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

When María José Contreras first converted her family garage in Lastarria into a makeshift laboratory in 2019, few in Santiago's business establishment took notice. Seven years later, her company SolTrack has become one of Latin America's most valuable climate technology firms, attracting investment from Singapore's Temasek and Switzerland's Roche Ventures. The trajectory offers a compelling case study for how Santiago's innovation district—anchored by entrepreneurial clusters in Lastarria, Providencia, and around the Universidad de Chile campus—is producing world-class founders.

SolTrack's core product is a real-time solar efficiency monitoring system that helps industrial facilities optimize energy consumption. Contreras, 34, spent her early career at a mining consultancy before recognizing that Chile's aggressive renewable energy targets had created an urgent market need. The initial prototype was crude: Arduino boards, open-source software, and countless late nights. By 2021, after securing a 40 million peso seed round from local venture capital firm Collazo Ventures, the team moved to a proper office on Avenida Lastarria.

The growth phase proved decisive. SolTrack expanded to Mexico and Colombia by 2023, and last year closed a $180 million Series B round that valued the company at 1.2 billion dollars. The capital infusion funded a 120-person engineering hub now operating from a five-story building in Las Condes, complementing their original Lastarria operations.

What distinguishes Contreras's approach, by most accounts, is her commitment to local talent development. SolTrack has become one of Santiago's largest employers of software engineers, paying salaries that compete with international tech hubs—typically 8 million to 15 million pesos monthly for senior developers, well above the national average of 2.8 million. The company has partnered with Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica to create fellowship programs that place engineering graduates directly into roles.

The ripple effects extend across Santiago's startup ecosystem. Contreras sits on the board of Fundación Imagen de Chile, an organization dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in underrepresented communities. Her visibility has also triggered heightened institutional interest: the Santiago Chamber of Commerce launched a dedicated climate tech working group last year, while municipal authorities in Providencia designated three blocks near Parque Bustamante as a priority innovation zone.

As Santiago positions itself against Buenos Aires and São Paulo for regional tech leadership, stories like Contreras's matter. They demonstrate that breakthrough ventures can emerge from modest beginnings, provided founders have access to mentorship, venture capital, and a supporting ecosystem. For the city's ambitions to become a genuine innovation hub by 2030, fostering more such stories remains essential.

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