Cross-border by design

Why the Americas Corridor May Be Venture Capital's Most Mispriced Deep-Tech Opportunity

One of the questions I get asked most often is why we invest across both North America and Latin America.

It's a fair question. For decades, venture capital has treated them as separate investment universes. One represented technological leadership, the other emerging market growth. Different founders. Different investors. Different opportunities.

When we launched 1200vc, many people assumed we had simply chosen to invest on both sides of the border. The reality is different.

We built the firm cross-border by design, because we believed the next generation of transformative companies would emerge not from isolated ecosystems, but from the growing integration of the Americas. We've been seeing this phenomenon for the last 20+ years.

At the time, it was largely experience and conviction. Today, it is increasingly being validated by the way technology, industry, and geopolitics are reshaping the world. I believe the next decade won't belong to any single country. It will belong to connected ecosystems.

For nearly two decades, software reshaped venture capital by making geography feel almost irrelevant. Great companies could be built almost anywhere, distributed globally, and scaled with relatively little dependence on physical infrastructure. Talent mattered. Capital mattered. Physical location mattered less than ever. That era is changing.

The technologies defining the next generation of innovation: artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, industrial biotechnology, quantum computing, new energy systems, and autonomous machines, depend on something that software largely didn't. They require factories, specialized engineers, resilient supply chains, abundant energy, manufacturing capacity, critical minerals, and industrial customers capable of deploying these technologies at scale.

Innovation is becoming physical again. And when innovation becomes physical, geography stops being a backdrop. It becomes a strategy. Most conversations around artificial intelligence continue to focus on foundation models. Those models are extraordinary, but they represent only one layer of the opportunity.

The much larger challenge, and perhaps the much larger investment opportunity, is deploying intelligence into the physical economy.

That requires an entirely different kind of infrastructure. Manufacturing capacity, industrial automation, resilient logistics, semiconductor supply chains, engineering talent, and reliable energy are becoming just as strategic as software itself.

This is where the Americas become uniquely positioned. Trade between the United States and Mexico is approaching $1 trillion annually, making Mexico one of America's largest trading partners. Yet the number itself isn't the story. The story is how that relationship is evolving. Products are increasingly co-designed, engineered, assembled, tested, and refined across borders before ever reaching a customer. According to the Dallas Federal Reserve, many manufacturing sectors already operate through deeply integrated regional value chains, continuously creating value on both sides of the border. This is no longer globalization. It is regional integration.

When I say the Americas Corridor is "mispriced," I don't mean investors are ignoring the region. Quite the opposite. Most recognize the rise of artificial intelligence, nearshoring, advanced manufacturing, and supply-chain resilience. What I believe remains underappreciated is how these forces reinforce one another.

Venture capital still tends to organize itself around geographies, while the next generation of value is increasingly being created across integrated ecosystems. That disconnect is where I believe one of the market's greatest inefficiencies still exists.

One misconception I continue to encounter is the assumption that investing in Latin America means investing in companies whose customers are primarily in Latin America. Increasingly, our experience suggests the opposite. Many of the most compelling founders we meet are building globally competitive technologies while leveraging the region's structural advantages: world-class engineering talent, manufacturing expertise, industrial capabilities, natural resources, and an entrepreneurial ecosystem that has matured dramatically over the past decade.

The markets they pursue are global because the problems they solve are global. Whether it is industrial productivity, climate resilience, healthcare infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, or artificial intelligence applied to physical industries, these companies are addressing challenges that transcend borders. 

The United States continues to lead in frontier research, venture capital, and commercialization. Latin America contributes industrial depth, engineering talent, manufacturing capabilities, and extraordinary entrepreneurs who know how to build through complexity. Separately, these ecosystems are compelling. Together, they become exponentially more valuable.

The conversation around nearshoring illustrates this perfectly. For the past several years, the narrative has largely centered on tariffs, logistics, labor costs, and supply-chain resilience. Those dynamics certainly mattered, but they were never the destination. They were simply the first chapter. The more profound transformation begins after manufacturing moves.

Engineering talent follows. Suppliers expand. Universities adapt. Corporate R&D moves closer to production. Entrepreneurs emerge to solve newly visible industrial bottlenecks. Capital eventually follows those entrepreneurs. Factories don't simply manufacture products. They manufacture ecosystems.

Mexico has already become one of the world's leading exporters of advanced manufactured products, particularly in electronics, medical devices, aerospace, and automotive production. As industrial capacity continues expanding across the Americas, innovation naturally follows. The opportunity is no longer to build more factories. It is financing the technologies that will redefine how those factories operate over the next decade.

This realization shaped the architecture of 1200vc from the very beginning. Our decision to combine partnerships with specialist U.S. venture funds alongside direct investments across the Americas was never simply about diversification. It was about maximizing our learning.

Every GP relationship expands our visibility into frontier technologies before they become obvious. Every founder conversation deepens our understanding of how industries evolve. Every corporate partnership helps us recognize adoption curves long before they appear in market data.

Over the past three years, one pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore. We've seen AI companies born in California and manufacturing in Mexico. Industrial technologies developed alongside U.S. research institutions, first seeing large-scale deployment with Latin American industrial partners. We've backed founders solving global problems by combining engineering talent, manufacturing capabilities, and commercial relationships that span the Americas.

These are no longer isolated success stories. They are becoming a repeatable pattern.

Today, our underlying portfolio provides exposure to more than 140 companies across artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, industrial software, quantum technologies, advanced manufacturing, climate innovation, and frontier infrastructure. More valuable than the number of companies, however, is the perspective that emerges from observing them together.

Our greatest advantage isn't simply access. It's context. The ability to recognize connections before they become consensus. Every major technology cycle has rewarded investors who understood convergence before everyone else.

Cloud connected infrastructure with software. Mobile connected consumers with financial services. Today, artificial intelligence is connecting digital intelligence with the physical economy. I believe the US–LatAm corridor, as the backbone of the broader Americas Corridor, is no longer an emerging market story. It is becoming one of the world's most strategically important innovation ecosystems.

The most important opportunities of the next decade won't emerge from choosing between the United States and Latin America. They will emerge from understanding how both are becoming one increasingly integrated innovation platform. At 1200vc, that has never been simply our investment geography. It has been our investment thesis.

Because the future rarely arrives all at once. It emerges through patterns that are easy to dismiss individually, but impossible to ignore once they are connected. We believe the Americas Corridor is one such pattern. And we're excited to keep learning alongside the founders, GPs, corporates, and LPs who are helping build it.

Cross-border, by design.

Adriana Tortajada
Summer 2026

Disclaimer:
Text written by human, cover picture generated by AI