3 months ago
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Brazil fintech Magie raised $4 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital, marking the firm’s first investment in Brazil. The company, which has raised $5.1 million in total, is creating an AI-powered financial assistant. The current product allows people to send money and pay bills through WhatsApp.
For cofounder Luiz Ramalho and Lux partner Brandon Reeves, Magie is a broader bet on Brazil’s burgeoning fintech scene, which has been fueled by the massive success of Nubank, the Brazilian neobank that had a blockbuster IPO in 2021.
Reeves, who’s been at the forefront of many of Lux’s international investments – particularly Sakana AI, the firm’s first Japanese bet — said he saw firsthand how quickly Brazilians were “generally early adopters of new financial products” on a recent trip to Sao Paulo.
He cited Pix, an instant payments platform that the country’s central bank rolled out in 2020; by 2023, almost 42 billion payments were sent using Pix, exceeding credit and debit charges combined, according to Abecs, a Brazilian association for financial services.
Pix paved the way for Magie. Last September, Ramalho, a Rio de Janeiro-native, realized that Pix represented a major opportunity: it brought most Brazilians onto a common network, one that Ramalho could leverage. Along with cofounder João Camargo, they designed Magie as an AI chatbot in WhatsApp where users can send or receive money. Magie has acquired over 12,000 users since launching in April, although the company has yet to monetize those users. “Our goal is to really build something with a lot of retention first,” Ramalho said.
But Ramalho’s ultimate goal is for Magie to be a more full-fledged financial assistant — and an equalizer. He hopes to potentially charge for a premium subscription, where Magie can help users work through financial decisions, like what kind of loan to take out and at which bank. He’ll have competition from the banks themselves: Morgan Stanley launched its own AI-powered financial assistant in June.
But Ramalho insists that Magie will be a more egalitarian tool, one without a vested interest in any one bank’s services. “There is a certain conflict of interest in the banks,” he said. “The banks don’t necessarily want their customers to be seeing the best offers for every single bank.”
He said it all goes back to Magie’s namesake: Lizzie Magie, the designer who created Monopoly. In her version, there was less focus on one person usurping all the properties and a greater emphasis on everyone having land. “You still had a winner,” he said. “But everybody was better off at the end of the game.”
