Felipe Meneses

Forbes Brasil writes that he is from Aracaju, in the Brazilian state of Sergipe, and Bloomberg Línea calls him a Sergipean. Bloomberg Línea’s articles of May and June 2024 give his age as 23; Forbes Brasil’s article of December 2025 gives it as 25 and says that he was 24 when he sold his AI startup to Nubank.⁠[1][2][3]

He recalled that at the age of 12 he began doing small things of his own: with a loan of R$17 from his father he bought phone cases from China and sold them to friends.⁠[1]

Bloomberg Línea writes that he was passionate about mathematics, took part in an academic development programme and studied university-level mathematics early, and that at 14 he stood out in the Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad) and was invited to the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA). Forbes Brasil writes that at 14 he joined an academic project that taught advanced mathematics to pupils bored with the school curriculum and that at 16 he was selected for a course at IMPA. He said that he had meant to follow the academic road if he did well: “Mas percebi que a matemática pura era muito teórica, e que eu gostava mesmo era do empreendedorismo.” (But I realized that pure mathematics was very theoretical, and that what I really liked was entrepreneurship.) The honours section of his LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile lists an Honorable Mention (36th place) in the Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática and a bronze medal in the OBMEP.⁠[2][1][4]

He said that at IMPA’s summer course he was informed that, if he did well, he could take a master’s degree and an undergraduate degree in parallel at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV), and that his teacher instead suggested Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry: “Meu professor sugeriu Stanford como o melhor lugar para estudar” (My teacher suggested Stanford as the best place to study). Forbes Brasil writes that he turned toward technology after reading “De Zero a Um” (the Portuguese edition of Zero to One) by Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry and Blake Masters; in his words, “Decidi ir para o Vale do Silício e aplicar para Stanford” (I decided to go to Silicon Valley and apply to Stanford) and “Foi duro, mas dei sorte e passei.” (It was hard, but I was lucky and got in.)⁠[2][1]

Forbes Brasil writes that he entered Stanford University in 2018 to study computer science, immersed himself in artificial intelligence there and fell in love with natural language processing. Brazil Journal has him studying computing and mathematics at Stanford. In Bloomberg Línea’s article of May 2024 he said that he had completed the equivalent of a master’s degree in AI there: “completei o equivalente a um mestrado em inteligência artificial” (I completed the equivalent of a master’s degree in artificial intelligence).⁠[1][5][2]

His LinkedIn profile lists the Russell A. Berman Award for Excellence in an Introductory Seminar from Stanford University and says that he and two teammates built “Empathy Box,” a virtual reality project on global issues, in the course EE 15N, and that the award went to 32 of about 2,500 projects. A news item of Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, dated April 2019, congratulates the undergraduates Andrew Zelaya, Felipe Bomfim Pinheiro de Meneses and James Milan Kanof on an Introductory Seminars Excellence Award for their course project; the project came out of EE15N, “Art and Science of Engineering Design,” taught by Professor Goldsmith and Dr. My T. Le, and consisted of a custom virtual reality experience that lets students experience global issues firsthand and a custom online platform.⁠[4][6]

Bloomberg Línea writes that he gained software engineering experience at startups working on process optimization and code review; he singled out his internship at the Brazilian startup Zippi during its time at Y Combinator, where he worked with its chief technology officer, Ludmila Pontremolez: “A Zippi foi meu único estágio.” (Zippi was my only internship.)⁠[2]

Bloomberg Línea writes that in 2019 he met his later business partner, Felipe Lamounier, and that the two saw an opportunity in Latin America’s financial sector.⁠[2]

Forbes Brasil writes that the pandemic interrupted his studies, that he went back to Aracaju for remote classes, decided to take a sabbatical year and in the end did not go back. He said: “Venho de uma cidade pequena, de onde pouca gente sai.” (I come from a small city that few people leave.) He added that on returning he realized how much technology could help develop the region. Bloomberg Línea has him leaving Stanford to found Hyperplane.⁠[1][2][3]

Nubank’s announcement, Bloomberg Línea and Forbes Brasil all give 2022 as the year Hyperplane was founded, by him together with Felipe Lamounier, Daniel Silva and Rohan Ramanath; Brazil Journal wrote in June 2024 that the company had been founded in Silicon Valley two years earlier. Startups, in its articles of December 2023 and June 2024, gives 2021 and Silicon Valley for the founding, and the later article also says that the company was launched in 2022. Bloomberg Línea, Brazil Journal and Startups write that three of the four founders are Brazilian and one, Rohan Ramanath, is Indian.⁠[7][3][8][5][1][9][10]

Introducing the four founders, Brazil Journal writes that Felipe Lamounier had worked at TOTVS and was later part of the founding team of StartSe; that Daniel Silva spent years at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry working on AI; that Rohan Ramanath built his career in AI at LinkedIn; and it calls Felipe Meneses a “menino-prodígio” (boy prodigy).⁠[5]

