin credit and fintech regulation.
Tala has partnered with El Dorado to offer pre-qualified unsecured credit disbursed in USDT within seconds to wallet users, starting in Bolivia, and running on Tempo. Separately, Takenos became the first fintech incorporated from scratch under Bolivia's new ASFI framework, which now covers 36 fintechs. A dollar-scarce economy is proving receptive to onchain finance.
EBANX Brazil NigeriaEBANX launches recurring payments through OPay in Nigeria.
The Brazilian cross-border payments company becomes the first global player to offer direct-debit subscriptions via OPay's roughly 40 million monthly active users. It extends EBANX's export of LatAm-honed local-payments infrastructure to Africa.
C6 Bank BrazilMastercard debuts its AI benefits assistant with C6 Bank in Brazil.
Mastercard Max lets issuers embed contextual, location-aware benefit recommendations inside banking apps, with C6 Bank as launch partner. Brazil is once again the first market for a global card-network feature.
Regional currencies weaken for a second day as Wall Street turns on AI spending.
The Nasdaq 100 fell 2.4% on Thursday, its worst session since June, while Brent crude topped US$113 a barrel and most Latin American currencies lost ground against the dollar. Argentina is facing a wave of bond selling on uncertainty ahead of its 2027 elections and Brazil heads into Sunday's presidential run-off with the Moreira Salles brothers publicly opposing Flávio Bolsonaro. Friday brings Brazilian inflation and Mexican activity data.
2027 minimum-wage talks and Brazil's fiscal path frame the policy agenda.
Analysts told Bloomberg Línea that governments across the region must restore purchasing power without rekindling inflation amid higher energy prices and elevated rates, with Brazil and others having little room for real increases. Fitch said Brazil faces a fiscal adjustment whoever wins the run-off, and Brazil also launched simulated tokenisation pilots for its capital markets.
Fintech & payments
5 itemsMajor US banks block third-party AI agents after detecting unauthorised activity.
Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are limiting agent access to customer accounts, some agents having acted independently of users' instructions. On the retail side, Walmart opened a gateway for shopping agents with spending limits and purchase reviews, while Amazon continues to block agents such as Instinct and Meta's Muse. Liability for rogue agent transactions remains undefined.
WhopRound United StatesWhop raises US$200m Series D at a US$5.1bn valuation.
Sequoia and Shopify led the round for the creator-commerce platform, which hosts about 25,000 operators generating US$550m a month and runs at roughly US$500m in revenue.
Sixteen companies now object to OKXICE's 24/7 tokenised shares as the OCC finalises its GENIUS Act rule.
Microsoft, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs joined the opt-outs under the SEC's Innovation Exemption, and SIFMA asked the SEC for affirmative issuer consent. The OCC's final rule sets reserve, redemption and audit requirements for stablecoin issuers; SoFi launched the first national-bank tokenised consumer deposit and JPM Coin went live on Ethereum.
Stripe United StatesStripe and Anthropic wire payments into AI agents.
Stripe launched Treasury for agents, letting startups check balances, pay invoices and convert currencies through ChatGPT and Claude, and Anthropic's new Claude Duet uses Stripe's Link wallet to pay with one-time virtual cards subject to owner approval.
Prediction-market venues start charging market makers.
US venues traded US$76.7bn of notional volume in September, 26 times the prior year; DKeX began charging makers on combos and will end its NFL fee waiver, while Polymarket US now pays rebates only to its largest firms. The subsidy phase of liquidity building appears to be ending.
Venture & markets
4 items
OpenAIRound United States United Arab EmiratesOpenAI nears a US$30bn round at a US$1.25tn pre-money valuation, framed as a bridge to an IPO.
UAE investors and Coatue are leading as the company lines up more compute. DeepSeek reportedly raised about US$15bn, one of China's largest rounds, two days after US agencies were ordered to remove its technology.
Flapping Airplanes raises a US$1bn Series A at a US$6bn valuation.
Index Ventures and Lux Capital led the round for the startup training large models on less data, with Sequoia, GV and Kleiner Perkins returning. Blacksmith also raised US$66m at a US$1bn valuation led by Sequoia.
LegoraRound Sweden United States MexicoLegora raises US$550m Series E, lifting its valuation to US$8.8bn.
Atreides Management led the round for the Swedish legal-AI company, joined by Baron Capital, Capital Group, Fidelity, Glade Brook and J.P. Morgan, a month after rival Harvey raised the same amount at US$15.5bn. Legora already has an office in Mexico City.
NvidiaMarkets United States EuropeInvestors demand returns from AI capex as Nvidia funds its own European customers.
Meta and Tesla results drove the sell-off, and Sifted's analysis of Nvidia's recent European cheque-writing shows the money concentrating in compute buyers and AI cloud builders that in turn purchase Nvidia chips. Russell Clark notes markets are pricing the end of the AI trade while commodity prices keep rising.
AI & technology
2 itemsOpenAI United StatesOpenAI's model helps uncover two critical PHP flaws affecting around 70% of websites.
Patches shipped after two months of coordinated work; the NSA urged unpatched systems offline and several European governments took sites down as early attacks appeared.
Anthropic United StatesAnthropic launches Claude Duet, a 24/7 personal agent with its own cloud computer.
The research preview runs briefs, calendars and bookings, inherits memory and connectors from the Claude app, and requires user sign-off for payments, deletions and outgoing messages.
Worth reading
3 itemsFinance in the intelligence era.
Part two of Simon Taylor's "Fintech is Dead" thesis, on continuous risk decisions, shared records and delegated agent access.
Saudi Arabia's fintech oasis.
A primer on consumer trends, the SAR 55bn household savings gap and white space in the Kingdom's fintech landscape.
Observations on Money20/20.
A veteran's read on who exhibited and who stayed away in Las Vegas, and what that says about incumbents versus insurgents.