Mercado Libre Announces Strategic Investment in Gradient to Accelerate AI Innovation Across Latin America

Mercado Libre (NASDAQ: MELI), Latin America's leading e-commerce and fintech platform, today announced a strategic commitment as a Limited Partner in Gradient’s Fund 5, a Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital fund focused on applied artificial intelligence. This investment reinforces the company’s intent to be at the forefront of applied AI, leveraging its proprietary ecosystem, large-scale data, and in-house platforms to develop and deploy AI solutions across operations.

This marks a milestone for Mercado Libre as the company's first-ever commitment as a Limited Partner in an investment fund. With its commitment to Gradient's oversubscribed $220 million Fund 5, Mercado Libre gains early visibility into the pre-seed and seed-stage global startup ecosystem. This strategic positioning enables the company to identify emerging technologies early and integrate them into its ecosystem at scale. Mercado Libre has been a pioneer in AI and machine learning adoption for over a decade, continuously investing in capabilities that allow it to anticipate and adapt to major technological shifts.

"AI is the backbone of our growth strategy and is already embedded in everything we do, from personalizing the user journey to the complex models that analyze thousands of variables in milliseconds to prevent fraud and assess credit instantly,”  said Leandro Cuccioli, SVP of Corporate Development, Strategy and IR at Mercado Libre. “Investing in Gradient gives us a front-row seat to the next wave of AI innovation, allowing us to bring those insights back to the millions of people who rely on our platform every day, accelerating our learning curve and reinforcing our commitment to long-term development in Latin America".

“Investing in Gradient gives us a front-row seat to the next wave of AI innovation, allowing us to bring those insights back to the millions of people who rely on our platform every day, accelerating our learning curve and reinforcing our commitment to long-term development in Latin America".

 

Leandro Cuccioli

SVP of Corporate Development, Strategy and IR at Mercado Libre

“We’re excited to have Mercado Libre as an investor in Gradient’s latest flagship seed fund,” said Darian Shirazi, Managing Partner at Gradient. “AI innovation is now a global phenomenon and Latin America has become one of the top regions for adoption of new AI tools and products. As payments, messaging, and ridesharing took the region by storm a decade ago, it is now clear that AI is following a similar trajectory. With this partnership, we can accelerate this adoption by bridging one of the largest tech ecosystems with one of the largest technology companies in the region.”

“AI innovation is now a global phenomenon and Latin America has become one of the top regions for adoption of new AI tools and products."

 

Darian Shirazi

Managing Partner at Gradient

Gradient's fifth fund is mostly focused on reinvented B2B applications, agents, and the development stacks that support large enterprises such as MELI building AI capabilities in-house, focus areas that closely align with the company’s strategic priorities in personalization, automation, and scalable infrastructure.