Brazil is home to the majority of Latin America’s unicorns at a time when regional venture capital is on the rise again. South Summit, which held its Latin American edition in Porto Alegre from 25 to 27 March 2026 in partnership with IE University and the Government of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, highlights the strength and leadership of the Brazilian ecosystem in creating unicorns.
Latin America currently has 46 unicorns, 25 of which are in Brazil, maintaining the country’s position as the region’s leading hub for companies valued at over a billion dollars. Indeed, according to South Summit, the concentration of venture capital in the country, combined with the dynamism of its ecosystem, forms the basis for the development of unicorns. It is worth noting that Brazil reached a peak of 25, and QI Tech was the latest to join that group.
Brazil ended 2025 as the leading destination for Latin American venture capital, with $2.032 billion invested across 363 deals, accounting for 52.9% of the region’s capital. The ecosystem has moved from the expansionary cycle of 2021 to a more mature phase, in which capital is more concentrated in companies with traction, validation and a genuine ability to scale. At the same time, Porto Alegre stands out as a hub of innovation, representing the country’s main innovation hub, which encourages the development of the start-up ecosystem in the region, which has seen exceptional growth in recent years.
At sectoral level, one of the key reasons for this leadership lies in fintech, as Brazil is home to more than half of all fintech companies in Latin America and the Caribbean and is set to account for 60% of regional fintech investment by 2025 – a concentration explained by its role as a global laboratory for financial innovation. Furthermore, the country’s financial infrastructure has created particularly fertile ground for new businesses. This combination has enabled many Brazilian start-ups not only to sell end products to consumers, but also to build infrastructure for third parties – a recurring feature among the country’s unicorns – positioning them in sectors such as enterprise software.
The South Summit Brazil provided a fairly accurate picture of this ecosystem. Participants include Diego Barreto, CEO of iFood, Latin America’s largest food delivery platform; Ricardo Josua, CEO of Pismo, a cloud banking and payments platform acquired by Visa in 2023 for nearly a billion dollars; and Pedro Mac Dowell, founder and CEO of QI Tech, which specialises in technological and regulatory infrastructure for banks, fintech companies and businesses. They are joined by investors who help shed light on how this scale is built, such as Alex Szapiro, managing partner of the SoftBank Latin America Fund; Caio Bolognesi, managing partner of Monashees, one of Brazil’s pioneering funds; and Wana Schulze, head of Vivo Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Vivo, part of the Telefónica group. This year’s programme also brings together 11 unicorn founders and representatives from 130 investment funds.
The composition of these names also helps to illustrate the kind of unicorns Brazil is producing. It is not just about digital consumer services or mass-market apps. At the South Summit, companies involved in delivery and logistics, such as iFood; banking infrastructure, such as Pismo; and B2B fintech and banking-as-a-service, such as QI Tech. In other words, part of Brazil’s leadership is based on businesses built around payments, credit, banking services, financial software and services for companies, not just marketplaces or consumer platforms. This greater sectoral diversity explains why Brazil continues to produce large-scale companies even in a more challenging environment than that of four or five years ago.
The Brazilian start-up Dairy Tech emerged as the winner of the start-up competition at the fifth edition of South Summit Brazil. Furthermore, the Barcelona-based start-up Flomics, which has developed a liquid biopsy test for the early diagnosis and clinical management of cancer and other complex diseases, was selected as the winner of the Best Team award.
Dairy Tech, founded by Maria de Lourdes Borba Magalhães, is a tech start-up specialising in the development of digital solutions for the dairy sector. Its platform enables farms to optimise day-to-day management by centrally managing herd data, monitoring milk production and improving operational processes. Thanks to these tools, producers can make more informed decisions, increase efficiency and improve the profitability of their farms.
Specifically, this Brazilian start-up has developed a rapid diagnostic method for use on farms that allows A2 milk-producing cows to be identified in just 20 minutes and guarantees the purity of the product in the tanks. This type of milk, which contains only the A2 beta-casein protein – easier to digest for some people – requires precise verification processes to ensure the absence of A1 – which is associated with digestive problems in some people.
“In recent years, we have turned what was a promise in the first year into reality. Porto Alegre has become a mature hub,” says Maria Benjumea, president and founder of South Summit, in a statement. “Now we must continue to move forward, and if we truly want to make this ecosystem international, it is essential to look ahead and think big. “This is the next challenge: connecting Porto Alegre to the global ecosystem and making it international.” In this regard, Benjumea also announced that the sixth edition of South Summit Brazil will take place from 15 to 17 April 2027 in Porto Alegre.
During the closing ceremony of #SouthSummitBrazil26, the other winning start-ups in each category were also announced; in this edition, they stood out in particular for their female leadership. Of the five projects awarded this year, four were founded by women: Unibaio, recognised as the most sustainable; Flomics, based in Barcelona, awarded as the startup with the best team; and Nucleo Vitro, recognised as the most disruptive. Furthermore, Naturannova was awarded as the most scalable startup.
Similarly, the most promising start-ups by vertical sector have also been announced: sustainability and climate technology: Naturannova (Chile) and Unibaio (Argentina); health: Flomics (Spain) and Nucleo Vitro (Brazil); Industry 5.0: UBI Meat (Canada) and Dairy Tech (Brazil); enterprise: Zarv (Brazil) and Primelis (France); digital: Redraw (United States) and Wedy (Brazil).
Amid the rapid expansion of generative artificial intelligence, the aim of South Summit Brazil 2026, through its slogan ‘Human by Design’, was simply to place the human being at the heart of the innovation process. To this end, the event brought together some of the leading experts from the entrepreneurial and technological ecosystem, such as Ed so Ho, CTO of Lenovo, and Jack Mardack, co-founder of Oyster HR, to discuss the opportunities and challenges posed by constant technological advances.
Jack Mardack emphasises the need to strengthen the role of human judgement in an increasingly automated environment: “The role of humans is more important than ever. Those with initiative and decision-making skills are seeing their impact grow, but this also makes it essential to strengthen human oversight to ensure that the results are accurate, safe and accountable. If we stop integrating younger talent, we run the risk of creating a crisis in the future: AI needs human judgement to sustain itself over time.”
Ed So adds that the key lies not only in technology, but in humanity’s ability to interpret it and make the most of it: ‘In an increasingly unpredictable world, competitive advantage does not lie in knowing all the answers, but in asking the right questions, starting from empathy, curiosity and creativity. Technology is advancing faster than our ability to adapt, which is why the greatest challenge is not AI, but us.’
Over the course of three days, South Summit Brazil 2026 brought together over 24,000 participants from 70 countries, as well as more than 800 representatives from the entrepreneurial ecosystem, 7,000 companies, 3,000 start-ups and over 1,000 investors. (Photo: a view of Porto Alegre by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash)
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