Itau agrees to buy AI model firm NeoSpace for R$2.925 billion

Itau agrees to buy AI model firm NeoSpace for R$2.925 billion

26 October 2026: Itau Unibanco has agreed to buy all of NeoSpace A.I. Technologies, a Brazilian developer of large foundation models, for R$2.925 billion, in a notice to the market signed by its investor relations director. The bank would then own the company that has been training models on Itau's own data for almost two years. The deal needs approval from Brazil's competition authority, CADE, and from the Banco Central do Brasil.

Not yet independently verified. We read Itau's material fact notice as a copy hosted by Poder360, because itau.com.br refused our requests. The size of the first instalment is not stated, and press reports of an earlier stake and of NeoSpace dropping other clients are not in the filing, so we do not rely on them. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

How the price is structured

Itau will pay one instalment at closing, and the rest is deferred over five years, "subject to certain conditions". The notice does not give the size of the first instalment or spell out those conditions, so how much changes hands at closing is not known. It does say the team will be kept.

A customer buying its supplier

NeoSpace develops large foundation models for data. Its work at Itau has covered credit, customer relationship management and fraud prevention, using models trained on the bank's data. Itau connects the purchase to ia.i, its generative assistant.

NeoSpace's management is to stay autonomous, the notice says. A buyer of its models would want to know what that means in practice once the company sits inside a regulated bank, with the bank's risk and compliance teams answerable for what it produces.

What it means for other banks, and for NeoSpace's other customers

Banks in Latin America that were evaluating NeoSpace, or already use it, have the most immediate question: will a model vendor owned by a large competitor go on serving them, and on what data terms? The filing does not address this. Any such customer should ask for a written position now, ahead of the regulators' decisions, and review change-of-control and data-use clauses in its contract.

The two approvals are the next step, and any third party with concerns would raise them with CADE. The notice gives no expected closing date.

We could not read NeoSpace's own site, so we have no company profile for it. We track 151 AI models on our board, and NeoSpace's are not among them.

Sources

• Itau Unibanco Holding: Fato Relevante, 26 October 2026 (copy hosted by Poder360), 26 October 2026