The archive · Money & Fintech · Technical decision · 2022–2025
Tako bets LLMs can tame Brazil's payroll maze of 10,000 unions; R$75M seed, R$100M A
Tako automates Brazilian payroll with an LLM that ingests labor law and 10,000 unions' rules; it raised Brazil's largest seed ever, then a R$100M Series A.
Tako
What the business is
Tako is a São Paulo HR-tech platform that automates the employee lifecycle — onboarding, payroll, offboarding — for Brazilian mid-market companies, using an LLM that ingests labor law and union rules to keep the system current.
Starting capital：US$13.2M (R$75M) seed co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz with ONEVC and Ramp's founders, November 2024; R$100M Series A led by Ribbit Capital, July 2025
How it started
Fernando Gadotti co-founded DogHero, sold it in 2020 and left in 2022; at DogHero every payroll cycle meant hours of double-checking data with little insight. A few months later he started Tako in São Paulo to automate the employee lifecycle, launched the product in 2023, and processed tens of millions of dollars in payroll while still in stealth.
What happened
In November 2024 Tako came out of stealth with a US$13.2M (R$75M) seed co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with ONEVC and Ramp's founders. Bloomberg Línea reported it was the largest seed round in Brazilian VC history — ahead of Kanastra's US$13M in 2023 — and that Tako had cut time spent on payroll and related processes by 60% while processing hundreds of millions of reais in its first months. The LLM digests labor-law and union data so developers can keep the codebase up to date, with humans in the loop for accuracy. In July 2025 Ribbit Capital led a R$100M Series A.
How it ended up
Still running and expanding: Brazil's largest-ever seed round in November 2024, then a R$100M Series A led by Ribbit Capital in July 2025.
Background
Tako is a São Paulo fintech founded by Fernando Gadotti, who previously co-founded DogHero and sold it in 2020. Its bet is that Brazil's payroll system is so uniquely complicated — laws that change frequently and roughly 10,000 unions that update their own rules several times a year, sometimes with more power than the law itself — that a local, AI-powered platform can beat imported US payroll software like ADP.
Gadotti started Tako a few months after leaving DogHero in 2022, launched the product in 2023, and processed tens of millions of dollars in payroll while in stealth, targeting mid-market companies of 100–500 employees. The platform automates onboarding, payroll and offboarding, and uses an LLM to ingest labor-law and union data so developers can keep the codebase current, with humans checking accuracy.
In November 2024 Tako emerged from stealth with a US$13.2M (R$75M) seed co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, which Bloomberg Línea said was the largest seed round in Brazilian VC history. The company reported cutting time spent on payroll and related tasks by 60% and processing hundreds of millions of reais within months. In July 2025, Ribbit Capital led a R$100M Series A, extending the run.
What has to be true
- Brazil's 10,000 unions and frequently changing labor law make payroll a moving target that global players cannot easily localize, giving a domestic specialist structural protection.
- The LLM is the edge: it turns the regulatory churn into a code-maintenance problem, digesting law and union updates before humans verify them.
- Gadotti's own pain at DogHero — hours of double-checking payroll with little insight — made the wedge concrete rather than theoretical.
- Starting with simple white-collar segments of 100–500 employees let Tako prove the model before venturing into industrial payroll, an explicit 'don't boil the ocean' strategy.
- Backing from Ribbit, a16z and Ramp's founders — plus the record seed size — signaled conviction in the thesis during a cold LatAm funding period.
What can be applied
Regulatory complexity can be a moat: a market too tangled for global software giants to localize is a wedge for a local team, and AI tracking changing rules is how it keeps that moat current.
Aftermath
As of July 31, 2025, Tako had closed a R$100M Series A led by Ribbit Capital, following the US$13.2M seed that Bloomberg Línea reported as the largest in Brazilian VC history. The product was live for mid-market white-collar companies, having processed hundreds of millions of reais in payroll with a reported 60% reduction in time spent on the task. Gadotti planned to put most capital into R&D and to expand into areas such as instant payments and employee benefits, competing with legacy players like ADP and local HR startups such as Gupy and Caju.
Sources
- Brazilian fintech Tako emerges from stealth with sizable seed round led by a16z and Ribbit Capital
- Rodadas da semana: startup de RH conclui a maior captação Seed no Brasil
- Ribbit Capital leads BRL 100 million Series A round in Tako
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