Nowports bets LatAm SMEs digitize China trade; $150M Series C makes a $1.1B unicorn

Nowports is a digital freight forwarder for Latin America–China trade: online quotes, real-time tracking, cargo insurance and documents on one platform, plus embedded SME financing launched in Mexico in 2024.

That SMEs trading with China would abandon Excel-and-email freight handling for one digital platform, then pay embedded financing from the same screen.

US$16M Series A (July 2021), US$60M Series B (December 2021) and US$150M Series C (May 2022) led by SoftBank Latin America Fund, with Tiger Global, Tencent, Foundation Capital, Monashees and others.

Founded by Stanford classmates Alfonso de los Ríos and Maximiliano Casal, both from families with decades in traditional freight in Mexico and Uruguay, to digitize Latin America–China trade. Bloomberg Línea recounts the pitch: moving one container from China to Mexico once meant more than 80 emails and 15 manual documents on an Excel-driven 'operating system'.

The company almost ran out of cash in December 2020 on internal cash-flow problems, then raised US$16M (July 2021), US$60M (December 2021) and US$150M (May 2022, SoftBank-led) in under a year, serving more than 2,100 clients at the Series C. In October 2024 it launched SME financing in Mexico — 24-hour credit decisions — citing that only 9.6% of Mexico's private-sector credit reaches SMEs; by December 2024 the product had ten active clients and the company was planning an AI concierge and platform 2.0 for 2025.

Both founders grew up inside traditional freight in Mexico and Uruguay, so they knew the exact Excel-and-email pain before writing any code.

Raising A, B and C rounds within about ten months converted one near-death cash crisis into a US$1.1B valuation by May 2022.

The 'logistics grows during crises' argument gave investors a counter-cyclical reason to back the company amid global uncertainty.

Embedded financing attacked a structural gap — only 9.6% of Mexico's private-sector credit reaches SMEs — making the platform sticky rather than transactional.

A near-death cash crisis in year two did not define the company; stacking A, B and C rounds in ten months plus embedded financing turned a commoditized freight business into a $1.1B franchise.

As of September 2026, Nowports continues to operate as a digital freight forwarder across Latin America and China. Its SME financing product launched in Mexico in October 2024, with credit decisions in about 24 hours; T21 reported in December 2024 that it had ten active clients and that the company planned an AI-powered concierge and a platform 2.0 for 2025. Bloomberg Línea reported at the Series C that an IPO was not ruled out in later years; no further round or valuation has been publicly reported.