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Numbers don't lie: Latin America has never attracted so much investment to its technology-based companies

No matter the angle, data by Sling Hub in Brazil, and info by LAVCA and Crunchbase indicate a record year for LatAm in 2021

LatAm tech startup investments boom amidst broad digital reinvention and new trends emerging during the global pandemic
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Last week, we’ve shown the numbers gathered by Sling Hub about Brazil’s ecosystem and sent first-hand to LABS. According to the Brazilian intelligence platform, Latin America’s largest economy secured 760 rounds and snagged $10 billion in investments (a 194% growth compared to 2020) last year. This week, preliminary stats by LAVCA (the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America) and data by Crunchbase show that Latin America has never attracted so much investment (venture capital and private equity) to its technology-based companies as it did in 2021.

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Latin America crossed the $15.3 billion mark in venture capital investments last year, according to LAVCA’s preliminary data – more than three times the 2019’s record, when $4.8 billion were poured into Latin American startups. The organization’s full report on the second half of 2021 will be available sometime this quarter.

On top of that, global participation in local investments in Latin America‘s innovation ecosystem has been steadily increasing since 2019: 21% of transactions included at least one global investor in 2019, jumping to 23% in 2020 and 31% in the first half of 2021, according to LAVCA. “Now, we are interested in seeing how do collaboration dynamics between global and local investors develop during 2022”, the association said recently.

READ ALSO: All I want for Christmas is… funding. Some funds gave many gifts to Latin America in 2021

Crunchbase, in its turn, found out that while established regional firms, like Kaszek and monashees, remain the most prolific venture dealmakers, big-name global investors, such as Valor Capital Group and Tiger Global Management are ramping-up the charts. “This is evidenced in our ranking of the top 14 most active early- and late-stage investors by deal count last year,” wrote Crunchbase News‘s Joanna Glasner on Monday.

The data gathered by the platform encompasses venture capital and private equity deals. While Kaszek dominated the early and late-stage rounds (42 deals), followed by monashees (37), Y Combinator (65) was Latin America’s most active seed dealmaker, followed by Sao Paulo-based firm Bossa Nova Investimentos.

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