Tech Roundup: Searching for unicorns in the Amazon

This week’s topics: a startup accelerator is searching for unicorns in the Amazon while protecting the rainforest; researchers build an anti-coronavirus robot; data privacy remains low on lawyers’ priority lists.

Startup accelerator goes looking for Amazonian unicorns

The Amazon rainforest is known for its abundant resources, but the region’s economic isolation has seen it lag behind the rest of Brazil in development terms. However, believing there is potential for innovation in the country’s largely poor North region, startup accelerator AMAZ is looking to find potential unicorns while fostering sustainable economic models in the rural Amazon.

Origin story. The initiative is a spinoff of the Partners of the Amazon Platform (PPA), a collective action hub that has accelerated 12 companies in the last two years. As an impact accelerator, AMAZ wants to support entrepreneurs to overcome the region’s challenges by forging links between businesses and future investors.

• As AMAZ CEO Mariano Cenamo tells The Brazilian Report, few investors focus on the Amazon region. Investments and expected returns are typically incompatible with the current stage of local businesses.
• “The difficulties they face from their inception are so great that they fail to reach the expected level of maturity and development,” he explains.

Blended finance. By helping to connect startups with future investors, AMAZ’s financing mechanism is a blended fund, receiving resources from foundations, institutes, and private investors. Some of its many partners are major Brazilian companies such as Vale, JBS, and Mercado Libre.

• The fund — of which half of its resources are earmarked for philanthropy — intends to invest BRL 25 million (USD 4.6 million) in 30 startups over the next five years, in addition to ensuring the management and monitoring of these businesses for another ten...