1. 

WHERE ECOMMERCE IS HEADED IN LATIN AMERICA

• In 2019, over 150 million Latin Americans are expected to buy goods and services online, while retail sales alone are expected to surpass US$84.7 billion by 2019
• In Latin America, retail eCommerce sales are expected to grow 21.3 percent, bringing total sales to an impressive US$71.34 billion
• two in three Internet users in Latin America said they are likely to use mobile wallets or similar payment methods during 2018 and 2019

2. 

30 COMPANIES WORTH AT LEAST $1 BILLION THAT DIDN’T EXIST 10 YEARS AGO

• tech landscape looks completely different today than it did at the beginning of the decade
• Numerous tech companies that didn’t even exist before 2010 joined the ranks of the unicorns in 2019
• Some of the young companies to reach unicorn status this year include Lyft, Instagram, Casper, Snapchat, and Warby Parker

3.  

GOOGLE DETAILS AI THAT CLASSIFIES CHEST X-RAYS WITH HUMAN-LEVEL ACCURACY

• AI also underpins the tech giant’s advances in diabetic retinopathy diagnosis through eye scans
• DeepMind’s AI that can recommend the proper line of treatment for 50 eye diseases with 94% accuracy
• newer work tapped over 600,000 images sourced from two de-identified data sets…researchers developed a text-based system to extract labels using radiology reports associated with each X-ray

4. 

RETAILERS NOW CHOOSE COMMERCE TECH BASED ON HOW PROVIDERS ENGAGE, NOT WHAT THEY ARE

• Gone are the days of take-it-or-leave-it, prefab, legacy commerce suites and isolated, minimally integrated platforms
• Some retailers struggle to identify whether a commerce suite is flexible enough for them or if a platform is connected deeply enough to other functions
• The definitions and categorization of commerce technology providers have shifted away from a focus on providers’ capabilities

5. 

DYAL RAISES $9B+ GP STAKES FUND AMID STRATEGY SPIKE

• Not only do private equity firms invest in private businesses, but they also invest in each other—and with increasing vigor
• As private equity firms look to expand their grip on alternative assets, 2019 has seen capital flood into GP stakes investing
• And so far this year, total GP stakes fundraising has exceeded $23 billion, open funds included…more than four times 2016’s GP stakes high of $5.3 billion