Minerva Foods, South America’s largest beef exporter, acquired a stake in Grão Direto, a Brazilian agfintech specializing in digital grain trading.
According to a statement from the startup, Minerva acquired the stake previously held by a venture capital fund that was among Grão Direto’s earliest investors when the company was still in the initial stages of its operations. The company did not disclose which fund sold its stake.
Grão Direto’s investor portfolio already included major agribusiness groups such as ADM, Amaggi, Bayer, Basf, Cargill, LDC, SLC, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), Banco Rendimento and Bradesco, as well as technology funds including Kaszek, Barn, Lanx and Endeavor Scale-Up Ventures.
“Our cap table is diverse by design. All shareholders are minority investors, with no control or exclusivity, and the door remains open, which is why Minerva Foods is now joining us,” Grão Direto CEO and co-founder Alexandre Borges said in the statement.
Minerva joined the investor group as Grão Direto expands its trading platform, scales up its financial services and consolidates the use of artificial intelligence, according to the fintech.
Using its proprietary artificial intelligence system, Airton, the startup already calculates more than 50 million real-time prices per day and digitally traded 12 million tons of grain in 2025.
