Q4’24 Venture Pulse Report - Americas

After reaching a ten-quarter high in Q3’24, VC investment in Canada rose further in Q4’24, surpassing $2.5 billion for the first time since Q1, 2022. This increase was despite uncertainties related to the US presidential election in November and related concerns about potential changes that could be made by the incoming administration, including the possible introduction of tariffs.

During Q4’24, VC investors in Brazil continued to focus their investments on startups with strong resilience given the challenging market conditions, and on those with proven market fit or that have managed to achieve profitability. While IPO exits have been dry throughout 2024, Brazil started to see M&A activity creep upwards during Q4’24, including companies beginning to position their organizations for potential sale in 2025.

The Canadian government continued to be highly supportive of innovation during Q4’24. During the quarter, it launched the Canadian Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, with plans to invest approximately $2 billion to support Canada’s competitiveness in the AI space by supporting the development of data centres and other computing infrastructure.¹ AI-focused Cohere received $240 million from this fund to support the development of a new data centre in Canada.² In Q4’24, the government also launched the Canadian AI Safety Institute to conduct research related to AI safety, develop AI risk assessment tools, and help with identifying risk mitigation activities.³ The Canadian government also continued to prioritize innovation in the health and life sciences sector; during Q4’24, the government announced a $40 million investment in vaccine developer Aramis Technologies.⁴ The company also raised CAD$40 million in Series A funding during the quarter.⁵

Fintech remained one of the strongest areas of VC investment in Brazil, with SMB financing company Asaas raising $149 million during Q4’24. The fintech market in Brazil has matured quite rapidly over the past five years — driving significant improvements in financial inclusion — a fact that is now leading some smaller fintechs to look at consolidation in order to improve their market share and financial viability and larger fintechs to look at expansion into other countries within Latin America. Outside of the fintech space, a number of other sectors also saw increasing attention from VC investors in Brazil during the quarter, including cleantech, biotech, and healthtech; all three are well positioned to remain trendy among VC investors heading into Q1’25.

Looking ahead to Q1’25, VC investment in the Americas is expected to remain very solid, propelled by the continued focus of investors on the AI space. The change in administration in the US could keep investors holding back early in the quarter — particularly in jurisdictions like Canada — until there is more certainty as to the direction the new administration will take.

With COP30 scheduled to be held in Brazil during Q4’25, climate change is expected to be a major focus over the next year; this will likely drive increasing interest and VC investment into the cleantech and climatetech spaces in 2025.

There is a lot of optimism for the IPO market in the Americas heading into 2025, with many eyes watching to see which companies move to exit first; while the US is drawing the most attention, the growing stable of strong and profitable Canadian tech startups suggests that Canada could also see a number of quality IPO exits over the next year or two once the market picks up.