By Sofiia Barysheva
How Europe’s growing interest in Latin American creativity and entrepreneurial resilience is shaping a new stage of transatlantic partnerships and investment.
Today, Europe’s relationship with Latin America is going through a fundamental paradigm shift, which is driven by the interest in the region’s rich cultural output and rapidly maturing startup ecosystem. Across major European innovation hubs like Madrid, Berlin, London, and Paris, investors and corporate partners are looking beyond traditional commodity trading to embrace Latin America’s vibrant creative industries, digital platforms, and tech talent.
The Inter-American Development Bank has estimated that Latin America and the Caribbean’s cultural and creative industries generated around 1.9 million jobs in 2015, illustrating the longstanding economic significance of the region’s creative economy.
The investment landscape reflects this momentum. According to Crunchbase and Cuantico VC, Latin American startups raised $4.1 billion across 681 funding rounds in 2025, while early-stage investment increased by 31.9% year-on-year to nearly $2 billion. Meanwhile, European trade alignment is solidifying: research by the European Commission highlights that trade in services between the EU and Mercosur countries has crossed €30 billion annually, creating stronger opportunities for digital businesses and making European expansion much more accessible for Latin American founders.
Among the companies helping to transform the ongoing shift into long-term collaboration is KunturLab, which is entirely dedicated to investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial education for Latin American CulTech and Createch startups, alongside a surge in transatlantic venture capital.
New Transatlantic Innovation Corridor
The growing interest in Latin American startups reflects an important transformation in the economic relationship between Europe and LATAM. Over the past several years, the EU has expanded investment programmes, strengthened trade partnerships and encouraged cooperation in digital infrastructure and the creative economy.
One of the remarkable initiatives is the EU's Global Gateway programme. In 2023, it announced the mobilisation of €45 billion in investments across Latin America and the Caribbean. Spanning sectors from energy to transport and digital infrastructure, it also created a foundation for the innovation-driven businesses operating across borders.
Private investment activity has also reflected greater interest in the region’s technology sector.Corum Group data indicating higher technology M&A activity involving Latin American companies provides another sign of growing cross-border interest in the region’s software sector. Moreover, they are acquiring software companies developed across Latin America.
Generational Shift in Soft Power and Tech Maturity
As co-founders of KunturLab, Nohelia Sánchez and Carina Valoni mention, the ongoing shift is particularly driven by a new diaspora of highly educated, globally connected Latin American entrepreneurs who operate effortlessly across international business environments while remaining deeply connected to their heritage and roots. Unlike previous generations, these founders do not dilute their cultural identity to conform to Western standards. On the other hand, they leverage it as a distinct competitive advantage.
At the same time, Latin America's startup ecosystem has matured under conditions that would challenge most innovation hubs. In markets affected by inflation, political uncertainty and currency volatility, many founders have had to operate with tighter capital discipline and consider international expansion earlier.
“Wherever you look in the region, there is an incubator, an accelerator, an angel investor institution, a new generation of professionals setting high standards and delivering to international tech companies at a level that surprises people. Argentina has produced 11unicorns while living through hyperinflation, external debt and several parallel exchange rates at the same time. Colombia has produced 2 after decades of being defined by its conflict. And our giant brother Brazil has produced more than 20, though its scale asks for a different lens, because a company there can reach that status without ever leaving the country.” - explaining Sánchez and Valoni.
For some international investors, perceptions of Latin America are shifting from a predominantly emerging-market risk narrative toward greater recognition of its capacity to produce globally competitive technology companies.It is a region capable of producing globally competitive companies despite structural constraints. Businesses such as Nubank, Rappi and Globant have helped demonstrate that innovation from the region can scale internationally, while newer startups are benefiting from an ecosystem that is much more mature than it was even five years ago.
