January 2026 felt like a month when venture investors tried to look disciplined while still sneaking out for a little speculative fun. The file is not packed with endless trophy rounds, but it does have a clear hierarchy: one genuinely large financing, a couple of strong follow-on rounds with respectable backers, and a few smaller checks where the investor name matters more than the amount. In other words, the market opened the year wearing a blazer over a T-shirt—serious enough for the LP meeting, casual enough to still say “AI-native” with a straight face.
The vibe, broadly, was selective optimism. Infrastructure, fintech, ag, and workflow software drew the most credible attention, while several smaller rounds looked more like option value than conviction. That is not a criticism; it is just the modern venture ecosystem doing what it does best: funding the future in uneven bursts, then pretending the pattern was obvious all along. January’s winners were the companies that either raised real money, attracted real investors, or managed to do both without hiding behind too much PowerPoint perfume.
1. UY3 — Venture round, USD 37.2M
This is the undisputed heavyweight of the month. On round size alone, UY3 towers over the rest of the file, and the step-up from its June 2025 round of about USD 9.1M to USD 37.2M suggests meaningful momentum rather than a polite bridge dressed as growth capital. Vinci Compass leading adds institutional heft, and the company’s positioning in financial solutions and credit services gives it enough market relevance to matter beyond the spreadsheet. For the ecosystem, this is the kind of round that says capital is still available for fintech-adjacent infrastructure—provided you are building something more durable than a glorified cashback app.
2. Nagro — Series B, USD 9.3M
Nagro earns its place because it checks every editorial box: meaningful size, clean stage progression, and credible investors. The company has gone from angel and pre-seed roots through Seed and Series A into a Series B led by Rabo Partnerships, with Itaú Ventures in the syndicate. That is serious validation in agfintech, a sector where thematic appeal alone is never enough—you need underwriting logic, distribution, and trust. This round matters because it reinforces a theme Brazil keeps producing: venture-scale companies built around real economy pain points. Ag is not always glamorous, but it does have the rude habit of mattering.
3. Lerian — Seed, USD 5.68M
For a Seed round, this is a very respectable check, and the syndicate makes it more interesting. MAYA Capital is back after leading the prior USD 3.17M Seed, while Norte Ventures, Crivo, Supera, BluStone, and Kevin Efrusy deepen the credibility. More important, the company is in core banking infrastructure built on an open-source ledger—exactly the kind of plumbing-layer bet sophisticated investors like when they want exposure to fintech without buying the thousandth front-end neobank pitch. The relevance here is not just that Lerian raised money; it is that it raised again from people who understand the stack. That tends to be a better signal than founders using the phrase “modular banking” like incense.
4. Magie — Seed, USD 5M
Magie makes the cut because the company combines a strong narrative with a strong repeat backer. Lux Capital led both the prior USD 3.93M Seed and this new USD 5M round, after Canary had backed the pre-seed, which tells you this is not random tourist money wandering through Latin America. The “WhatsApp’s first smart account” positioning gives it a high hype factor, but it is also aimed at a very real user behavior layer in Brazil and other messaging-first markets. Editorially, this matters because investors are clearly still willing to fund consumer-productivity hybrids when distribution logic feels native rather than imported. It is a reminder that sometimes the biggest interface in the market is not an app store—it is the green chat bubble everyone already lives in.
5. Camu — Venture round, amount undisclosed
Normally, undisclosed rounds are annoying, because they ask editors to clap without showing the scoreboard. But Camu still belongs in the top five because Andreessen Horowitz is the lead investor, and that changes the conversation immediately. Even without an amount, a16z plus Everywhere Ventures behind a tax software company is not trivial; it suggests the company has both product ambition and enough category relevance to attract globally recognized capital into a deeply unsexy but mission-critical problem. And frankly, that is part of why it matters: taxes are the sort of pain point that founders rarely glamorize but customers never ignore. In venture, “boring but huge” has funded a lot more success than “viral but vague.”
A near miss is Anbetec Tecnologia, which raised a healthy USD 5.67M and sits in enterprise ERP infrastructure, but the investor signal is not quite as sharp as the five above. Aliado also deserves a nod for the AI-retail angle and the Headline backing, yet the round is smaller and the financing history less developed. Good companies, interesting rounds—just not the five that best define January’s actual power structure.
January deals
2026-01-30 / Limbos Games / Pre-Seed / USD 575
Limbos Games is an indie studio crafting survival horror and stealth games with psychology, social impact, and community focus.
