NotCo, the Chilean foodtech founded in 2015 by Matías Muchnick, Karim Pichara and Pablo Zamora, which became one of the country’s first unicorns, announced the sale of its operations in Brazil to the Ferrara group, with experience in the food industry and a portfolio of natural brands in Brazil and the United States.
The operation was announced via LinkedIn and occurs less than three months after NotCo sold its operations in Argentina and Uruguay to Molinos Río de la Plata. According to Diario Financiero, which cited sources close to the matter, the company would also have closed its operation in Mexico around March, without a buyer and without an official statement.
“Positioning ourselves as the second national player in vegetable drinks as we did with NotMilk is unprecedented. And that must continue,” said Matías Muchnick, CEO of NotCo, when announcing the Brazilian sale.
The operation does not include the continuation of local teams: the company had 30 people in São Paulo whose contracts would extend until the end of September.
From unicorn to accelerated withdrawal
NotCo’s decline accelerated in the last year. At the end of 2025 it closed its New York office and left its operations in the US and Canada in the hands of Kraft Heinz. In June 2026 it sold Argentina and Uruguay, in September it sold Brazil, and Mexico would have closed quietly due to poor results.
At the end of July, the company laid off about 20 people in R&D, cooking, artificial intelligence and marketing between Chile and the US. From a peak of more than 300 workers, today it would not exceed 100.
With these exits, the plant-based food business is concentrated solely in Chile, the last market under direct management, where operations continue to yield negative results. According to the sources consulted by Diario Financiero, if profitability is not achieved before the end of the year, there is the possibility of a sale by product categories.
The bet shifts towards AI for the mass consumption industry
As the food business shrinks, NotCo is focusing its efforts on NotCo AI, its B2B artificial intelligence platform for the FMCG industry, with clients including PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Ferrero and Kraft Heinz.
This is the commitment that the company presents today as its engine of future growth, moving away from the model that made it famous: plant-based products designed with its AI chef “Giuseppe”, capable of recreating flavors and textures of animal products using plant ingredients.
The contrast between the narrative of 2021, when NotCo raised a round of US$235 million and was valued at more than US$1.5 billion with Jeff Bezos among its investors, and the reality of 2026, is one of the most illustrative cases of the Latin American startup ecosystem about the risks of expanding geographically before achieving profitability in the markets of origin.
