Viatik, the Uruguayan startup that connects drivers and passengers who share the same journey between cities, closed its second round of investment for US$600,000, exceeding the goal of US$500,000 that it had initially set out to raise.
The round brought together the Silicon Valley fund Plug and Play, the Argentine accelerator Picante and the National Research and Innovation Agency (ANII) of Uruguay, which co-invested together with a group of angel investors with experience in the regional technology ecosystem.
Among them are Rubén Sosenke, co-founder and former CTO of PedidosYa; Alan Descoins, CEO of Tryolabs and Chief AI Officer of Qubika; Federico Lavagna, co-founder of Sinergia y Viajero Hostels; Mariano Otero, who led Uber in Argentina and its expansion in the Southern Cone; and Iang Yim, co-founder and former CTO of Nearsure.
The company was founded in 2022 by Renzo Costanzo, Gonzalo Aszyn, Germán Mazzarino and Renzo Battaglia, four students from the interior of Uruguay who shared frequent trips to Montevideo and found in that informal dynamic the opportunity to build a platform. With the new closure, the company has accumulated more than US$850,000 in financing since its creation and operates with a team of only six people.
Argentina as an engine: from one route to thousands of seats per month in weeks
The funds will be allocated entirely to accelerate growth in Argentina, a market that Viatik entered in January 2025 and which today concentrates almost nine out of every ten transactions on the platform. The growth in that country was notable: between June and September 2026, the volume of operations multiplied by six.
The speed of opening of new routes explains a good part of the jump: while Buenos Aires-Mar del Plata, the first connection enabled in the country, took more than a year to exceed 1,000 monthly seats, the Salta-Jujuy route, inaugurated at the beginning of August, reached that figure in less than three weeks.
“We have already managed to take routes from zero to a thousand seats per month in weeks. This round is to do it on the main routes in the country,” said Renzo Costanzo in statements to El País Uruguay.
The strategy is to open connections individually, evaluate their traction and scale, rather than deploying the entire operation in one country at once. Currently, the startup is present on routes such as Buenos Aires–Rosario, Santiago del Estero–Tucumán, Río Cuarto–Córdoba and Mendoza–San Juan, taking advantage of a practice already widespread in Argentina: sharing cars between locations through informal WhatsApp and Facebook groups. Viatik incorporates verified profiles, ratings and payments within the app into this dynamic.
AI with minimal equipment: the commitment to operate at scale without scaling the structure
One of the most distinctive features of Viatik is its operating model: the company works with six people and a single developer, Gonzalo Aszyn, co-founder and CTO, who directs and reviews the work of artificial intelligence agents that are responsible for the development of the application.
AI also operates in customer service, through an agent on WhatsApp, and in identifying content creators for the launch of new routes. “Being the only programmer no longer means being the bottleneck. Now we are a team of builders. Marketing creates and automates its own processes with AI, without waiting for me to program them,” Gonzalo Aszyn explained to El País Uruguay.
The long-term vision transcends carpooling. “We want to operate on a unicorn scale with a team that fits around a table. Two years ago that sounded crazy. With how much AI models have advanced, today it is already possible, and with each passing month it becomes more so,” said Renzo Costanzo in statements to the same medium.
The company aims to become the app where any trip between cities is planned, booked and paid for, from car sharing to the bus and beyond, with Argentina as a springboard to larger markets. “We want to be the next PedidosYa, and even bigger,” said Renzo Battaglia, CMO of Viatik, referring to the Uruguayan company that was born with a similar model of progressive expansion and today operates in 15 countries in Latin America.
