Startup Failures in Chile

Competing with Komatsu and Caterpillar for haul truck autonomy in Chile was a losing bet.

Chilean credit-scoring and financial wellness startup backed by Accion and IGNIA ran for ten years before shutting down its consumer product in 2023 as open banking regulation eliminated the data advantage it had spent a decade building.

Chile's property management startup raised $35M then collapsed as rising rates and currency volatility destroyed the rental model

Google killed ComparaOnline's SEO moat; insurers finished the job by going direct.

AI-powered plant-based food unicorn. $1.5B valuation. Significant layoffs in 2023.

Chilean grocery delivery pioneer agreed to sell to Walmart in 2018, was blocked, then sold to Uber in 2021—only to see the brand retired as Uber absorbed it into Uber Eats.

A decade of financial comparison in LatAm ended when banks cut referral fees.

Chilean IoT insurtech that embedded telematics devices in vehicles to enable usage-based auto insurance — could not scale the hardware-dependent customer acquisition model to reach sustainable distribution.

Financial services app for migrants in Chile. CMF licensing blocked scale.

Retail robot startup from Chile. Hardware timelines and funding cycles don't match.

Chilean fintech offering payroll-linked credit to underbanked workers — wound down in 2022 when credit losses outpaced the growth needed to cover the risk model's fixed costs.

Chilean BNPL for e-commerce. Mercado Crédito arrived. Market dried up.

Chilean digital media startup. Advertising model broke. Subscriptions too slow.

Chile's financial product comparison platform squeezed out by bank incumbents and global aggregators

Spanish neobank's Chilean expansion. Parent ran out of money first.

Chile's grocery delivery pioneer, absorbed by Uber and stripped of independence.

Chilean packaging and e-commerce supplies. Amazon Business arrived.

Chilean last-mile SaaS. Acquired by project44. Team dispersed.

Greek ridesharing app Beat entered Latin America in 2016 and became the leading challenger to Uber in Chile, Colombia, and Peru — acquired by BMW/Daimler's Free Now in 2019 and shut down LatAm operations in January 2021.

Chilean e-learning platform. Coursera and edX went free. Aprendanet couldn't survive.

Chilean robo-advisor. CMF investigation slowed everything down.

Chile's first equity crowdfunding platform — wound down after seven years as CMF regulatory requirements made the platform model for retail equity investment economically unviable.

Falabella's 20-year travel empire evaporated in 8 months of zero revenue from COVID borders.

Chilean intercity bus-ticket aggregator that survived seven years only for a pandemic to erase it in weeks.

Chile's estallido social and COVID delivered a one-two punch that ended P2P invoice financing.

Spanish OTA's Chilean operation. COVID grounded the entire model.

Project management SaaS with Chilean roots. Slack and Asana won.

Chile's grocery delivery unicorn. Uber acquired it and eventually absorbed it.

Chilean robo-advisor that Y Combinator backed but hit structural ceiling in thin Latam savings market.

Justo raised 87 million dollars to let restaurants own their online ordering without paying Rappi or PedidosYa commission fees — and then laid off more than 70 percent of its staff in 2022 as the unit economics never worked.

Chilean event ticketing platform survived the estallido only to be killed by COVID

Chilean payment gateway for SMEs — absorbed by Transbank's digital pivot

Chilean employee wellness unicorn backed by SoftBank that combined life insurance and wellbeing benefits and raised 250 million dollars before losing 40 percent of its workforce.

Chile's second crypto exchange in a market Buda.com had already claimed

Chilean school management SaaS overtaken by global platforms and Ministry of Education tools

Chilean mining AI platform acqui-hired after reaching TAM ceiling in the local copper sector

Chilean robo-advisor squeezed between CMF regulation and zero-fee competition

Chile's mining IoT startup that Rockwell Automation and ABB already served through their Chilean offices

Chilean fintech for immigrant communities unable to scale beyond the structural limits of a high-risk niche market.

Chile's mental health app blocked by FONASA reimbursement rules and outspent by global platforms

Chilean on-demand home services marketplace that failed to find sustainable unit economics despite multiple pivots.

Chile's fintech that arrived after the market was already split between Tenpo, Fintual, and BancoEstado

Chilean recycling marketplace unable to monetize civic engagement into a viable business

Chilean vineyard management AI that found product-market fit only in the top 5% of wineries

Chile's satellite analytics startup that Planet Labs and Maxar had already solved

Chile's proptech that the 2019 social crisis and a contracting housing market buried

Chilean language learning platform that could not compete with Duolingo's free model and post-COVID demand collapse.

Doctor booking platform outrun by well-funded copycats

Chile's esports platform replaced by Twitch adding Spanish-language features

Chilean AI plant-based food unicorn backed by Jeff Bezos and Tiger Global that raised 235 million dollars before the alternative protein market imploded.

Mexican used car unicorn entered Chile and exited 3 years later burning cash

Chile's precision agriculture startup beaten by the ERP integrations its customers already had

Chilean P2P lending pioneer squeezed out by bank regulation

LatAm employee benefits unicorn over-expanded and retreated to core Chile market

The digital news startup that arrived just as advertising migrated to Silicon Valley

Chilean higher-education analytics platform that served universities across LatAm and quietly wound down.

Chilean retail investment app ran out of users as global brokers entered the market

Chilean flea market and second-hand goods platform — Mercado Libre absorbed the category