Lead Investors: N/A
Previous Rounds
2025-10-16 / Pre-Seed / USD 184
Lead Investors: N/A
2024-11-04 / Pre-Seed / USD 1,000
Lead Investors: N/A
2026-01-27 / Lerian / Seed / USD 5,680,959
Lerian is a next-gen core banking platform built on top of an open source ledger.
Lead Investors: MAYA Capital / Investors: BluStone, Crivo Ventures, Kevin Efrusy, MAYA Capital, Norte Ventures, Supera Capital
Previous Rounds
2024-11-06 / Seed / USD 3,170,409
Lead Investors: MAYA Capital / Investors: Crivo Ventures, MAYA Capital, Norte Ventures, Quartz Ventures, Supera Capital
2026-01-27 / Tem Lugar / Corporate Round
Tem Lugar connects companies that need storage space with owners of warehouses and sheds with available capacity.
Lead Investors: Mouts TI
2026-01-26 / Anbetec Tecnologia / Venture – Series Unknown / USD 5,669,684
Anbetec Tecnologia provides consulting, support, maintenance, implementation, integration, and automation tools for ERP systems.
Lead Investors: SRM Ventures
2026-01-26 / Jabuti Technologies / Seed / USD 396,878
Jabuti AGI develops AI solutions for digital multichannel environments, enhancing operational efficiency and sustainable human interactions.
Lead Investors: DOMO.VC
2026-01-21 / Nagro / Series B / USD 9,301,979
Nagro is a brazilian agfintech, delivering credit to small and midsize farmers and helping agribusiness chain reduce risk throughs BigData.
Lead Investors: Rabo Partnerships / Investors: Itaú Ventures, Rabo Partnerships
Previous Rounds
2023-09-20 / Series A / USD 8,000,000
Lead Investors: Kinea Investimentos Ltda, Oasis Ventures
2021-12-15 / Seed / USD 1,400,000
Lead Investors: N/A
2020-01-01 / Pre-Seed / USD 700,000
Lead Investors: Ariel Lambrecht
2019-08-01 / Angel / USD 325,000
Lead Investors: Ariel Lambrecht
2026-01-20 / Uma Penca / Venture – Series Unknown / USD 837,833
Uma Penca lets artists, creators, brands, and entrepreneurs design and sell products without managing inventory, production, or logistics.
Lead Investors: Grupo Gaia
2026-01-19 / Beepay / Angel
Beepay is a mobile checkout platform enabling autonomous stores with barcode scanning, digital payments, and inventory management.
Lead Investors: Anjos do Brasil
Previous Rounds
2020-09-16 / Pre-Seed / USD 78,663
Lead Investors: N/A
2026-01-17 / UY3 / Venture – Series Unknown / USD 37,200,000
UY3 offers financial solutions and credit services for businesses, emphasizing efficient and humanized customer support.
Lead Investors: Vinci Compass
Previous Rounds
2025-06-17 / Venture – Series Unknown / USD 9,101,169
Lead Investors: NVA Capital, Vectis
2026-01-14 / Magie / Seed / USD 5,000,000
Magie is WhatsApp’s first smart account, designed for people who understand the value of their time.
Lead Investors: Lux Capital
Previous Rounds
2024-08-22 / Seed / USD 3,933,840
Lead Investors: Lux Capital
2024-05-07 / Pre-Seed / USD 1,182,313
Lead Investors: Canary
2026-01-09 / Aliado / Seed / USD 2,408,121
Aliado uses AI to analyze in-store interactions, find why sales fail, and deliver instant micro-training to retail staff.
Lead Investors: Headline, Nestal
2026-01-07 / Ummix Ads / Angel
Ummix Ads focuses on modernizing how companies buy and manage traditional media advertising.
Lead Investors: Monique Evelle
2026-01-05 / MRS Logística / Corporate Round
MRS Logística is a concessionary that controls, operates and monitors the Southeastern Federal Railroad Network Company.
Lead Investors: Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional
2026-01-03 / Vatten Pharma / Seed / USD 2,000,000
Vatten Pharma is building a next-generation pharmaceutical platform focused on transforming cannabinoid.
Lead Investors: FasterCapital, Hesham Zreik
2026-01-01 / Camu / Venture – Series Unknown
Camu is a developer of tax software aimed at simplifying the complexities of indirect taxes.
Lead Investors: Andreessen Horowitz / Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Everywhere Ventures