Cloudwalk (The Hive)

Market position

CloudWalk is a Brazilian payments unicorn competing in the merchant acquiring market that emerged from the country's 'machine war'. It was listed by CB Insights among the 250 most promising fintechs in the world, named by Forbes Brasil as one of Brazil's most innovative startups, included in Bloomberg Línea's 2025 list of '10 Brazilian startups to watch', and featured as the first company spotlight in BCG and FT Partners' 2026 Global Fintech Report.

The company combines regulated payments and credit operations with in-house AI systems, reporting fraud decisioning at over 99% accuracy with only 0.3% of decisions requiring human review, transaction analysis in 0.05 seconds versus up to three minutes for a human reviewer, an AML agent that cut analysis time by 80%, and agents that replaced work previously done by more than 100 analysts. Its credit models rely on observed customer behavior and non-traditional data to underwrite thin-file and underbanked borrowers.

Technology

CloudWalk applies machine learning and large language model agents across credit scoring, fraud detection, AML, customer support and marketing. Described techniques include LLM-based credit assessment on unstructured data, a merchant vector space of embeddings describing merchants, evolutionary computation for feature selection and hyperparameter optimization, behavioral credit scoring covering thin-file and underbanked borrowers, and a three-layer fraud system operating on transactional, behavioral and relational/graph perspectives. Customer support uses workflow graphs, retrieval-augmented generation and a dual-agent (conversational plus tool) architecture. The company also runs a 'Consciousness Project' exploring sensory integration, agency simulation and subjective experience modeling in language models. Its risk infrastructure includes a network of over 130 autonomous alerts covering card, Pix, boleto and wire transfers.

Go-to-market

Direct digital distribution of merchant acquiring and banking products under consumer brands, supported by marketing-mix-modeled acquisition campaigns. In Brazil the company reached merchants through mobile tap-to-pay and card machines, including a partnership making it Apple's first chosen partner in Brazil for Tap to Pay on iPhone. US expansion began in 2024 with JIM.com targeting entrepreneurs in cities including New York, Austin and San Francisco.

Small and medium-sized businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs in Brazil (InfinitePay) and in the United States (JIM.com), plus retail consumers in Brazil for the Pierre financial intelligence, deposit and card products.

Geography

Headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, with operations in Brazil and the United States. Job listings span São Paulo, Brasília and other Brazilian locations; JIM.com serves sellers in all 50 US states.

History

Founded in 2013 in São Paulo, CloudWalk launched InfinitePay in 2019. It raised a US$150 million Series C led by Coatue Management in November 2021 at a US$2.15 billion valuation. In 2022 it obtained a Central Bank of Brazil payment institution license, and in 2023 became Apple's first chosen partner in Brazil for Tap to Pay on iPhone. International expansion began in 2024 with the US launch of JIM.com. In 2025 it received authorization to operate as a Credit, Finance and Investment Company (SCFI), received the Fraud Prevention Seal from the National Confederation of Financial Institutions, and raised $780 million through FIDC funds; the company has raised $2.7 billion across 11 FIDCs.

Risks & controversies

The business is exposed to payment fraud and money laundering attempts, which the company counters with automated detection systems, and it operates under Central Bank of Brazil supervision as a licensed payment institution and SCFI. Its merchant credit book depends on recurring receivables-financing vehicles raised from institutional investors.