Intelligent CIO LATAM Issue 60 | Page 38

FEATURE measurable improvements in public safety outcomes.
According to Cohen, vehiclerelated crimes have fallen sharply in the first state where the platform was deployed and law enforcement personnel now view the system as an essential operational tool.
The company’ s growth story is closely tied to the experience of its founder.
Before launching Pax, Peixoto built one of Brazil’ s most successful education technology businesses. He scaled Arco into the country’ s largest education technology company and led its public listing in the United States.
The scale of the challenge
in ten Brazilians experiences a stolen device each year. Meanwhile, homicide investigation rates remain well below those achieved in many developed economies.
Technology investors increasingly see these challenges as opportunities for data-driven innovation. Greenoaks partner Andrew Cohen said public safety agencies across Latin America have historically lacked both the technology infrastructure needed to generate actionable intelligence and the tools required to effectively use available information.
“ Ask Brazilians what they want fixed, and their number one answer is crime,” Cohen said.
He added that early results from Pax deployments demonstrate how modern technology can deliver
• Violence costs Latin America approximately 3.5 % of regional GDP.
• Economic impact is estimated at roughly US $ 241 billion in 2025.
• Brazil records around 40,000 homicides annually.
• Fewer than four in ten homicides are solved.
• Global homicide clearance averages approximately 63 %.
• Some European countries achieve clearance rates above 90 %.
He later co-founded isaac, a company focused on addressing financial and operational challenges faced by Brazilian K-12 schools.
That combination of technology, scale and operational experience has influenced the approach taken at Pax, where the focus has been on building technology capable of operating across complex public sector environments.
The company has also attracted a highly specialised workforce.
Its engineering team includes graduates from Stanford University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alongside talent from Brazil’ s leading engineering institutions including ITA and USP.
Many team members previously worked for major US technology companies before returning to Brazil to help develop the platform.
The involvement of Greenoaks and Benchmark is particularly notable given their track records of backing category-defining technology companies.
Benchmark helped fund companies such as Uber, Instagram and eBay, while Greenoaks has invested in organisations including Anthropic, Brex, Coupang and Flock Safety.
The latter is especially relevant given its focus on public safety technologies in North America. The comparison highlights an emerging trend
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