The photo caption of Bloomberg Línea’s article of May 2024 and Baguete’s article of May 2024 call him the CEO of Hyperplane, whereas Startups’ article of December 2023 and Bloomberg Línea’s article of July 2024 give Felipe Lamounier as CEO.⁠[2][11][9][8]

On December 14, 2023, Startups wrote that Hyperplane had closed a seed round of R$30 million led by Lachy Groom, a former Stripe executive, with SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Latitud, Atman Capital, Crestone VC and Norte taking part; the caption of the photograph in the article names the four founders as Felipe Meneses, Rohan Ramanath, Felipe Lamounier and Daniel Silva. Nubank’s announcement of June 2024 puts the money raised by Hyperplane at US$6 million; Forbes Brasil writes that the company raised US$6 million (R$32.4 million) at the end of its first year.⁠[9][7][1]

Startups writes that Hyperplane is a U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry company that took Brazil as its first market after the round; that while in stealth mode it worked with three banks before expanding to about a dozen institutions; and that the work produced two products, the proprietary predictive model Mandelbrot LLM and the AI platform Hyperplane Cloud.⁠[9]

On March 20, 2024, the Thiel Foundation announced its new class of 20 Thiel Fellows, each receiving $100,000; he was selected for the Thiel Fellowship. The list of fellows gives his hometown as Aracaju, Brazil, and his project as Hyperplane, described as a data intelligence platform that empowers financial institutions to make multi-billion dollar decisions using specialized LLMs trained on consumer banking data, enabling the rapid creation of hundreds of state-of-the-art predictive models.⁠[12]

Bloomberg Línea wrote on May 26, 2024 that he was the first Brazilian to receive a Thiel Fellowship, a grant of US$100,000 over two years; Baguete, Brazil Journal and Forbes Brasil likewise call him the first Brazilian selected. He said that he had long known of the programme but was turned down the first time he applied: “Conheço e respeito o programa desde jovem, mas fui rejeitado na primeira tentativa.” (I have known and respected the programme since I was young, but I was rejected at the first attempt.) Bloomberg Línea writes that he applied again two years later and was accepted, and that mutual friends had introduced him to the programme. Forbes Brasil writes that he considered his first application premature, made before he had built anything of substance, and that by December 2025 he was about to complete the two-year programme.⁠[2][11][5][1]

Speaking in 2025 about why he was chosen, he said: “Eu era um brasileiro construindo algo a partir do Brasil, um caminho bem diferente do perfil típico de quem costuma receber essa oportunidade” (I was a Brazilian building something from Brazil, a path quite different from the typical profile of those who usually get this opportunity) and “Mas a empresa estava voando, e isso chamou a atenção deles.” (But the company was flying, and that caught their attention.) In his view the money frees a fellow from worrying about finances, while the community and its level of excellence matter far more, and he gave his own experience: “Pense: eu, com 21 anos, tentando vender para um banco, dizendo que faria um modelo melhor do que o deles.” (Think of it: me, at 21, trying to sell to a bank, saying I would build a better model than theirs.) Forbes Brasil writes that the programme includes no formal mentoring by Peter Thiel himself but that fellows are often invited by him to his events; he said: “Geralmente ele convida para encontros em Los Angeles. Ano passado, chamou para uma festa de Natal, por exemplo.” (He usually invites people to gatherings in Los Angeles. Last year he invited us to a Christmas party, for example.)⁠[1]

Bloomberg Línea wrote in May 2024 that Hyperplane had a team of 30, among them former Google and Microsoft engineers, served clients in Brazil and planned to expand to the United States, and that it had three main products: a system that estimates users’ payment capacity, a tool for building custom models for banks and a segmentation system that analyses user behaviour. The article adds that he stressed the importance of developing local talent, and that the company invested in internship and training programmes and recruited in particular students of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), in order to form the next generation of engineers and technology leaders in Brazil. He said that the company’s income products were used to raise credit limits, and gave an example: “para um banco digital aumentamos em 45% o volume de utilização do cartão sem aumentar a taxa de inadimplência” (for a digital bank we increased card usage volume by 45% without increasing the default rate); Bloomberg Línea’s article of June 2024 places this statement in an interview given that April.⁠[2][3]

On June 26, 2024, Nubank announced in São Paulo that it was acquiring Hyperplane. The announcement describes Hyperplane as a Silicon Valley data intelligence company whose platform lets financial institutions train, evaluate and deploy self-supervised deep learning models on their first-party data, and says that Hyperplane would build foundational models for use by Nubank’s product and engineering teams. The Hyperplane founder quoted in the announcement is co-founder Felipe Lamounier.⁠[7]

