Brazil fintech Magie raised $4 million in a seed spherical led by Lux Capital, marking the agency’s first funding in Brazil. The corporate, which has raised $5.1 million in complete, is creating an AI-powered monetary assistant. The present product permits folks to ship cash and pay payments via WhatsApp.
For co-founder Luiz Ramalho and Lux accomplice Brandon Reeves, Magie is a broader wager on Brazil’s burgeoning fintech scene, which has been fueled by the huge success of Nubank, the Brazilian neobank that had a blockbuster IPO in 2021.
Reeves, who’s been on the forefront of a lot of Lux’s worldwide investments — notably Sakana AI, the agency’s first Japanese wager — mentioned he noticed firsthand how shortly Brazilians have been “typically early adopters of recent monetary merchandise” on a current journey to São Paulo.
He cited Pix, an instantaneous funds platform that the nation’s central financial institution rolled out in 2020; by 2023, nearly 42 billion funds have been despatched utilizing Pix, exceeding credit score and debit costs mixed, in line with Abecs, a Brazilian affiliation for monetary companies.
Pix paved the way in which for Magie. Final September, Ramalho, a Rio de Janeiro-native, realized that Pix represented a significant alternative: It introduced most Brazilians onto a standard community, one which Ramalho may leverage. Together with co-founder João Camargo, they designed Magie as an AI chatbot in WhatsApp the place customers can ship or obtain cash. Magie has acquired greater than 12,000 customers since launching in April, though the corporate has but to monetize these customers. “Our aim is to essentially construct one thing with quite a lot of retention first,” Ramalho mentioned.
However Ramalho’s final aim is for Magie to be a extra full-fledged monetary assistant — and an equalizer. He hopes to probably cost for a premium subscription, the place Magie might help customers work via monetary choices, like what sort of mortgage to take out and at which financial institution. He’ll have competitors from the banks themselves: Morgan Stanley launched its personal AI-powered financial assistant in June.
However Ramalho insists that Magie will probably be a extra egalitarian device, one with no vested curiosity in anybody financial institution’s companies. “There’s a sure battle of curiosity within the banks,” he mentioned. “The banks don’t essentially need their prospects to be seeing the perfect affords for each single financial institution.”
He mentioned all of it goes again to Magie’s namesake: Lizzie Magie, the designer who created Monopoly. In her model, there was much less concentrate on one individual usurping all of the properties and a higher emphasis on everybody having land. “You continue to had a winner,” he mentioned. “However all people was higher off on the finish of the sport.”
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