There is money flowing into startups leveraging it to tackle real-world problems anywhere in the world, including in Latin America, but also in Africa. the two newly minted Latin American AI unicorns in Q3 were NotCo, a food tech company, and Unico, a digital ID provider.
Venture capital firms Seaya Ventures and Cathay Innovation have created a joint fund aimed at startups across Latin America that are redefining their industries and society. The team’s first investment was made in September when it went in on Chilean fintech Xepelin’s $230 million round. As solo firms, both have been active in the region making other investments in Mexico’s Kueski and Lana, Brazil’s Facily and alt.bank, and Colombia’s RobinFood and Chile’s Fracttal.
South African tech talent marketplace OfferZen which is one of the beneficiaries of the growing global demand for tech workers, has raised €4.5 million ($5.07 million) in Series A funding from South African investment company Base Capital.
CDP mParticle is being acquired by ecommerce platform Rokt for a price of $300 million. It’s the third acquisition of a leading independent CDP in a little over one month, following Uniphore’s purchase of ActionIQ and Contentstack’s purchase of Lytics. All three buyers offer some type of customer-facing technology; apparently they’ve decided that adding real-time profiles from CDP will give them a competitive edge. (See this blog post for more analysis.)