The Brazilian bank is expanding both its VC capital and its investment scope.
Brazilian financial services firm Banco do Brasil has boosted the amount of capital for its corporate venturing investments, more than doubling the CVC’s total capital to R$500m ($94m).
In addition to the capital raise, BB Ventures expanded its investments to include startups in the bioeconomy, a term referring to the parts of the economy that use renewable biological resources from the land and sea to produce food, healthcare, materials and energy.
It will also incorporate ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion into its investment scope.
This year, BB Ventures launched a division that partners with entrepreneurs to build startups. The first of these is BB Expenses, an AI-enabled expense management software to automate corporate expenses with the bank’s credit cards, which it co-created with startup Payfy.
BB Ventures, founded in 2020, has 51 companies in its portfolio in the fintech, agtech and govtech sectors.
