The archive · AI & Models · Product decision · 2023–2026
NeoSpace bets 'large data models' beat chatbots; unicorn talks at $1.25B
Zup veterans in Brazil train foundation models on company data with Itaú as anchor client; ~US$55M 2026 revenue projected, US$250M round in talks
NeoSpace
What the business is
Builds 'large data models' — foundation models trained on enterprises' structured and unstructured data — to anticipate customer needs, personalize service and inform credit decisions; targets finance, oil and gas, aerospace and telecom
Starting capital：US$18M pre-seed led by Itaú Unibanco (US$15M from the bank, January 2025), with angels Martín Escobari, Micky Malka, Nigel Morris and Hans Morris; a US$250M seed at US$1.25B post-money was under negotiation as of August 2026
How it started
Bruno Pierobon and his co-founders had built Zup, the software and IT-services company Itaú acquired in 2020 for more than R$500 million, and stayed on to run it inside the bank. In late 2023 they founded NeoSpace in Uberlândia on a contrarian read: the generative-AI boom was producing chatbots, while the structured data that actually runs a business — transactions, service history, credit records — had no foundation model of its own.
What happened
In January 2025 Itaú led a US$18M pre-seed, putting in US$15 million for a minority stake and gaining 12-month exclusivity on NeoSpace's conversational model plus perpetual exclusivity on jointly developed products. NeoSpace works with the bank on three models — customer-service language, anticipating what a client needs next from their data, and credit — and is building models for other sectors such as telecom while training in English and Spanish from the start. By 2026 it projected about R$300 million (US$55 million) in revenue, appeared in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's presentation, and was one of Brazil's biggest buyers of Nvidia's B200 GPUs.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
NeoSpace was founded in Uberlândia, Brazil by the entrepreneurs behind Zup, the software and IT-services company Itaú bought in 2020 for over R$500 million. Bruno Pierobon and his co-founders had stayed on to run Zup inside the bank, and left in late 2023 on a contrarian read: the generative-AI boom was producing chatbots, while the structured data that actually runs a business — transactions, service history, credit records — had no foundation model of its own.
The startup builds what it calls 'large data models': architectures that ingest structured and unstructured company data into one system, the 'brain of each company', rather than the text-focused models behind ChatGPT and Claude. Itaú became both anchor client and lead investor, putting US$15 million into a US$18M pre-seed in January 2025 in exchange for exclusivity on early models, and the founders' prior relationship let NeoSpace train on the bank's data from day one.
By 2026 NeoSpace projected roughly R$300 million (US$55 million) in revenue, appeared in Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's presentation at the company's main event, and became one of Brazil's largest buyers of Nvidia's B200 GPUs. In August 2026 it was negotiating a seed round of up to US$250 million at a US$1.25 billion post-money valuation — a figure that would make it a unicorn in under three years.
What has to be true
- LLMs were built on public text; the structured data inside a bank or refinery had no model trained for it — an open wedge for specialists
- The founders had already sold Zup to Itaú, so the bank's CIO trusted them enough to hand over exclusivity, data and US$15M before anyone else
- One anchor customer with billions of records let a young startup train and prove models without a long sales slog, then expand to other sectors
- The exclusivity terms forced speed: perpetual exclusivity on co-developed products meant NeoSpace's value depended on what it kept building next
What can be applied
A credible insider customer can fund and train a new category: trade exclusivity for one partner's data and capital, prove the model there, then expand sector by sector
Aftermath
As of August 2026 NeoSpace was negotiating a US$250M seed round at a US$1.25B post-money valuation; closing it would make it a unicorn in under three years and the largest seed in Latin America. Itaú remained the anchor client, the company projected about R$300M (US$55M) of 2026 revenue on a profitable operation, and it was opening its first United States customers while pushing large data models into oil and gas, aerospace and telecom
Sources
- Itaú investe na NeoSpace, a GenAI que quer 'mudar totalmente o CRM'
- NeoSpace negocia hasta US$250M y rozaría el unicornio en menos de tres años
- NeoSpace pode bater recorde com seed de US$ 250 milhões
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