In the second quarter of 2025, Mexico emerged as the leader in terms of venture capital dollars raised in Latin America, per Crunchbase data. It marked the first time since the second quarter of 2012 that Mexico’s startups brought in more venture funding than their Brazil counterparts, our data indicated.
Now in the third quarter, it appears that Brazil is back on top — and in a big way. Brazil-based startups raised $692 million in Q3, up 47% year over year and 92% quarter over quarter. Mexico-headquartered startups brought in $126 million, down 21% year over year and a 71% dip quarter over quarter.
The largest raise in Brazil — and Latin America as a whole — was announced on Sept. 11. That was a $160 million Series D round for Sao Paulo-based Omie — which offers cloud-based management software for SMEs —- that valued the company at $700 million. Partners Group led the financing.
In general, a boom in late-stage and growth funding helped buoy the region year over year, Crunchbase data shows. Overall, startups in Latin America raised a combined $1 billion across seed- through growth-stage deals in the third quarter, up 21% year over year and up 8% from the second quarter.
Of that total, $477 million went into late-stage and growth deals, up 176% year over year. That’s down 16%, however, from the $565 million in late-stage and growth financing the region saw in the second quarter of this year.
Early-stage investment surged in the third quarter with $425 million flowing into startups, up 18% year over year and 48% compared to the second quarter.
Seed and angel investment totaled $105 million for the third quarter, which marked a 34% increase compared to the prior quarter, but a 47% decrease year over year.
For perspective, we charted out total investment, color-coded by stage, for the past 10 quarters below.
Table of contents
Late-stage boom
While Omie’s venture round was the largest financing in Latin America, it was not the only nine-figure raise the region saw in Q3.
Other large deals included Kapital, a Mexico City-based Y Combinator-backed digital bank, raising a $100 million Series C that propelled its valuation to over $1.3 billion. Pelion Venture Partners and Tribe Capital led that financing.
Canopy raised $100 million in a round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Cloud9 Capital. Founded in 2025, the Sao Paulo-based startup is a tech holding company that aims to acquire and scale B2B software providers.
Investor POV
Camila Vieira, head of Brazil at QED Investors, said the quality of the companies getting funded in Latin America as of late seems “high” and “like a step up from earlier in the year.”
“We saw big rounds, a solid shift to AI taking over, and lots of activity in fintech both in terms of deals and market events,” she told Crunchbase News.
“The AI hype felt like it was a wave behind the U.S. for a bit,” she said, “but now we are seeing application layer solutions getting funded in addition to companies leaning heavily into AI-enhanced strategies.”
Fraud prevention and security are taking center stage on the backs of major breaches in Brazil. Vieira cited research revealing that in 2024, Brazil’s financial sector reported R$10.1 billion ($1.88 billion in USD) in losses related to fraud.
“This is already increasing the regulatory thresholds in Brazil and is likely to put more scrutiny in fintech,” she said.
Mexico was not excluded from the drama as a number of banks dealt with FinCEN issues — potentially delaying or postponing activity to push fintech forward, Vieira noted.
“On the positive side, Colombia gave clarity around open banking and launched Bre-B, the country’s real-time payment network,” she added.
Rocio Wu, partner at F-Prime, said her firm has long tracked the rise of alternative assets, or alts, as they “become a core piece of the modern investment portfolio,” and amid the subsequent rise of infrastructure players enabling their expansion.
Within “alts,” private credit has been one of the fastest-growing and most overlooked segments, she noted.
That led to F-Prime leading the $30 million Series B round into Kanastra, a platform that offers tech-driven back-office services for alternative investments, to “spearhead Brazil’s private credit infrastructure development.” Over the past 12 months alone, she said, the company grew 150%, with customers spanning Brazil’s largest banks, investment managers, private credit funds and originators.
Overall, Diana Narváez, principal and head of LatAm investments at Flourish Ventures, believes that Latin American founders generally “are rewriting the rules of financial innovation.”
“Fintech remains the region’s No. 1 funded sector because trust, access and agency are still the biggest pain points for consumers and businesses,” she told Crunchbase News. “In LatAm, entrepreneurs innovate under tighter capital and tougher consumer realities, producing solutions that are not just resilient but transformative. This is not a story of catching up, it’s a story of leapfrogging.”
Recent LatAm investments for the firm include co-leading rounds for: Akua, which aims to modernize payment acquiring in LatAm, and Kamino, a Sao Paulo-based platform that integrates financial management software, a native bank account and corporate card for midsized businesses in Brazil. It also wrote a check into a $2.1 million round for Liquid, also based in Sao Paulo, which is building real estate credit infrastructure.
The rise of stablecoins
Vieira believes that “everyone continues to watch stablecoins, trade and other cross-border activity as a big opportunity for Latin America.”
A stablecoin is a type of digital currency designed to maintain a stable value.
Wu is also excited about the potential for stablecoins in the region.
“We have increasingly high conviction that stablecoins are the killer use case for crypto, and cross-border payments are an ideal use case because they offer material benefits over current rails — faster, cheaper and more transparent — in a massive market,” she said.
In addition, with upcoming regulatory clarity in Brazil, the local denominated stablecoin is on the rise, “with the promise of yield-bearing stablecoins and tokenization of real-world assets,” Wu noted.
“Overall, the stablecoin market in LatAm has numerous nascent players with liquidity fragmentation, and we look forward to seeing more interoperability and consolidation,” she said.
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 6, 2025.
Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.
Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.
Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.
Glossary of funding terms
Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.
Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.
Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.
Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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