Zapia AI, a cross-continental startup bridging Silicon Valley and Latin America, has raised $7,250,000 in seed funding to scale its network of AI agents designed to automate daily tasks through messaging apps. With backing from major investors such as Prosus Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Anthos Capital, Factory HQ, and SNR, the company is positioned to redefine how millions across LATAM interact with AI in their everyday workflows.

With messaging platforms like WhatsApp embedded into daily life across the region, Zapia AI is leveraging this behavior to deploy chat-native automation. From appointment scheduling and customer service to sales coordination and task management, Zapia’s agents are simplifying business operations - without requiring users to leave the messaging apps they already trust.

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Why Messaging-Based AI Agents Matter Now

Latin America’s population is not just mobile-first - it’s messaging-first. According to DataReportal, 92% of internet users in Brazil, 91% in Colombia, and 90% in Argentina use WhatsApp regularly. In a market where messaging is the default interface for everything from family chats to business operations, embedding AI into these platforms offers unmatched distribution potential.

Yet despite this penetration, only 13% of LATAM businesses currently use AI-based automation tools, according to a 2024 report from IDB Lab and Microsoft LATAM. This massive adoption gap presents a prime opportunity for startups like Zapia to define the infrastructure layer for AI-powered productivity.

And this is where their model becomes a blueprint for founders everywhere.

What Zapia understands - and many overlook - is that true product-market fit in emerging regions doesn’t mean reinventing how people work. It means enhancing how they already work. Instead of building new apps and dragging users into foreign workflows, Zapia meets them in their comfort zone. For founders eyeing underserved markets, this is the lesson: distribution via cultural alignment beats innovation in isolation. AI gains traction fastest when it disappears into routine - not when it demands new behavior.

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The Product: AI Agents That Automate from Inside Chat Apps

Zapia’s platform enables users to deploy domain-specific AI agents that function entirely within existing chat apps. These aren’t just reactive chatbots - they’re proactive agents that learn user patterns, schedule tasks, send reminders, process transactions, and even communicate across team members.

This automation is especially critical in Latin America, where small and medium businesses often coordinate operations informally through messaging - without CRMs, SaaS stacks, or dedicated back-office teams.

By eliminating the friction of installing, onboarding, and maintaining separate apps, Zapia AI turns WhatsApp into a low-code automation environment, ideal for mobile-first users.

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LATAM’s Digital and AI Market Outlook

Latin America is undergoing a rapid digital transformation. According to Statista, the region’s digital economy is expected to exceed $460 billion by 2026, with AI and automation being among the fastest-growing verticals. Additionally, the region has more than 40 million SMEs, many of which rely on chat-based communication for daily operations.

Meanwhile, the conversational AI market in Latin America is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 22% through 2028, driven by mobile-first adoption, smartphone penetration (which is above 80% in key markets), and limited desktop infrastructure.

The takeaway: AI agents delivered through messaging aren’t a workaround - they’re the most native path to scale in LATAM.

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Strategic Backing for a Hyperlocal, High-Impact Play

Zapia’s $7.25M seed round is more than capital - it’s a bet on AI’s last-mile potential in emerging markets. Investors like Prosus Ventures, known for scaling tech across India and Africa, and Endeavor Catalyst, which champions high-growth startups in LATAM, bring a strategic edge.

Their combined insight, alongside Anthos Capital and others, gives Zapia the tools not just to grow fast - but to grow resiliently and regionally, with infrastructure tailored to hyperlocal business needs.

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What’s Next for Zapia AI

With its funding secured, Zapia plans to:

• Expand product and engineering teams to accelerate AI development
  
• Roll out vertical-specific AI agents for industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics
  
• Launch a developer API platform, enabling businesses to deploy and manage their own agents
  
• Expand market presence across Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia
  
• Enhance multilingual NLP models tailored for regional dialects and language nuances
  

Co-founders Juan Pablo Pereira and Nicolas Loeff emphasize that the goal isn’t just to automate - it’s to humanize AI adoption by making it feel native and useful from day one.

“We’re not trying to change how people work. We’re helping them work faster, more reliably, and with less friction - using tools they already love,” said Pereira.