From Lastarria Garage to Global Stage: How One Santiago Founder Built a $50M ClimaTech Unicorn

Walk down Calle Merced in Lastarria on any given afternoon, and you'll find the kind of creative ferment that has defined Santiago's innovation scene for the past decade. But three years ago, from a converted loft space above a vintage bookshop, something more transformative was taking shape: the founding of EmiTrack, a software platform that has quietly become the region's answer to enterprise carbon accounting.

María José Contreras, the 34-year-old founder and CEO, started with a problem closer to home. While working at a major Chilean forestry company, she watched executives struggle to measure their actual emissions across sprawling supply chains. "The tools were built for Silicon Valley companies," she recalls in recent interviews. "They didn't understand how manufacturing works in Latin America." Rather than complain, Contreras left her position in 2023 and spent six months interviewing 40 companies across Chile, Colombia, and Peru.

The bet paid off spectacularly. EmiTrack closed a Series B funding round this May at a $50 million valuation, led by Miami-based venture firm Kaleido Capital and joined by regional heavyweight Monashees, based in São Paulo. The round brings total funding to $15 million—modest by Bay Area standards, but transformative for Santiago's climate-tech sector.

What makes EmiTrack's rise particularly significant is where it's rooted. While many Santiago entrepreneurs chase opportunities in Miami or Mexico City, Contreras has kept her team of 28 people based firmly in the city's emerging innovation district. The company recently expanded from its original Lastarria headquarters to a larger office in the Barrio Italia neighborhood, where rents have climbed but the concentration of design studios, tech firms, and venture capital has created genuine ecosystem effects.

"Santiago used to be seen as a regional outpost," says Diego Ramírez, managing partner at local venture fund Capital Semilla. "But what we're seeing now—with EmiTrack, with biotech companies in the Mapocho corridor, with fintech talent clustering around Providencia—is that the city has genuine competitive advantages." Those include proximity to natural resource industries desperate for innovation, a highly educated workforce, and significantly lower burn rates than equivalent startups in developed markets.

For Contreras, the work is just beginning. EmiTrack's next target is expansion into Brazil and Mexico, where her platform could help thousands of mid-market manufacturers navigate increasingly strict climate reporting regulations. It's an ambition that reflects something larger about Santiago's moment: not a city chasing trends imported from elsewhere, but one generating ideas that the hemisphere needs.

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