Latin American startup investment climbed by 14.3% in 2025, driven by a boost in both early- and late-stage funding, Crunchbase data shows.
Overall, venture funding in the region increased to $4.1 billion across seed- through growth-stage deals in 2025, up from $3.6 billion in 2024. Investors active in the area who spoke with Crunchbase News also said they remain bullish on Latin America’s potential for startup innovation, particularly in financial services and as the region’s middle class continues to expand.
However, venture dollars invested in 2025 across such deals still totaled less than half of the $8.4 billion invested in 2022, and were a fraction of the amount invested in 2021, a record-setting year for the region’s startup investment levels.
In the fourth quarter, venture funding in Latin America amounted to $1.085 billion, down 16% from $1.285 billion raised by LatAm startups in Q4 2024, and up 1% from the $1.07 billion raised in Q3 2025.
Table of contents
Brazil still leads
Following historical trends, Brazil remained the region’s top venture investment destination in 2025, followed by Mexico. In total, Brazil-based startups raised $2.1 billion during the year, up 10.5% from the $1.9 billion raised in 2024. Mexico-based startups brought in $1.1 billion in funding in 2025, up 53% from the $718 million raised in 2024.
For perspective, we charted out total investment, color-coded by stage, for the past 12 quarters below.
Late stage and technology growth
Of the total amount raised in 2025, $1.63 billion went into late-stage and growth deals, up 14% year over year. In the fourth quarter, just $251 million flowed into late-stage and growth deals, down 69% compared to $806 million in Q4 2024. That’s also down 39.2% compared to the third quarter of 2025, when startups in the region raised $413 million in late-stage and growth funding.
Notably, Mexico-based startups had the distinction of raising the three largest rounds of 2025. Plata, a Mexico City-based startup offering Mastercard credit cards, picked up $160 million in a March Series A led by Kora at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. Then, just over seven months later, the fintech raised a $250 million Series B, more than doubling its valuation to $3.1 billion.
And, in late June, Mexico City-based fintech startup Klar — believed to be Mexico’s largest digital bank —- announced a $170 million Series C round that valued the company at $800 million.
Early stage
Meanwhile, early-stage investment surged in the fourth quarter of 2025 with $690 million flowing into startups, up an impressive 112% compared to the $325 million in Q4 2024. For 2025 as a whole, early-stage investment totaled nearly $2 billion, up 31.9% compared to the $1.48 billion in all of 2024.
Seed and angel
Seed and angel investment totaled $144 million for the fourth quarter, which marked a 6.5% decrease year over. For all of 2025, seed and angel investment amounted to $540 million, down 22% compared to the $692 million raised in 2024.
Investor POV: An inflection point
Michael Nicklas, a partner at Valor Capital Group who is based in Rio de Janeiro, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm is optimistic about Latin America because the region “combines scale, a young and increasingly digital population, and deep structural inefficiencies that technology can solve — especially across financial services, commerce, logistics, health, and education.”
In his view, Latin America is now reaching a structural inflection point. Greater digital access, middle-class expansion, infrastructure investment and pro-innovation regulation — such as open finance in Brazil — are converging to unlock new business models across the digital economy, he said.
At the same time, significant inefficiencies remain, which creates more opportunity. In Brazil, for example, corporate credit represents around 32% of GDP, compared with roughly 73% in the United States, a gap that illustrates how much value is still to be created, according to Nicklas.
“The region has already proven its ability to build category leaders, and growing connectivity between the U.S. and Latin America reinforces Valor’s cross-border strategy, supporting both Latin companies expanding globally and global companies entering the region,” he added.
“Latin America is also emerging as a pragmatic laboratory for blockchain adoption, driven by real economic needs,” he said.
Fintech and broader financial infrastructure are core focus areas for Valor Capital, including payments, digital banking, crypto and digital assets, and platforms that expand financial inclusion and efficiency, particularly in credit.
Brazil, in particular, is central to this thesis, he believes.
“The country has become a global benchmark for regulatory leadership, with what is often called the “Brazil Stack” — digital identity through Gov.br, instant payments via Pix, and data-sharing frameworks such as Open Finance, alongside the development of Drex,” he noted. “These modern rails materially reduce friction and create the foundation for a new generation of financial and digital products.”
Beyond financial services, Valor is increasingly focused on enterprise and B2B software that digitize large, inefficient industries such as logistics, retail and services. The firm also invests in technology-enabled consumer, commerce and infrastructure plays, from mobility and logistics to edtech and healthtech.
Damaris Mendoza, a Mexico City-based partner at 500 Global, told Crunchbase News that her firm is “incredibly bullish” on Latin America.
“The opportunity is still immense,” she wrote via email. “We’re still a region with deeply significant challenges, which translates into incredible opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs.”
The region is also still profoundly underinvested, in her view, “with major capitalization needs,” especially in early stages.
“As a region, we have all the ingredients: strong technical talent, ambition, resilience, and massive opportunities,” she said. “And when you add capital that genuinely provides differentiated value, it becomes an incredibly exciting recipe.”
As with Valor, fintech remains the asset class favorite for 500 Global. However, Mendoza believes there is room for disruption and capitalization “across every industry” in the region.
Hustle Fund partner Haley Bryant noted that her firm has been investing in Latin America since 2020 and has backed more than 20 companies across the region.
Fintech makes up about half of Hustle Fund’s LatAm investments.
“Neobanks and payments laid the groundwork,” she said. “Now we’re seeing a second wave of more vertical and infrastructure-driven fintech, SME financial services, underwriting, insurtech, and digital wealth.”
Beyond fintech, Hustle Fund is also excited about AI-native enterprise and vertical software in under-digitized sectors like healthcare, logistics, manufacturing and back-office ops.
“These are markets where strong fundamentals and capital efficiency really matter, and LatAm founders are building with that mindset from day one,” Bryant told Crunchbase News.
While acknowledging that Brazil “still matters a lot” given its GDP and scale of outcomes, as in the case of Nubank, Bryant said Hustle Fund is currently especially excited about Mexico.
The country has become a “real regional hub” as founders and operators relocate there, “driven by nearshoring, proximity to the U.S., and a growing density of talent and capital,” she added.
“Networks and capital are helping LatAm not only mature but compound, as experienced operators from Nubank, Rappi, Newports, Kavak, and others are starting their next act, and global talent is being drawn to Mexico City in particular,” she said. “I’m especially excited about ecosystems with strong fintech talent like Colombia and technical talent like Argentina that could start regionally and expand, and founders coming out of overlooked geographies.”
Methodology
The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Jan. 4, 2026.
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.)
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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