A the scarf raised a new round of US$7 million with Prosus Venturesthe venture capital arm of Prosusowner of brands such as iFood, OLX e Sympla. The resources will be used to strengthen the company’s own application the scarfwhich is also launching Zapia Max, an evolution of its artificial intelligence personal assistant, now capable of performing tasks in the real world autonomously.
This is the second contribution made by Prosus Ventures in the company. Last year, the fund had also led a contribution of US$7.25 million in the scarf with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Anthos Capital, Factory HQ and SnR.
With the new round extension, the the scarf now totals US$ 19.3 million raised since its foundation, the equivalent of more than R$ 100 million. According to the company, the startup is now among the most capitalized consumer-facing artificial intelligence companies in Latin America.
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By Michele Chahin, VP de Marketing & Growth at the scarfthe participation of Prosus Ventures It has been relevant mainly in strategic support, without direct interference in product decisions.
“A Prosus Today it gives us a lot of autonomy in our development. They are not directly involved in product creation or decisions. But, as they are people from the market and have such established applications in Brazil, we really like to count on their opinion, support and, in some cases, consultancy. They are the first to test, bring feedback to us and help with this direction”, says the executive.
Michele explains that the new investment is directly linked to the strategy of strengthening the startup’s own application. The tool already performs actions such as making reservations, creating reminders, managing calendars and synchronizing appointments with Google Calendar.. Although the the scarf has always operated both via the app and through integration with messengers, operations within the chat app have been reduced.
“We always had two channels: WhatsApp and the app. WhatsApp represented more than 90% of usage, users had a huge preference for it, but the app always existed. What happened, after Meta changed the policy, was that we started to put much more focus on the app, naturally”, he says.
Founded in September 2023, the scarf developed a personal assistant aimed at simplifying everyday tasks. In November 2025, the company joined Luziawhich also operated within WhatsApp performing tasks such as transcribing audio.
In October last year, WhatsApp (controlled by Meta) announced that, starting January 15, 2026, it would ban general-purpose AI chatbots from its Business API, which generated apprehension among founders of startups that use the application as the basis of their solutions.
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According to Michele, it was in this context that Zapia Max, a new generation of the startup’s assistant, was born. “This artificial intelligence not only responds, it executes and completes tasks. It can respond to an email for you, make a purchase, set ticket price alerts, finalize reservations, change your calendar. You just give the command and it goes to the applications or websites and completes these actions for you”, he explains.
Although the company remains connected to WhatsApp as an entry channel, the the scarf stopped responding directly within the platform.
“We understand that WhatsApp is a very important channel for Latin Americans and we will continue connecting with it. But Zapia no longer responds within WhatsApp. This change gave us much more freedom to innovate, because Meta’s environment was quite limited for the type of product we want to build”, he states.
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For the executive, the new round also works as a clear sign of confidence in the strategy of reducing dependence on third-party platforms.
“We had a very large number of comments and mentions on social media, showing that people were on Zapia’s side. It was a huge reinforcement for us, coming both from users and from Prosus itself, which even in these circumstances decided to invest again.”
The investment comes amid the popularization of so-called autonomous AI agents. According to the startup’s CEO, Juan Pablo Pereira, the company’s proposal is to make this type of technology accessible to the general public, with a focus on security and control.
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