Jelou raises $10m to scale WhatsApp-based transactional AI

January 26, 2026

Jelou, a FinTech company building AI agents that execute real financial operations inside messaging apps, has raised $10m in Series A funding to expand its WhatsApp-based transactional platform across the Americas.

The funding round was led by Wellington Access Ventures, with participation from Krealo, Credicorp’s corporate venture arm, and Collide Capital.

With this raise, Jelou has secured $13m in total funding, following a $3m Seed round previously led by Act One Ventures and Arca Continental Ventures.

The capital will be used to scale Brain, Jelou’s core platform that enables businesses to build and deploy AI agents capable of securely executing transactions directly within WhatsApp. These AI agents are designed to go beyond basic customer support, handling actions such as executing payments, opening bank accounts, verifying identity, underwriting credit, and progressing financial workflows entirely within a chat conversation.

Jelou’s approach addresses a long-standing friction point in digital commerce. While messaging has become the primary channel for customer communication across Latin America and beyond, critical financial actions are often redirected to separate apps, portals, or call centres. According to the company, this fragmentation increases abandonment and operational costs. Brain is designed to close this gap by allowing transactions to be completed at the moment customers are ready to act.

The Brain platform connects directly to a company’s existing systems, using live data to power AI-driven interactions. It includes a web-based studio with more than 3,000 integrations, enabling developers and businesses to build, integrate, and manage AI agents. A conversation management layer allows teams to oversee high volumes of interactions while securely executing workflows such as payments, credit processes, and document signing.

Founded in Ecuador in 2017, Jelou was built after its team observed that messaging had become the dominant interface for commerce, while execution remained fragmented and insecure. Since then, the company has expanded across Latin America, serving more than 500 business customers in over 13 countries. Jelou reports it has processed more than $100m in financial operations through its AI agents, working with banks, retailers, and consumer goods companies in highly regulated environments.

Looking ahead, the company plans to evolve Brain into a full operating system for conversational business. Its longer-term vision is to enable companies and developers to build and manage production-ready WhatsApp applications directly from a prompt.

Jelou CEO Luis Loaiza said, “When customers are most ready to act, things usually fall apart.

“They get redirected out of the conversation, put on hold, or asked to repeat themselves across systems. We built Brain so businesses can meet customers where they already are and complete the entire operation securely inside chat. This round allows us to scale that model across the Americas and push conversational AI beyond talk into execution.”