Somos Internet, the Colombian internet provider that became obsessed with redesigning connectivity from scratch, closed a US$40 million Series B co-led by Bracket Capital and Ribbit Capital. With the capital, the startup launches in Mexico City and accelerates its vision of becoming the most ambitious network and AI infrastructure on the continent.
How Forrest Heath built Somos from the ground up
It all started in 2018, when Forrest Heath, an American from North Carolina who arrived in Colombia almost by chance, came across a blockchain-based internet project for low-income neighborhoods in Medellín. He ruled out blockchain, but was left with the problem: people wanted faster and cheaper internet.
What followed was years of building from scratch. It designed its own router, the Orb, manufactured with partners in China. It developed its own software to get more performance out of the fiber optic network. And he went door to door, building by building, offering a 30-day free trial to convince the first customers.
The result: the third largest internet provider in Medellín, with a model where the payback period per client was reduced to just 13 months.
The bigger vision behind Somos
Heath isn’t just building a telecommunications company. Their bet is much more ambitious: turning Latin America into an infrastructure layer for the era of artificial intelligence.
Through its subsidiary Panandina Authority, Heath is working on building data centers near Colombia’s abundant hydroelectric power. The vision is that US companies can access cheaper AI computing from Colombia or Chile, running models and agents more cheaply than any alternative available today.
For investors, that’s where the real potential lies. As an internet provider, Somos is already a promising business, but if Heath gets the big picture right, it could become a generational business.
What’s coming
With the US$ 40 million, Somos has two clear priorities: conquer Mexico City as the first international market and continue developing FiberX, its new fiber optic network inspired by data centers. An intense hiring phase is also coming, attracting Latin American technological talent back to the region and global profiles seeking to build something different.
Heath sums it up with the philosophy that has guided Somos since day one: go from one problem to another, reject the status quo and be willing to make mistakes quickly to iterate even faster.
