Twenty Years In, Monashees Goes to the Source
When Monashees was founded in 2005, Brazil had no startup ecosystem — no network of founders, no LPs backing local VC firms, and no follow-on investors. Co-founders Eric Acher and Fabio Igel bet that what had happened in Silicon Valley could be replicated across Latin America. It took time. By 2010, the first wave of Brazilian tech companies began to emerge, and Monashees helped put the region on the global map.
Since then, the firm has invested in more than 150 early-stage startups, with 16 companies valued above $1 billion in its portfolio — including 99, Rappi, Neon, Nomad, and AI companies like Runway, Tractian, and Moises.
Today, Monashees makes around 8 to 10 new investments per year and is finalizing the deployment of its $370 million fund into roughly 35 companies. The firm has now backed more than 300 companies over its two-decade history.
Why San Francisco, Why Now
The firm opened an office in Mexico City in 2022 and in September 2025 set up an office in San Francisco. The move was driven by a simple observation: the AI frontier moves faster than any previous technology wave, and you can't track it from a distance.
"If you're not here, it's very difficult to keep pace and stay up to speed with where the AI frontier is going. You even have a gap with Wall Street, so imagine the gap with Latin America." — Fabiola Quinzaños, Partner, Monashees
Quinzaños, who relocated from Mexico City to lead the Silicon Valley office, describes San Francisco as "the champions league" — a place where the density of talent, capital, and research creates an environment that LatAm's ecosystem still can't fully replicate at home.
The calculus for founders is practical, not aspirational. Monashees now maintains offices across São Paulo, Mexico City, and San Francisco, giving it reach across Latin America, the US, and Europe. The SF outpost is specifically designed to help portfolio founders absorb what's happening at the frontier and bring those learnings back.
One concrete hire illustrates the strategy: the firm brought on Andrés Campero, a Mexican researcher with a Ph.D. in AI from MIT and a student of renowned researcher Josh Tenenbaum, specifically to build bridges into the research diaspora that tends to stay in the US rather than return to LatAm.
The Google Partnership: Gama Fund
The clearest expression of Monashees' AI pivot is the Gama Fund, a co-investment program launched in partnership with Google. The initiative is part of Google Labs' global AI Futures Fund program. Google has run a similar model in India in partnership with Accel.
Monashees and Google co-invest up to $2 million per startup into AI-native and deep tech pre-seed or seed-stage startups in Brazil. Brazilian-language reporting from multiple outlets — including BNamericas and Finsiders Brasil — puts the total program envelope at up to $10 million across approximately five startups, though neither Monashees nor Google have confirmed that figure in English-language communications.
Beyond capital, the deal is structured as a two-way exchange. Selected startups receive up to $350,000 in Google Cloud and Gemini credits, plus early access to Google DeepMind models and immersion sessions with senior Monashees and Google teams. In return, feedback from these companies is expected to help Google's own teams refine and improve their AI models.
The program's first summit is planned for later this year in San Francisco, bringing together Latin American founders building AI businesses.
The Real Arbitrage: Cost Basis vs. Talent
Quinzaños is candid about the tensions founders face when they relocate. Revenue in Brazilian reais or Mexican pesos does not mix well with a US cost basis — particularly when competing for AI talent against labs with deep pockets.
Her framing of the opportunity is telling: the goal isn't to turn LatAm founders into Bay Area startups. It's to use San Francisco as a learning environment, absorb best practices, and then deploy them against a talent pool in Latin America that is cheaper, increasingly sophisticated, and — with modern AI tools — able to operate with a smaller headcount than ever before.
Brazil's digital infrastructure makes this a credible bet. The market data backs the urgency: Brazil is the highest-volume market for Uber globally and the third-largest by visitor share for ChatGPT. Its real-time payments rail Pix, launched by the Central Bank in 2020, is now used by more than 90% of Brazilian adults — a distribution layer that most markets can only envy.
Success stories like Vercel (founded by Guillermo Rauch) and Kalshi (co-founded by Luana Lopes Lara) are proving to a new generation that LatAm-origin founders can build globally. Monashees has already announced Monashees XI with a target raise of $200 million, with a first close of $80–100 million in sight — signaling that the firm is putting structural weight behind the global LatAm thesis, not just planting a flag.
