The second edition of the Startup World Cup took place on August 21 at Aleph Hub, right after the LATAM Digital Assets Conf closed and with the conference's institutional audience still in the auditorium. Seven startups pitched in a single round, three minutes per team plus two of questions, in front of a jury of four investors who invest across Latin America. Arturo Grande, Regional Ambassador at Celo, hosted the evening.
The seven selected: Luca Money, an app to receive, invest and spend directly in stablecoins; Aqua0, cross-chain shared liquidity infrastructure for stablecoin issuers; Autiffy, an ERP for the automotive market; Nora Finance, building BRS, a stablecoin backed 1:1 by the Brazilian real, along with the infrastructure to operate in BRL onchain; Compass, a firewall that intercepts risky actions by AI agents before they execute; Piggy Wallet, a family app where kids earn money by completing chores and save toward concrete goals; and Sequencer, a platform for brands and IP owners to turn their characters and stories into AI-powered interactive games. Two of them, Aqua0 and Nora Finance, arrived through the fast track from the Uniswap Acceleration Season.
The jury brought together four investors active in the region: Jerónimo Alazraki, from Latitud; Mateo Guigue, from Newtopia; Nicolás Zylberberg, from Lucero Ventures; and Milagros Santamaría, from Andén. They heard the seven pitches, asked the questions and deliberated the result. Thanks to all four for the time and judgment they brought to the competition.
Once the seven pitches were done, the jury chose Nora Finance as the winner. BRS is already live on Solana, with EVM support on the way and more than five ecosystem partners integrated. The team takes a spot in Inception, Andén's new program for Latin American tech companies.
Thanks also to Andén and Lucero Ventures, the two partners behind this edition; Andén also provided the prize.
Held in November during Devconnect, the first edition gathered 219 startups from more than 40 countries, with Peanut as champion. The Startup World Cup is the final stage of Crecimiento's builder funnel: hackathons bring in new projects, the Acceleration Seasons give them structure and mentorship, and the competition puts them in front of investors. The day after the event, the Aleph Hackathon kicked off, the other side of the same week.