At Dalus Capital, we focus our investments on three specific verticals: Inclusion (fintech, healthtech, and edtech), Business Productivity (AI and SaaS), and Climate Innovation. While capital is a fundamental part of the equation for all three, we realized early on that climate innovation needed something extra—a dedicated space to build a community from the ground up. That is why we created the Latam Climate Innovation Summit in 2022. We wanted to provide a central meeting point for an ecosystem that was finally ready to take off.
I know that any predictions for 2026 will probably be wrong, but I am willing to bet on two specific trends.
1. Volatility and opportunity
I expect 2026 to be a year of above-average market volatility. It will likely mirror what we experienced in 2025. However, this creates massive opportunities in the startup and venture ecosystem. Tremendous innovation is happening right now, but in a market with restricted liquidity. Constraints often breed the best creativity, and I think we are about to see the proof of that.
2. The acceleration of AI-native products
AI development will continue to accelerate. This will happen in foundational models and in specific, AI-native products.
• Foundational models will generate performance far beyond what we have seen so far. They will push into the upper range of human capability.
• Specialized products will finally have their moment. While the adoption of general interfaces like ChatGPT and Gemini has been fast, the uptake of specialized tools has lagged. I expect that to change rapidly in 2026. We will see a wave of products that don’t just chat, but act. They will solve complex problems just as expert humans do.
Looking Back
Personally, this year has been very demanding but also incredibly rewarding. I am confident the rewarding part will continue in 2026. I just hope the “demanding” part dials down a little bit.
I am grateful for you, my readers, for following this blog over the years. As always, your feedback is welcome.
Happy New Year to you and your families. Enjoy the last sunset of 2025 from the Mexican Pacific coast.
It’s been a few months since my last reading update, and as we wrap up 2025, I wanted to share a fresh batch of books that have sparked my curiosity.
If you’ve followed my blog, you know I’m drawn to topics that explain why the world works the way it does, whether through the lens of history, technology, economics, or the complexities of human behavior. The non-fiction titles in this list reflect that mix, ranging from AI and populism to the daily life of the Roman Empire.
In fiction, I have been drawn to emerging Latin American writers and global masters, including several recent Nobel Prize winners.
Below, you’ll find my latest reads, followed by a recap of the books I recommended earlier this year.
One more year, I’m sharing a list of 2026 economic outlook reports from leading investment banks around the world.
In previous years, I got this list from various sources and simply reposted it. This year, I asked an LLM (ChatGPT 5.2) to build it from scratch. The result is solid, and I’m pretty sure it was done much faster than the old way. Enjoy.
When a startup raises capital, it is always a delicate balancing act. You have the valuation of the startup on one side and the size of the round on the other. This tension is what determines dilution.
Simply put, dilution is the percentage of ownership that goes to your new investors, and by definition, it is the percentage that everyone else’s slice of the pie shrinks.
I came across this chart from Carta, which breaks down the average equity sold (dilution) in 2025 by round stage. It paints a very clear picture of the current fundraising environment. While this data reflects the US market, it serves as a critical benchmark for us in Latin America. Even though our check sizes and valuations are often lower in absolute terms, the dilution targets—the slice of the pie you sell—should remain similar.
Siempre disfruto las buenas conversaciones sobre el estado del venture capital y el emprendimiento en nuestra región. Hace poco tuve el gusto de platicar con Mónica Mistretta, Maricela Ochoa y Francisco Iglesias, el gran equipo editorial de IT Masters Mag.
Fue una charla sobre el ecosistema de emprendimiento en México. Conversamos sobre sus particularidades, los retos actuales y las características que definen a los emprendedores mexicanos que buscan escalar y construir empresas de impacto.
The news landed last week, and it’s a profoundly sobering moment for anyone who cares about this planet: Dr. Jane Goodall has passed away at 91.
She was the pioneering primatologist and probably the top biologist of her time. Her groundbreaking discoveries—that chimpanzees use tools, have distinct personalities, and complex social lives—didn’t just change science; they forced humanity to look at itself in a new, humbler mirror. Incredibly enough, she first went to Tanzania in 1960 without a college degree. She was a young woman who dared to get up close and personal with animals most people thought were just “things.” You can read her definitive obituary here.
This news hit my wife and me especially hard because we attended her last conference, which was right here in Mexico City, the Saturday before her passing. Being in the room and hearing her voice—still sharp, still full of fire—was a powerful, final experience.
At Dalus, we are convinced that AI will create a massive disruption, unlocking huge productivity gains for businesses in the short and medium term. We have been actively investing in AI-native startups that are developing easy-to-deploy tools to solve specific business problems.
These companies are building products on top of LLMs to work more efficiently. For example, our portfolio company Darwin AI, which recently announced a new funding round, develops AI agents—think of them as digital workers—hyper-focused on sales processes. Another investment, Qomplement, automates data entry from PDFs to Excel and ERPs, cutting up to 90% of manual work. And we have other very exciting companies in our investment pipeline.💡
I’m thrilled to share that our portfolio company, Darwin AI, has closed a $4.5 million funding round led by Base10 Partners. 🚀 We at Dalus are excited to be participating in the round alongside other previous investors, doubling down on our belief in the team.
Darwin AI is building the future of business operations with AI agents, with a sharp focus on the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking markets in Latam (try them here). The traction is already undeniable: they’ve onboarded more than 300 clients across 20 countries and have surpassed $2 million in annual booked revenues.
