Vitor Olivier spent years building the infrastructure behind Nubank, the Brazilian digital bank that gave roughly 100 million people a cheaper, simpler way to handle everyday transactions. Now he is going after the part of financial life that mobile banking’s first wave never touched: investment advice.

His new company, Decade, recently emerged from stealth with an $85 million seed round, the largest ever raised by a Latin American startup. Its AI-driven advisory platform aims to make investing as simple as banking already became.

Everyone inherits the job of managing their own money, Olivier, Decade’s CEO and co-founder, said in a conversation with Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS. “Managing money is a second job,” he said. Decade is betting that AI, paired with a flat fee, can finally take that job off people’s hands.

An app alone won’t get there, Olivier argued. “A lot of financial services require deep expertise, relationships, trust, long-term thinking, planning,” he said. “These are not good things that you can just do by yourself with an app.”

Demand for that help is clear in Brazil. Roughly 70% of Brazilians who invest say they need another person to help them decide how, and only about half the population invests at all. Yet access, Olivier argues, was never really the barrier.

The bigger problem is how advisors get paid. Brazil’s investment advisory business still runs largely on commissions, so an advisor’s income depends on what they sell rather than what fits the client. “You’re likely more incentivized to push products with higher fees, not necessarily the product that’s appropriate for you,” he said.

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