This is one of the lowest capital raising periods for Latin American startups in the last five years, according to a study by Endeavor. Latin American companies only raised US$406 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to the Venture Capital and Growth Equity Ecosystem 2023 study. The study also revealed that the number of investments is 40% above the first quarter of 2021.
In June, Visa announced the acquisition of the Brazilian payment platform Pismo for US$1 billion in a move to expand its presence in Latin America. With this operation, the Brazilian startup becomes the first success story of the Falabella Ecosystem, turning into a unicorn. Pismo, founded in 2016, is a payment processor and central banking platform operating in Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. In 2019, Falabella started collaborating with Pismo to develop the digital wallet Fpay in Chilean market.
Nigerian insurtech startup MyCover.ai is announcing today that it has raised US$1.25 million in pre-seed funding led by Pan-African venture capital fund Ventures Platform with participation from Founders Factory Africa and follow-on investor Techstars. The startup, which participated in the Techstars Toronto program last year, said it will use the investment to bolster its in-house operations and tech talent, invest heavily in its proprietary technology and strategically expand its operations into other African markets.
Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content. But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines. Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results. We’ll see if competitors do the same.