Itaú Unibanco has agreed to buy every share of NeoSpace, a Brazilian artificial intelligence startup, for R$2.925 billion, the bank said in a material-fact notice dated October 26. The price is to be paid in one installment at closing, with the rest deferred over five years, and the purchase still needs approval from Brazil’s antitrust authority, Cade, and from the Banco Central do Brasil. NeoSpace builds large AI models trained on big collections of data, has worked for the bank for nearly two years, and received an investment from the bank in January 2025.

The terms of the deal

According to the notice, which the bank also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a Form 6-K, the price is R$2,925,000,000 and the purchase covers all of the shares NeoSpace has issued. One payment falls due at closing and the remainder is deferred over five years, subject to certain conditions that the notice does not spell out. Closing also depends on other customary conditions for a transaction of this kind.

The notice does not give the size of the first installment or a closing date, and Capital Aberto reports that the bank did not disclose either. It also does not address accounting effects such as goodwill. The notice says nothing, in the version reviewed for this article, about whether the existing minority stake counts toward the price.

For scale, Baguete describes Itaú as the largest financial institution in Brazil and Latin America and reports that it earned R$46.8 billion in 2025, up 13.1% from 2024. Lens analysis: the headline price is a little over 6% of that single year’s profit, though the deferred structure means the bank will not pay it all at once.

What NeoSpace builds

Startups, the Brazilian business site, describes NeoSpace as a company founded in Uberlândia, in the state of Minas Gerais, that develops what it calls Large Data Models: foundation models designed to process corporate, tabular and operational data at scale. The bank’s own notice describes a startup that builds large general-purpose models trained on massive data collections.

Baguete gives more product detail. It says NeoSpace’s generative AI models connect to customer-relationship-management systems and are meant to draft personalized replies, summarize and enrich customer interactions, fill in customer records automatically, and predict sentiment and buying intent. The stated aim is to cut manual work and speed up negotiations in business-to-business and business-to-consumer operations.

The sources disagree on when the company was founded. Capital Aberto says it was founded at the end of 2023 and Baguete says 2023, while the Diário do Grande ABC says 2024. They agree on the founders: Bruno Pierobon, Felipe Almeida and Gustavo Debs, with Pierobon as chief executive.

Baguete says the three founders previously created Zup, a technology company that Itaú took control of, and the Diário do Grande ABC says some of them took part in its founding. Bloomberg Línea reported in February 2025 that Itaú bought Zup in 2019 for about R$500 million, while Baguete and the Diário do Grande ABC date the purchase to 2020, and Baguete says the price was above R$500 million. If the NeoSpace deal closes, it would be the second company founded by people from that group to come under the bank’s control.

From a minority stake to full ownership

In January 2025 Itaú led a US$18 million round in NeoSpace, putting in US$15 million for a 15% stake, according to Bloomberg Línea, which reported the round on February 1, 2025, and to the later coverage in Startups and Capital Aberto. Angel investors in the round included Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, Martin Escobari of General Atlantic, Nigel Morris of QED Investors and Hans Morris of NYCA Partners.

Baguete reports that the round valued NeoSpace at US$100 million at the time and puts the bank’s US$15 million at about R$88 million at the exchange rate of the day. Bloomberg Línea noted in 2025 that the bank had chosen to invest earlier this time, at the start of the business.

Alongside the investment, the two companies signed a commercial agreement to build AI products for the bank’s digital platforms, according to Capital Aberto and the Diário do Grande ABC. Since then NeoSpace has trained models on Itaú’s own data, with results the bank cites in credit, customer relationships and fraud prevention.

What Itaú says it wants

The notice ties the purchase to the continued development of ia.i, the bank’s generative AI assistant, and to more personalized customer experiences. Startups reports that NeoSpace’s models are already used in joint projects and are expected to feed the platform. Planned uses it lists include more contextual customer interactions, guidance on financial management, credit offers suited to different customer profiles, and financial-planning tools.

Milton Maluhy Filho, Itaú’s chief executive, said the bank wants to be among the institutions that define the next chapter of the global financial industry, and described the acquisition as a strategic investment in that ambition, according to Startups. Baguete quotes him on Brazil’s record of setting international benchmarks in banking innovation. Pierobon said, per Startups, that NeoSpace was built on the conviction that Brazil can develop artificial intelligence of its own.

Startups also reports that the bank recently joined Endeavor Catalyst Fund V as a limited partner, which the site calls the first investment under the fund-of-funds strategy of Itaú Ventures. It presents the NeoSpace purchase as part of a set of steps to become a reference in banking technology.

What happens to NeoSpace

Under the announced terms, NeoSpace keeps its own management and daily operations, and the bank says the current team will stay in place so that research and development continue. The Diário do Grande ABC adds that the bank announced no immediate changes to credit conditions, bank fees or customer service because of the deal.

Capital Aberto goes further. It reports that NeoSpace is expected to work only for the bank and, after regulatory approvals, to wind down its contracts with other clients. The outlet does not tie that statement to a named source, the Diário do Grande ABC says its own text does not address exclusivity, and the notice as reviewed does not mention it, so this remains unconfirmed.

Capital Aberto also reports that, before the sale, NeoSpace had been negotiating a new round of up to US$250 million at a valuation of US$1.25 billion, and that it projected revenue near R$300 million in 2026 with a profitable operation. The outlet names no source for either figure, and no other outlet reviewed for this article repeats them.

How this fits Itaú’s recent moves

Capital Aberto compares the structure with Itaú’s purchase of control of Avenue, where the bank raised its stake to 50.1% at the end of 2025 and has consolidated the results since the first quarter of 2026. In both cases management stays separate after control changes hands. The difference, the outlet says, is that Avenue keeps serving the open market while NeoSpace may end up serving only the bank.

Lens analysis: the sequence of a small minority investment, a two-year working relationship and then a full purchase gave Itaú time to test the models on its own data before paying a much larger price. The notice itself points to results in credit, customer relationships and fraud prevention, but it publishes no performance figures, so outside readers cannot check how much those results justify the price.

What to watch

The first open question is timing. Neither the bank nor the coverage gives a date for the Cade and central bank decisions, and the regulators’ conditions, if any, have not been announced. Capital Aberto reports that Itaú publishes its third-quarter results on November 3, which could bring more detail on how the bank will account for the purchase, though the notice does not say whether that disclosure is planned.

The second is the size and nature of the deferred payments. The notice says the remainder is paid over five years, subject to certain conditions, but it does not say whether those conditions relate to NeoSpace’s performance, to the retention of its team or to something else. The third is whether NeoSpace does keep serving other clients, since the reporting on exclusivity is thin and comes from a single outlet.

Sources

Image: Banco Itaú, Sousa (PB).jpg by Marcos Elias de Oliveira Júnior, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative photo; it does not show the events described.