The Latin American startup ecosystem is on the rise.
Here’s a recap of the region’s activity in August:
- More than 75 investment rounds
- Around $2.5B invested
- 3 new unicorns
- B2B solutions rising
- The SuperClásico moving to the startup ecosystem
Brazil and Argentina led Venture Funding
The recent Brazil versus Argentina match suspension leaves a curious tension between these two countries – a rivalry that extended to the venture capital world.
The countries led the ‘funding by country’ chart and stayed pretty close to each other. Late-stage fundings in Argentinian startups represented about 43% of investments in Latam.
Both Brazil and Argentina total around $2B of the total $2.5B disclosed investments recorded.
But things take a different turn when looking at the number of investments made per country.
Brazil’s strong investments in early-stage startups significantly outnumbered the rest of Latam. They not only surpassed it, but they doubled the total amount of investment rounds made.
*Debt, grants, and crowdfunding were excluded from this chart.
Biggest Investment Rounds in Latam
The superclásico isn’t over. August’s top 6 biggest rounds were led by 3 Brazilian and 3 Argentinian companies.
While the Brazilian companies are distributed in pets, real estate, and security industries, the Argentinian companies are from the finance and e-commerce industries.
Nuvemshop/TiendaNube’s Series E and Ualá’s Series D are outstanding in the list – the biggest disclosed rounds for the month of August that amount to a total of $850M (34% of Latam’s funding).
Latest Unicorns in Latam
The latest Latin American unicorns are all from Argentina and Brazil: Nuvemshop, Ualá, and Unico IDtech.
Unico IDtech’s valuation was not disclosed, but we do know it is higher than $1B.
Then, Argentinian Ualá and Nuvemshop reached a $2.45B and $3.1B post-money valuation, respectively, with August’s funding rounds.
Most Funded Industries in Latam
Once again, enterprise and finance industries received the most funding.
In terms of enterprise, funds mostly went to business management software, e-commerce and app building, and HR tools.
Finance mostly saw investments in payments, banking, and investing solutions.
Petlove’s Series C put the ‘funding spotlight’ on the pet industry during August.
After these industries, the real estate, security (mostly cybersecurity), edtech, and healthtech industries also stood out in terms of funding.
Startups are Growth
As usual, most of the funding rounds were for early-stage startups. But when looking at the graph below, the difference in amounts allocated to early-stage versus later-stage contrasts immensely.
Early-stage ventures represented $510M of the total funding, all distributed among 51 rounds. While Series C rounds and onwards raised around $1.4B, distributed into just 7 investment rounds.
There were 12 undisclosed funding type rounds; a total of $304.1M was raised in these rounds.
September is already leaving some interesting insights. Stay tuned for next month’s recap and until then, immerse yourself in Latin America’s startup ecosystem.