 After a huge buildup, funding for Latin American startups fell to $3.4B in Q1’22. The figure was down 30% from Q4’21 but still 28% higher than during the same quarter one year earlier. The round count was down from Q4’21’s total of 35 at just 15 reported deals. More: - The latest figures come as the continuation of a downward trajectory that began after LatAm funding jumped to an unprecedented height of $7B in Q2’21.
- Throughout 2021, investors pumped $19.5B into LatAm companies, mostly targeting late-stage companies and generating 25 unicorns in Brazil and Mexico alone.
- The biggest funding losses came at the late stage, which saw only $1.8B in total investment in the last quarter.
- Though numbers were down, some massive rounds came from the $300M Series D for Brazil-based digital bank Neon and the $260M Series F for Brazilian consumer loan provider Creditas.
- The seed stage, in fact, held strong at $0.3B, the level it has maintained for the last three quarters.
- Wenyi Cai, founder and CEO of Colombia-based Polymath Ventures, says that seed-stage companies are still targeting potential markets in e-commerce, logistics, fintech, and social commerce for LatAm’s growing middle class.
- However, she sees stormy seas ahead for the unicorns that abandoned lean principles and expects that culling to take place.
Reminder: - Just yesterday, SoftBank announced the spinning-off of its Latin America fund into an independent investment entity called Upload Ventures to deploy around $100M per year throughout the region.
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Berlin-based Choco, a sustainable food supply chain platform for restaurants and wholesalers, raised $111M. The Series B2 round was internal funding led by G Squared and Insight Partners and saw the company’s valuation boosted to $1.2B. More: - The funds came six months on the heels of a $100M Series B led by Left Lane Capital.
- Given a $63.7M Series A, which was raised in two tranches ($33.5M in 2019, $30.2M in 2020), Choco has now raised a total of $282.5M to date.
- As recently as 2020, it was valued at $230M.
- Choco provides the $6T food industry with software to digitize ordering, supply chain, and communications for suppliers and restaurants.
- It saw 350% growth in users over the past year and reported a total of $1.2B in goods traded on its platform to date.
- It is active in the U.S., Germany, France, Spain, Austria, and Belgium and works with around 15,000 restaurant customers and 16,000 on the supply side.
- With the new funding, Choco plans to expand into new markets and hopes to become the market leader in the U.S. and Europe.
- It will expand its current team of 400 to between 600 and 700 by the end of the year.
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 A message from OUTREACH What Your Executive Team Really Thinks About Your Sales Numbers Your executive team hates surprises, especially when it comes to revenue. Unfortunately, sales forecasts built on guesswork can be inaccurate and put you at risk of delivering surprise outcomes. This has negative consequences across the business for quarters to come, leading to an ever-widening Sales Execution Gap that grows over time. If this invokes anxiety, you’re not alone. Watch this on-demand webinar now to get the inside scoop on how sales execution missteps impact a company’s numbers — and how you can fix it. Outreach’s CFO shares her first-hand view on partnering with sales leaders and leveraging data to drive go-to-market success. When organizations close the Sales Execution Gap and execute at their full potential, they win more deals with less effort and deliver a better customer experience. Watch On-Demand
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Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey & Co. have all piled into Stripe’s Frontier Fund. The fund is now outfitted with $925M to buy offsets from startups that remove carbon dioxide from the air. More: - The Frontier Fund is intended to solve a double purpose: Make it easier for companies unable to reduce their own emissions to buy offsets and to enable companies removing carbon to scale more quickly.
- The end goal is the establishment of an industry that will support carbon removal.
- Beyond known strategies such as planting trees, the type of companies targeted by Frontier includes those that crush minerals that attract carbon like iron filings to a magnet and others that pickle wood to stop it from degrading and releasing the carbon it captured in its life span.
- Companies can pitch their idea to Frontier, which will evaluate their proposals based on various factors.
- They will then negotiate a price per ton captured (between $75 and $2,000), and Frontier will make a commitment to spend millions of dollars for the delivery of those tons.
- Stripe and Shopify have both independently run a Frontier-like fund. Each so far supported 14 and 22 startups with $7M and $30M, respectively.
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MoonPay, which provides consumers with a way to pay for digital assets with credit cards, raised $86.7M at a $3.4B valuation. The funding came from a list of celebrities, including Justin Bieber, Jason Derulo, Bruce Willis, Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matthew McConaughey. More: - Support also came from Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher and Guy “Madonna’s manager” Oseary), Kinship Ventures (Questlove, Mindy Kaling, Zoe Saldaña), and CAA’s Connect Ventures.
- The latest injection follows a $555M Series A round led by Thrive Capital, a firm founded by Josh Kushner.
- The company claims to have assisted 10 million customers in processing almost $3B.
- It partners with exchanges such as Coinbase, FTX, and OpenSea, as well as wallets including MetaMask in addition to over 260 service providers.
- With the goal of being the PayPal of cryptocurrency, MoonPay effectively lets people pay for NFTs (such as Bored Yacht Club Apes) without having to buy a bunch of Ethereum beforehand.
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 A message from EQUITYBEE In order to attract and retain talent, some companies are now giving employees more flexible stock options. What’s in it for them? - ESOs can turn into a financially life-changing opportunity. That’s why workplaces use them as an incentive.
- Getting a share of the company gives employees a sense of ownership and connection.
But that sense of ownership only truly means something if you exercise your options and become a shareholder. That’s what Equitybee is for. We help startup employees to exercise their stock options and participate in the success of the companies they helped build, by funding the full costs of the exercise (including taxes!). Want to hear more?
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 Today’s Funding 💸 Adtech/Martech - Quiq (Bozeman, Mont.), AI-powered conversational platform that enables brands to engage customers on the most popular asynchronous text messaging channels: $25M C led by Baird Capital, participation from Venrock, Foundry Group, Next Frontier Capital.
AI/ML - Union.ai (Bellevue, Wash.), commercial version of the open-source AI orchestration platform Flyte: $10M from NEA, et al.
Biotech/Health - Real (New York, N.Y.), platform-based therapy model: ...
Want to read about all of today’s funding in one place? The funding roundup is only available to free users on Mondays and Fridays. Upgrade to Inside VC Premium for either $10/month, or $100 billed annually, to receive the full list in every issue! For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day free trial. Click here to sign up! | | | |
Quick Hits - B2B businesses are switching to e-commerce. Now, it’s your turn. Learn three persuasive approaches that communicate the value of digital to decision-makers.*
- A16z’s Chris Dixon topped Forbes’ Midas List, driven by his investments in the Web 3.0 sector.
- Metaverse company Infinite Reality will purchase esports giant ReKT Global for $470M in an all-stock deal.
- KKR will buy cybersecurity company Barracuda Networks from Thoma Bravo for $3.8B.
- Certain Senate Republicans introduced a JOBS Act 4.0 that would encourage IPOs, double the number of LPs allowed in a VC fund >$50M, expand the definition of “qualifying investments” by VC funds, and more.
- Bosch will acquire Five.ai, an autonomous driving startup operating in the B2B segment, for an undisclosed sum.
*This is a sponsored post.
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 |  | Inside VC's writer/curator Stephen currently lives in Berlin and is pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy. He otherwise spends his time trying his hand at recipes from India and Southeast Asia, escaping it all at the kickboxing gym, and offending aural sensibilities with his band. |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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