Brazilian lender Itaú Unibanco agreed on October 26 to buy artificial intelligence startup NeoSpace AI for 2.925 billion reais ($589 million), acquiring all of the company’s shares, according to a securities filing reported by Reuters. Part of the price is due at closing and the balance deferred over five years. NeoSpace, founded in late 2023, builds Large Data Models that analyse diverse data formats and documents rather than language alone, and has worked with Itaú for nearly two years. The startup will keep operating independently under co-founder and chief executive Bruno Pierobon. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.
The Deal
Itaú said it had entered an agreement to acquire all shares issued by NeoSpace AI, Reuters reported from São Paulo. The bank will pay 2.925 billion reais, about $589 million at the filing’s exchange rate of 4.9654 reais to the dollar, with part of the sum due at closing and the rest deferred over five years. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions, and no closing date has been announced.
The structure matters for what Itaú is buying. NeoSpace will continue to operate independently under Pierobon, rather than being folded into the bank’s technology division. That arrangement preserves the startup’s product roadmap while giving Itaú direct control of technology it already uses.
What NeoSpace Builds
NeoSpace specialises in a category it calls Large Data Models. Unlike large language models, which are built mainly to understand and generate language, these models are designed to analyse diverse data formats and documents, finding patterns across a company’s structured and unstructured data and turning them into recommendations and decisions.
The startup lets corporate clients build and train specialised AI models on their own proprietary data. Its customers span telecommunications, aviation and energy, and it is pursuing expansion into the United States and Europe. For a bank, that pitch is concrete: models that read a customer’s documents, transactions and records together, rather than a chatbot that only handles text.
A Second Itaú Deal For The Founders
NeoSpace was founded in late 2023 by Bruno Pierobon, Felipe Almeida, Gustavo Debs and Thiago Teixeira. Pierobon, Almeida and Debs had previously founded technology firm Zup, which Itaú acquired in 2019 for more than 500 million reais. The NeoSpace deal is therefore the founders’ second sale to the same bank.
Itaú already knew the company well before this deal. The lender led an $18 million funding round in January 2025 that valued NeoSpace at $100 million, with participation from Martin Escobari of General Atlantic and Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital. The $589 million acquisition price is well above that valuation, reflecting both the startup’s growth and Itaú’s decision to own the technology outright rather than remain a minority investor.
Why It Matters
Itaú intends to deploy NeoSpace technology across its internal tools, including its generative AI platform i.ai, which launched in late July. The bank plans to roll the platform out to 100% of individual retail app users by the end of 2026, putting NeoSpace’s models in front of its mass-market customers within months of the deal.
The acquisition fits a wider pattern of banks buying AI capability instead of renting it. Santander has turned to Nvidia to cut AI serving costs across its banking operations, and AI startup deals continue to close across applied sectors. For Itaú, owning the model builder behind its own platform removes a supplier dependency at the moment AI becomes central to retail banking.
Background
Itaú’s path to this deal ran through its own balance sheet. It backed NeoSpace as a minority investor in January 2025, worked with the startup for nearly two years, and has now moved to full ownership, paying a price that reflects how quickly enterprise AI has gone from experiment to core infrastructure.
Sources: Reuters: Itaú NeoSpace $589 million; El-Fondo: Itaú NeoSpace deal
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