Jelou announced it has raised a $10 million Series A to expand Brain, its platform for building AI agents that can securely execute business and financial operations directly inside WhatsApp. The round was led by Wellington Access Ventures, with participation from Krealo, Credicorp’s corporate venture arm, and Collide Capital. Jelou said it has now raised $13 million in total funding, including a prior $3 million seed round led by Act One Ventures and Arca Continental Ventures.
The company is positioning Brain to eliminate the friction that occurs when customers are forced out of chat to complete high-intent steps like payments, identity verification, credit applications, signatures, and other transaction-heavy workflows.
Jelou is betting that across Latin America and other parts of the Americas, conversational channels have become the default interface for customer engagement, but most automation tools still stop at answering questions rather than completing transactions. Brain is designed to move from “talk” to execution by connecting agents to a company’s existing systems so they can collect missing information, verify identity, trigger payments, and advance financial workflows using live system data without pushing customers into separate apps, portals, or call centers.
At the core of the product is a web-based studio that includes more than 3,000 integrations for building and connecting agents, alongside a conversation management layer that helps teams supervise large volumes of interactions while securely running workflows such as payments, credit processes, and document signing.
Founded in Ecuador in 2017 by Luis Loaiza and Alberto Vera, Jelou traces its origins to early observations that messaging had become the dominant interface for commerce in the region while execution remained fragmented and insecure. The company says it has since expanded across Latin America, processed more than $100 million in financial operations, and serves more than 500 business customers across over 13 countries, including banks, retailers, and consumer goods companies.
With the new funding, Jelou plans to broaden Brain toward what it describes as a full operating system for conversational business, enabling companies and developers to build, deploy, and manage production-ready WhatsApp applications directly from a prompt, with the longer-term goal of making WhatsApp a primary operating layer for businesses across the region.
KEY QUOTES
“When customers are most ready to act, things usually fall apart.”
Luis Loaiza, CEO and founder of Jelou
“Jelou recognizes that the future of AI is centered around communication channels embedded within the everyday workflow.”
Jackson Cummings, Head of Wellington Access Ventures
