The archive · AI & Models · Product decision · 2025–2026
Primero's $12M seed: AI agents that unify LatAm's legacy-stack blue-chips
Mexican-founded startup launches Aug 2026 with one of LatAm's largest AI seeds: Primia, AI agents for blue-chips stuck on fragmented legacy systems.
Primero
What the business is
Sells Primia, an AI 'system of intelligence' layer that connects a company's scattered ERP, CRM, financial and legacy systems, encodes its business rules, and runs controlled, auditable AI agents over that layer — with forward-deployed engineers to implement it.
Starting capital：$12M seed co-led by Kaszek and General Catalyst; Definition, Conviction, 8VC and angels from FEMSA, Bimbo, Aeroméxico and Kimberly-Clark de México participated
How it started
José Murillo, Andrés Rosales and Santiago Buenahora — ex-Meta, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, 8VC, Robinhood and Microsoft — founded Primero after returning to Mexico, arguing LatAm needs locally built tech champions; the company launched publicly on August 25, 2026 together with a $12M seed.
What happened
Primia already runs at SmartFit, Terpel, Verde Valle and Mexico City's economic-development agency SEDECO; the company reports a consumer-goods client recovered $10M+ in wrong deductions and a construction workflow ~85% automated. Murillo told Reuters the region's CEOs can measure clearer AI ROI than with earlier enterprise software waves.
How it ended up
Just out of stealth: public launch and seed closed August 2026, with the round earmarked for product, LatAm expansion and hiring what it calls the region's highest density of engineering talent.
Background
Primero's bet is that Latin America's biggest companies run core operations on fragmented, often 1990s-era systems, with critical rules living in employees' heads — and that the real obstacle to AI there is context, not models. Its product, Primia, sits as an intelligence layer over those systems, encodes each company's business logic, and lets auditable AI agents execute complex processes.
The founders — José Murillo (ex-Meta and Goldman Sachs), Andrés Rosales (Harvard) and Santiago Buenahora (Penn) — built Primero in Mexico after returning from US tech jobs. Instead of selling generic SaaS, they deploy forward: engineers map each client's systems, rules and culture module by module, so the AI accumulates organizational knowledge with every implementation.
On August 25, 2026 Primero launched with one of Latin America's largest seed rounds: $12M co-led by Kaszek and General Catalyst, with Definition, Conviction, 8VC and angels tied to FEMSA, Bimbo, Aeroméxico and Kimberly-Clark de México. Clients already include SmartFit, Terpel, Verde Valle and Mexico City's SEDECO; the company cites a $10M+ deductions-recovery case and 85% automation of a construction review workflow.
What has to be true
- Kaszek backed Nubank from its earliest stages and General Catalyst holds major AI infrastructure positions, giving a young LatAm enterprise-AI startup unusually deep institutional validation.
- Pitch attacks measurable pain: data scattered across an average 957 applications (MuleSoft), only 27% connected, so ROI cases like recovering $10M+ in wrong deductions are concrete, not theoretical.
- Forward-deployed engineers turn the hardest part — understanding each client's undocumented business rules — into a defensible moat and compounding knowledge.
- Founders with Meta/Goldman Sachs/8VC backgrounds plus an engineering team heavy on IMO/IOI/ICPC alumni give a young company credibility with conservative enterprise buyers.
What can be applied
In enterprise AI, context is the moat: generic agents fail on fragmented legacy stacks, so the winner embeds engineers to encode rules the software never had — expensive to scale, hard to copy.
Aftermath
As of September 2026 Primero is live from offices in Mexico City, Madrid and Bogotá, working across financial services, manufacturing, retail, logistics, construction and health. The $12M seed is funding product development, Latin American expansion and aggressive hiring of what it calls the region's highest density of engineering talent. Its public test, per co-CEO Murillo: if LatAm's big companies become more efficient thanks to AI, that is proof the model works. The company remains early — no revenue figures have been disclosed.
Sources
- Startup mexicana 'Primero' consigue 12 mdd para llevar agentes de IA a empresas latinoamericanas
- La apuesta de US$12 millones por una startup que quiere llevar la IA a las grandes empresas de la región
- Primero levanta US$12M para transformar empresas latinas con IA – El Ecosistema Startup
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