Who's Really Answering Your Calls?
Hi, and welcome to a new edition of The Daily Dealflow — the 5-minute briefing that gives you clear context on capital flows and market-moving trends across the Americas, from Silicon Valley to Buenos Aires. Let's dive in.
🏆 Deal of the Day
Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cresta, the AI platform that runs voice agents and real-time coaching inside contact centers for brands like Marriott, Comcast and Alaska Airlines. Salesforce did not disclose a price, but The Information reported about $2.7B, well above the $1.6B valuation Cresta carried after its 2022 Series C. Closing is expected between February and April 2027.
Why This?: Customer service is one of the first big jobs AI is rewiring, and the Americas run on contact centers, from U.S. service hubs to the nearshore floors of Mexico and Colombia.
Positive Context:
- Cresta spun out of Stanford's AI Lab in 2017, co-founded by Zayd Enam, Tim Shi and Sebastian Thrun, and is now led by CEO Ping Wu. One trade report puts its 2026 ARR at about $100M, which would value the deal at roughly 27x ARR.
- It caps a shopping spree: counting Cresta at $2.7B, CMSWire estimates Salesforce's 2026 deals top $15B, including Fin at about $3.6B and Braze at $5.66B, plus a reported $375M deal for defense AI startup Rune days earlier.
Yes, but:
- Salesforce has not confirmed the $2.7B price, and the ARR figure is unaudited, so the 27x multiple is a rough estimate.
- Once it closes, Salesforce will have three ways to put an AI agent on a phone call (Agentforce Voice, Fin and Cresta) without saying which one customers should plan around.
Analyst Blair Pleasant of COMMfusion called the deal a "great move" that "isn't necessarily about forcing customers into a single ecosystem," according to CMSWire.
💰 Venture Capital
Submit a deal for The Daily Dealflow newsletter via DM here on LinkedIn.
Larridin (US) – $30M, Series A, a platform that measures whether AI is actually paying off across a company's human and agent workforce, in a round led by Pelion Ventures with returning backers Andreessen Horowitz and Gradient Ventures, plus GFT, W23, Thayer, DG Daiwa Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Cougar Capital. Total funding is now $47M– Business Wire, Larridin.
Bloquo (Brazil) – $3.7M, Seed, stablecoin rails for banks and enterprises that bundle cross-border payments, FX trading and liquidity, led by Crescera Capital and Triaxis Capital with Lattice Fund. It supports USDC and USDT via API or dashboard, is registered with the U.S. FinCEN as a money services business and has applied to Brazil's central bank for a virtual-asset broker license – Phemex News.
ScribeUp (US) – $13M, Series A, white-label software that lets banks and credit unions show customers their subscriptions and cancel them from inside the banking app, led by Iowa's Curql with Mucker Capital and Service Ventures. CEO and co-founder Jordan Mackler argues recurring payments are the money interaction consumers understand least. It already works with 60+ financial institutions – Los Angeles Business Journal.
🏛️ Private Equity
LAVA (US) – $300M, acquisition, with rewards platform Bilt buying the loyalty, membership and fan-experience technology used by 56 pro franchises across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS. Bilt built its name letting renters earn points on rent; now it wants a piece of the season-ticket holder's wallet too – Business Wire.
Cogentrix Energy (US) – about 5,500 MW, secondary sale closing, with Vistra completing its purchase of Cogentrix's 10 natural-gas plants from funds managed by Quantum Capital Group. It is a classic PE exit into a strategic buyer at the exact moment AI data centers are making every dispatchable megawatt look more valuable – PR Newswire.
Churchill Asset Management (US) – $1.54B, fund close, Junior Capital Opportunities Fund III, which beat its original $1B target by more than 50% and more than doubled the $737M raised by its predecessor. It is the largest fund to date in the program, a reminder that the money lending behind buyouts is still raising faster than many buyout funds – Business Wire.
📈 Public & Capital Markets
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) – fiscal Q4 earnings, consumer hardware and services. Revenue rose 12% to $114.5B, iPhone sales reached $57.6B and Services hit a record $31.6B, capping a record fiscal year of $478.8B in revenue. It was John Ternus's first earnings call as CEO, following Tim Cook's final call in July, and he guided to what Apple expects will be the best revenue quarter in its history – 9to5Mac, MacRumors.
Inovio, Precigen and Karyopharm (Nasdaq) – biotech stock moves. Inovio jumped 262% after the FDA granted accelerated approval to VOCERYQ to reduce the need for surgery in adults with recurrent respiratory papillomatosis. Precigen fell 28% on the new competition, and Karyopharm sank 69% after filing for Chapter 11 and naming Ayrmid as lead bidder in a court-supervised sale. One FDA letter, three very different Mondays – TheStreet.
Perion Network (Nasdaq: PERI) – cross-border take-out, ad tech. India's Affle will buy the Tel Aviv- and New York-based company for $11.70 per share in cash, about $420M in equity value. Perion withdrew its 2026 guidance and will skip its Q3 earnings call on Nov. 16. The company started life as IncrediMail, an email app famous for animated stationery, before reinventing itself in digital advertising – SEC.
📅 ICYMI
Formula 1 has a new king. Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, 20, clinched the 2026 title, breaking Sebastian Vettel's youngest-champion record by 3 years and becoming Italy's first champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953. Mercedes is cashing in too: its F1 team's revenue is expected to top £750M (about $1B) this year, up from £633M ($849M) in 2025.
Mexico's national chamber of commerce, Concanaco-Servytur, estimates Día de Muertos will move about MXN 53B (roughly $2.9B) between Oct. 25 and Nov. 2, up about 7% from 2025.
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan uses AI agents so heavily that he spends up to $200K a year on tokens.
See you tomorrow,
Katherine Castelán & Jose Kont
The humans behind The Investor Society