I think Harvey should buy Jusbrasil

Three. Full. Weeks.

That’s how much time an HR team can save every year by managing employee benefits with iFood Benefícios.

For context, that’s 110 hours.

Not spent recruiting. Not improving culture. Not retaining your best people.

Spent adding employees, managing balances and cards, processing payments, preparing reports and dealing with bureaucracy.

Employee benefits are supposed to help your people. They probably shouldn’t consume three weeks of the HR team’s time.

iFood Benefícios puts all of that administrative plumbing into one management platform—with zero fees for the company.

Your HR team has better things to do.

Request a demo here

I have a theory, which is:

Private equity is becoming the sexiest asset class in tech.

I know. Private equity.

For most of my career, venture capital got all the glamour.

VC got the 25-year-old founder, the exponential growth chart, the billion-dollar valuation and the possibility — however improbable — of turning a US$5 million check into US$500 million.

Private equity got spreadsheets, EBITDA and very serious conversations about working capital.

And then AI happened.

Suddenly, those enormous portfolios PE firms had spent decades accumulating became one of the most valuable distribution channels in technology.

OpenAI and Anthropic figured this out very quickly. Instead of selling AI company by company, they could partner with the world’s largest private-equity firms and consultancies and get a direct path into hundreds of businesses at once — which is exactly what they did through multi-billion-dollar partnerships with the likes of TPG, Warburg Pincus, Advent, Apollo and General Atlantic.

This GTM is brilliant for one simple reason — private equity owns or backs an enormous piece of the real economy.

Which brings me back to Brazil.

The country has built a large enough pool of scaled technology companies for private equity to buy, consolidate and now transform with AI.

And the numbers are kind of insane.

In 2025, technology accounted for 23.3% of all disclosed private-equity investment value in Brazil.

In the first half of 2026, that number jumped to 72.9%.

And by July, 51 of Latin America’s 88 private-equity transactions had happened in Brazil — 58% of the entire region.

Private-equity firms are buying control, taking minority growth stakes, funding acquisitions and providing liquidity to founders and early investors through secondaries.

General Atlantic putting US$115M+ into Starian, Partners Group buying US$100M+ of Omie shares, and Warburg Pincus acquiring VOLL from Localiza for US$120M+ are just a few examples.

So what is actually driving all this interest from global PE?

Part of the answer is multi-billion-dollar industries + complexity + fragmentation.

Brazilian tax, labor, payments, financial regulation and industry-specific workflows have created enormous local software markets that are surprisingly difficult for a generic global SaaS company to penetrate.

Once a company embeds itself deeply enough into those workflows, the complexity that made it painful to build in Brazil becomes part of its moat.

But there is another rather unique piece of the Brazilian PE story:

leverage — or rather, the lack of it.

Traditional American buyout math has historically relied heavily on cheap debt. Buy a company, put leverage on it, improve the business and let debt repayment amplify the equity return.

That playbook is a lot harder when interest rates are this high.

So Brazilian PE evolved differently: less financial engineering, more revenue growth, margin expansion and operational improvement.

Which businesses fit that model particularly well?

Software and technology-enabled businesses.

You don't need six turns of leverage if you can grow recurring revenue 20–30%, increase revenue per customer, acquire adjacent products and meaningfully expand margins.

And this is exactly what businesses like Omie, Contabilizei, Starian, Jusbrasil and Sólides give PE investors: large installed customer bases, sticky workflows and plenty of room to grow without relying on cheap debt to manufacture the return.

There is, of course, one giant problem.

Exits in Brazil still suck.

Brazil hasn't had an IPO since 2021.

As the IPO window stayed closed, average holding periods for Brazilian PE exits stretched to roughly six years and three months for exits completed between 2023 and 2025.

At first glance, that sounds like a pretty compelling argument against everything I just wrote.

Except something else happened at the same time.

Strategic acquisitions. Sponsor-to-sponsor deals. Founder secondaries. Partial exits. Buybacks.

The public market may still be effectively closed, but the private market has become much better at recycling ownership.

Omie is a perfect example. Partners Group could write a US$100M+ check largely by buying shares from founders and early investors — a huge vote of confidence in a team that had been grinding for years, and some very welcome liquidity for investors in a market that desperately needed it.

And none of this required ringing the bell at the NYSE.

And then AI makes the whole setup much more attractive.

Remember how Brazilian PE has historically had to make money: grow revenue, expand margins and improve operations.

AI will most definitely accelerate all three.

The reason is simple: these companies already have what AI startups spend years trying to build — customers, distribution, proprietary data and deeply embedded workflows.

Starian sits inside highly specific vertical workflows. Omie owns distribution into Brazilian SMBs. Jusbrasil has millions of users navigating one of the most complicated legal systems in the world. Sólides is deeply embedded with Brazilian employers.

Now layer AI on top of that.

You can sell new products into an existing customer base, automate huge chunks of expensive workflows and expand margins without having to build distribution from zero.

And this is where the PE + AI combination starts to get my heart racing.

The AI company may have the technology.

These companies already have the market.

I can absolutely imagine a world where extremely well-capitalized companies like Harvey or Legora, in desperate need of further scale and market expansion, look at a Jusbrasil-type asset and realize that buying the data, customers and workflow is infinitely faster than rebuilding twenty years of distribution from scratch.

And Brazil has a surprisingly large number of businesses that look exactly like that.

My bet is that over the next five years, we will see a number of multibillion-dollar M&A deals between global AI players and Brazilian technology companies sitting on exactly these kinds of assets.

Let’s see.

