Latin America-Focused FinTech Kapital Valued at $1.3 Billion

Mexico City-based FinTech company Kapital said Tuesday (Sept. 2) that it doubled its valuation to $1.3 billion and became “Latin America’s first AI unicorn.”

The company said this while announcing in a press release that it raised up to $100 million in a Series C funding round to accelerate the growth of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Latin America.

“We are proud to join an elite group of unicorns emerging from Latin America,” Kapital CEO Rene Saul said in the release. “Kapital is already profitable, and our growth continues to accelerate through the unique combination of a banking license and proprietary software.”

This funding round came about two years after Kapital raised $165 million, including a $40 million Series B equity financing round and $125 million in debt financing. In the December 2023 press release announcing that round, the company said it planned to invest the new capital in its cross-border offering and expand its product suite.

Today, Kapital’s technology-first financial infrastructure allows it to develop new products natively and acquire traditional financial institutions that it then rebuilds on its tech stack, according to the Tuesday press release.

The company now has a $3 billion balance sheet and 300,000 customers across the United States, Mexico and Colombia, per the release.

Kapital Chief Financial Officer Fernando Sandoval said in the release that the company is able to modernize infrastructure with anti-money laundering and know-your-customer (AML/KYC) compliance, machine learning and AI-driven risk systems.

“Kapital is emerging as the most forward-looking technology bank in the region — built on a foundation that is both financial and computational, designed to compound advantage with every product, acquisition and customer we bring onto the platform,” Sandoval said.

In another recent move, Kapital said in an Aug. 20 press release that it will acquire the brokerage, asset management and operational banking assets of Grupo Financiero Intercam.

Kapital said in the release that the acquisition will follow a vetting of the Intercam assets by financial risk and forensic advisory firm K2 Integrity; that Kapital’s compliance systems will prevent illicit activity; and that upon closing, Kapital will invest $100 million to strengthen operations and compliance.