Dispelling Misconceptions: CulTech as Economic Infrastructure
Despite visible progress, conversations with European investors often hold misconceptions about Latin American ventures. Co-founders of KunturLab highlight a common assumption they regularly encounter abroad: "There is one assumption I keep bumping into, which is that we do not understand how things work over there. The truth is that we do, and very often we practice those rules abroad even better than we do at home... Many of the founders I know already have their companies incorporated in Delaware or in Spain, or a fund based in Luxembourg, or partners located overseas. We may look far away on the map, yet we are far more interconnected than people imagine."
It proves the fact that international expansion for Latin American startups is no longer an exception, moreover - nowadays it is a common growth strategy, demonstrating the internationalisation of the ecosystem. As a result, this type of structure allows companies to access international capital without relocating the talent and creative ecosystems that formed their products.
One more common misconception is connected with the CulTech specifically. The deeper oversight lies in failing to recognize culture as a distinct investment category: "Regarding cultural startups specifically, the deeper misunderstanding is the belief that there is no Cultech / Createch business vertical at all. The truth is that it exists, and has for a while, it is just not officially named yet, nor treated as a political and economic asset. There are real exceptions, countries like Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Brazil that have built clear public policy and increased their budgets to favour cultural production and distribution. But we do not need to be conquered or patronized, we need skills transfer, real investment, and to be included as partners, so we can turn our cultural heritage into an infrastructural asset that creates respectful and long lasting endeavors." -explaining Nohelia Sánchez and Carina Valoni.
They also believe Europe's perception of the region is gradually evolving: "For a long time the region was read as a faraway territory, a place you went to take a risk. What is shifting is that today there is room to be looked at as a partner instead of only a market, and that is a very different conversation. And there is a reason that conversation holds up. We work deeply inside supporting networks, and we were raised to be demanding of ourselves, so our results tend to carry real effort and real quality behind them, a standard that is honestly hard to find elsewhere. Human connection, for us, is not a soft skill added at the end, it is the ground the whole operating system stands on."
KunturLab: Creating a New Phase of Transatlantic Collaboration
As interest in Latin American innovation is continuing to grow, organisations capable of connecting entrepreneurs, investors and creative industries across borders are becoming increasingly well-demanded. KunturLab positions itself at the intersection of culture, technology and entrepreneurship, supporting founders whose businesses often fall outside conventional venture capital categories. It works to strengthen the CulTech and Createch ecosystem through founder education, international partnerships and cross-border collaboration, while connecting entrepreneurs with investors, institutions and industry leaders across Europe and Latin America.
For Sánchez and Valoni, recent political developments are likely to reinforce this momentum. That is why they are explaining: "We believe that recent agreements like the EU-Mercosur agreement, which took 26 years to negotiate and has been provisionally in force since May 2026, will also open opportunities for cultural innovation exchange. On paper it is about trade in goods and services, but I am convinced that it will naturally impact the cultural and creative industries, because you cannot build that kind of economic closeness between two blocs without the culture eventually travelling along with it."
The founders also point to the growing global reach of Latin American culture, showing that its international success has already moved beyond niche audiences and become a measurable economic force. “According to the IFPI, Latin America was the fastest-growing recorded music region in the world in 2025, its sixteenth consecutive year of growth, and for the first time Brazil and Mexico both sit inside the global top ten music markets. Our audiovisual stories travel just as far: Spanish is the second most watched non-English language on Netflix after Korean, and after Spain, the largest producers of that content are Colombia and Mexico. This is culture being consumed globally, not culture waiting to be discovered.”
It is quite important to mention that Europe's growing interest in Latin American startups is no longer driven solely by trade or market expansion. For years, Latin America was often viewed through the lens of risk, but today, that narrative is gradually being replaced by one centred on resilience, creativity and international collaboration. Venture capital is following cultural influence, while cultural influence is creating new potential opportunities for technology businesses.
Whether this momentum ultimately leads to a recognised CulTech investment category or a new generation of transatlantic partnerships remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that Latin America is no longer asking to be included in global innovation conversations; it is already participating in shaping them.