For companies operating across countries, moving money gets expensive and complicated fast. Every new market can mean another bank, another currency, another payment rail and another layer of reconciliation.

Jeeves is built to remove that complexity. Its stablecoin-native financial operating system brings payments, FX, corporate cards and treasury into one stack — allowing global companies to move and manage money across markets without rebuilding their financial infrastructure country by country.

For Orinter, one of Brazil’s largest B2B travel operators, the impact was 87% lower international transfer costs.

The less it costs to move money globally, the more capital you have to grow globally.

So if you're a founder, CFO or finance leader building across markets, stop building financial infrastructure country by country. Go to tryJeeves.com to see what a global financial OS can do for your company.

Nubank - officially launched in the United States and introduced Nu Global, making its biggest move yet beyond Latin America.

Nu is entering the U.S. with a high-yield account, debit and credit cards, cashback and domestic and international transfers. At the same time, Nu Global gives customers a multi-currency account built around digital dollars and euros, with free transfers across 35+ countries. The company now serves more than 140M customers and just crossed US$1B in quarterly net income.

→ Nubank no longer trying to become the biggest digital bank in Latin America. It is explicitly trying to become a global one - and remarkably, stablecoins are embedded in the product architecture from day one.

Kapital - raised US$125M to double down on AI and expand beyond Mexico.

The financing was led by Tru Arrow Partners and Fasanara Capital. Kapital now serves more than 350,000 customers, generated roughly US$50M in net revenue in the first half of 2026 and grew its loan portfolio 220% YoY to more than US$1.7B. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its AI platform and grow in Mexico, the U.S. and other markets.

→ Kapital is trying to make the same leap Nubank is making: from a local challenger into a global financial institution - except through B2B.

Erco Energía - raised US$129M in one of Colombia’s largest equity rounds of 2026.

The 14-year-old energy company raised the Series C from Next Utility Ventures, Augment Infrastructure, Norfund and Endeavor Catalyst to expand the development and construction of solar infrastructure across Colombia.

→ A US$ 129M equity check in Colombian solar infrastructure is a pretty strong reminder that some of Latin America' sbiggest technology opportunities will sit at the intersection of software and very physical industries.

Celcoin - acquired VERT Capital in its largest acquisition to date, pushing the Brazilian financial-infrastructure company into capital markets and structured credit.

VERT brings securitization, fiduciary administration and fund management to Celcoin’s existing banking, payments and credit infrastructure. The company has completed more than 490 transactions, issued over R$142B and administers approximately R$97B in assets. Celcoin now plans to invest R$500M over the next three years — R$200M of it in technology — and expects to reach R$800M in annualized recurring revenue by the end of 2026.

→ Celcoin is no longer just building the infrastructure underneath banks is trying to make the same leap Nubank is making: from a local challenger into a global financial institution - except through B2B.

Listen - Eileen Gu on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose

I loved this one much more than I expected. Gu is obviously an insane athlete — the most decorated freestyle skier in Olympic history — but the best parts have almost nothing to do with skiing. She talks about why direction matters more than effort, training as if you have never won before and her philosophy of “evidence over affirmation”: confidence should come from repeatedly proving to yourself that you can do hard things, not from telling yourself that you can. She also talks about winning Olympic gold while dealing with a devastating personal loss in literally the same hour. Very smart, very intense 65 minutes.

Read - Game theory explains why smart people don’t win by Tim Denning

The title is a little clickbaity, but the underlying idea stayed with me: working harder is often completely useless if you are playing the wrong game. Denning uses game theory to argue that the real advantage comes from understanding incentives, figuring out who actually benefits from the rules and knowing when to stop optimizing inside a system that is structurally bad for you. My favorite takeaway: sometimes the smartest move is not figuring out how to win the game. It is choosing a different game altogether.

Read - AI companies are using influencers to market like consumer brands by Ramp Economics Lab

This one hit very close to home. Ramp’s data shows business spending on influencer marketing has increased 3.75x since 2023, from roughly 0.4% to 1.5% of marketing budgets. But AI and software companies are spending even more aggressively: 2.4% of their marketing budgets now go to influencers, and they account for 28.2% of all creator spend — second only to consumer brands. The fascinating part is that most AI companies are technically B2B, yet they are increasingly marketing like consumer companies. Which makes sense: enterprise buyers are humans too, and increasingly they discover software long before procurement ever gets involved.

The J Curve has reached the point where we need another builder.

We're looking for a Content & Distribution Manager to help us turn every episode into a world-class content engine across YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, X and our newsletter.

If you've ever wanted to build a modern media company from the inside—and care deeply about storytelling, distribution and quality—we'd love to meet you.

Role description and application: Click Here

We launched The J Curve referral program.

Two milestones. Two rewards built for founders.

Refer 3 founders → Unlock the masterclass

Share The J Curve with 3 founders and get access to How to Build a Brand That Raises Money — my complete framework on storytelling, audience building, distribution, and investor relationships.

You’ll also get the exact 30-day execution sprint I would follow if I were starting from zero today.

Refer 5 founders → Pitch me directly

Refer 5 founders and unlock a 30-minute 1:1 fundraising and deck review with me.

We’ll go through your pitch deck, positioning, fundraising narrative, and investor messaging. I’ll tell you what’s working, what’s missing, and where I’d focus to make the story more compelling.

(Please send your deck at least 48 hours before the call.)

Your referral link is below.

Start sharing ↓

{{rp_personalized_text}}

Your link to share: {{rp_refer_url_no_params}}

Thanks for reading,

Olga 

🎙 The J Curve  is where LATAM's boldest founders & investors come to talk real strategy, opportunity and leadership.