Behind Latin America’s digital economy lies an infrastructure that still operates in the analog era. A new wave of startups is using AI to rebuild it from the ground up.

Latin America’s next generation of startups will be different from the last. 

The first wave of venture-backed innovation in the region focused on bringing consumers online: digital banking, e-commerce marketplaces, and mobility platforms that connected fragmented demand and supply. Nubank, Mercado Libre, and Rappi defined this era.

But beneath that surface transformation, much of the region’s economic infrastructure remains unchanged. Old-school business practices still dominate in many areas, and ambitious businesses struggle to move money efficiently across borders. Supply chains remain fragmented, and industries that form the backbone of the economy continue to operate without the benefits readily available via modern digitization.

Today, a new wave of founders is beginning to address these structural inefficiencies — using AI to move us forward at higher speeds than ever before. The result may be a shift from building digital products on top of the economy to rebuilding the infrastructure of Latin America’s economy itself.

Three themes increasingly appear at the center of this transformation: low-friction financial transactions, AI productivity for already-digitized businesses, and AI-enabled transformation of offline businesses.

1. Reducing financial friction in a fragmented region

Moving and managing money in Latin America is a persistent point of friction. 

Cross-border payments remain slow and expensive. Companies operating across multiple countries often juggle several banking relationships just to manage basic treasury operations. And access to capital remains uneven and unpredictable for small and medium-sized businesses. These friction points are precisely where some of the most interesting fintech innovations are happening.

Stablecoins, used by global players like Circle and startups like Avenia, use crypto technology to digitize major currencies, including the US dollar and Brazilian Real. They are not a speculative instrument like Bitcoin, but now offer institutional-grade settlement infrastructure. For businesses that need to move money between countries, the ability to settle transactions in minutes rather than days, and at a fraction of the current cost, fundamentally changes treasury dynamics. Lower transaction costs for B2B cross-border payments reduce financial friction and increase competitive edge for MSMEs; at the same time, programmable payments create opportunities for new financial workflows.

In parallel, lending is being reimagined through the platforms where economic activity actually happens.

For example, goFlux, a Brazil-based logistics-tech company, addresses this by building software that digitizes logistics workflows and adds fintech operations on top. Essentially, what started as a logistics management platform has evolved into a financial operating system for a freight ecosystem that’s fundamental to the entire economy. With real-time visibility into freight transactions across its network, the data becomes the foundation for financial services, enabling working capital financing to carriers secured by receivables.

In effect, for companies like goFlux, digitizing old-school business practices using modern software creates the data infrastructure for new financial services. Innovative financial services deployed in local, regional, or transnational models are becoming increasingly inseparable from the operational systems businesses use every day.

2. AI as a productivity layer for modern businesses

A second theme emerging across the region is the application of artificial intelligence within modern, already digitized business workflows.

For many years, enterprise software adoption in Latin America focused primarily on compliance and basic enterprise productivity. Tools helped automate accounting, payroll, regulatory, and sales operations processes, but rarely played a direct role in generating substantial revenue upside.

AI is beginning to change that equation. Startups like Diio and Dapta are building systems that sit closer to the growth engine of a company: identifying sales opportunities, qualifying leads, optimizing pricing, and automating parts of the customer acquisition process. By lowering the cost of accessing expertise and analysis, AI delivers capabilities that previously required expensive, specialized teams.

The impact can be particularly meaningful in markets where businesses operate with limited resources and fragmented customer access. When AI platforms are employed to help companies not only operate more efficiently but also generate more revenue, AI adoption accelerates with a positive feedback loop.

In this sense, AI expanding beyond productivity enables even small companies to gain economic leverage.

3. AI for the industries that still run on spreadsheets

Perhaps the most consequential opportunity lies in sectors that historically received little attention from startup founders and their venture investors.

Large parts of Latin America’s economy still operate through analog workflows with limited digitization. Manufacturing plants track production manually. Construction companies coordinate projects across disconnected tools. Logistics networks depend on phone calls and spreadsheets to manage complex operations.

At the same time, global supply chains are undergoing a structural shift.

Nearshoring is gradually positioning Mexico and parts of Latin America — including Colombia, Guatemala, and Costa Rica — as strategic production hubs for North American markets. The region’s proximity and labor base offer advantages, but capturing this opportunity requires meaningful improvements in productivity.

AI-native software platforms are beginning to emerge at this intersection. Some, like Pulsar and Prima, focus on optimizing industrial processes such as production planning, quality control, and predictive maintenance. Others, like Makasi and Solvento, digitize operational workflows across industries like construction, logistics, and field services. These systems often begin as workflow tools but gradually evolve into the system of record for daily operations. AI is enabling founders with deep domain expertise to create companies that solve “vertical” problems efficiently, quickly and profitably from anywhere, without requiring startups to be located in traditional tech hubs.

Once embedded deeply, vertical AI solutions become durable pieces of infrastructure, delivering profits to all who create and employ them.

A deeper phase of technological adoption

Taken together, these three development areas suggest a step-change in Latin America’s technology ecosystem.

The first generation of startups digitized consumer experiences and expanded access to financial services. That transformation was significant, but it largely operated at the surface of the economy.

The next generation will be addressing something deeper: the structural inefficiencies that shape how businesses operate, how capital flows, and how industries produce goods.Financial systems are being modernized. Operational workflows are being digitized. AI solutions are being applied to sectors that historically had very little software.

In a region where much of the economy is still analog, the companies that successfully introduce new infrastructure can become deeply embedded in how entire economies function.

And when that happens, the opportunity for long-term value creation will be far larger than any breakthrough since the mass introduction of mobile phones.

Will Poole is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Capria Ventures, an applied AI investor with expertise in emerging markets.