Nubank did not disclose the terms or the value of the deal. Startups writes that market sources said the deal was done as a share swap between the two companies. Brazil Journal writes that Nubank’s chief executive, David Vélez, called the deal small for the bank but “extremamente estratégica” (extremely strategic) and said that Nubank had tested Hyperplane’s neural networks and found that they outperformed the bank’s internal algorithms. Forbes Brasil writes that the sale was made official in June 2024; Brazil Journal’s article of August 2026 dates Nubank’s acquisition of Hyperplane to August 2024.⁠[3][10][5][1][13]

Bloomberg Línea’s article of July 1, 2024 states that Nubank was already a client of Hyperplane and that this work had shown the technology’s potential, and that gaining scale and widening the technology’s reach were what led the founders to accept Nubank’s offer. He said that the two companies had already been working together and that the results of the pilot were very special, adding: “vamos levar isso para 100 milhões de pessoas” (we are going to take this to 100 million people); he also said, “O Nubank é uma empresa de tecnologia, não um banco” (Nubank is a technology company, not a bank), and that the two sides had already been testing these models in credit, guarantees and marketing. The article adds that after the acquisition Hyperplane would stop serving other financial institutions and be fully integrated into Nubank, and that he said Hyperplane’s investors had already had “um resultado muito bom” (a very good result).⁠[8]

Looking back in 2025 on the work with Nubank, he said: “Em três meses, a gente treinou 11 modelos juntos” (In three months we trained 11 models together), adding that all of them were better than the models Nubank already had.⁠[1]

The event page states that the Tiradentes Innovation Center held “Bate-papo com Felipe Meneses da Hyperplane” (A conversation with Felipe Meneses of Hyperplane) in Aracaju on August 8, 2024, from 10:00 to 12:00, open to the public; it introduces him as a 23-year-old entrepreneur from Sergipe.⁠[14]

Forbes Brasil wrote on December 15, 2025 that he had left Hyperplane three months earlier to concentrate on new plans; he said: “Não saí porque não acredito no futuro do Nubank.” (I did not leave because I do not believe in Nubank’s future.) “Saí porque vi uma oportunidade que queria atacar de novo.” (I left because I saw an opportunity that I wanted to go after again.) The article states that after the acquisition he grew close to Vitor Olivier, then Nubank’s chief technology officer, and decided to build a new project with the executive, who left Nubank in August; he said: “Percebemos que tínhamos muita afinidade e que existia uma oportunidade enorme na mesa.” (We realized that we had a great deal of affinity and that there was an enormous opportunity on the table.) The article adds that the project was focused on AI, would not compete with Nubank, and that no details were given. In his view the part of financial services that still depends on people and outdated processes will be changed by AI: “A gente acha que a IA vai transformar essa outra parte” (We think AI is going to transform this other part).⁠[1]

Bloomberg Línea calls the two former Nubank executives and writes that they met while working on AI initiatives at Nubank; NeoFeed writes that they met at Nubank after it agreed to buy Hyperplane in 2024; and Decade’s press release says that the acquisition brought the two founders together to lead some of Nubank’s largest AI initiatives. Bloomberg Línea writes that Decade was founded in September 2025, raising US$85 million at its founding. Brazil Journal likewise writes that the money came in when the company was founded in September 2025, while Startups writes that the round closed at the end of 2025. NeoFeed writes that the company was called Frontier Technologies when the round closed in 2025 and was later renamed Decade, and that Vitor Olivier officially left Nubank in September 2025; Forbes Brasil and Brazil Journal give August.⁠[15][16][17][13][18][1]

On August 4, 2026, Decade came out of stealth mode, announced a seed round of US$85 million (about R$440 million) and opened a waitlist. The investors were the U.S. firms GreenoaksGreenoaksGreenoaks is an American investment firm co-founded by Neil Mehta in 2012 and known for concentrated, long-term investing; it made an early, large bet on the Korean e-commerce company Coupang and has invested in companies including Wiz, Stripe, Databricks, and Anthropic. In May 2026, it co-led Anthropic’s $65 billion Series H funding round with Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, and Sequoia Capital.Open the full entry, Benchmark and Diffusion and the Brazilian firms Atlantico and Norte Ventures; Startups and Decade’s press release name Greenoaks, Benchmark and Diffusion as the leaders of the round, and Forbes Brasil notes that Norte Ventures had earlier invested in Hyperplane. Bloomberg Línea writes that, on the data of the Latin American private capital investment association going back to 2010, this is the largest known seed round in the region; Forbes Brasil gives the previous record as PAX’s US$40 million.⁠[19][15][13][18][17]

Startups, NeoFeed and Decade’s press release all give him as co-founder and head of AI of Decade, with Vitor Olivier as chief executive. Bloomberg Línea writes that the company is headquartered in São Paulo and began offering its service to clients that day after five months of internal testing; Brazil Journal writes that it had run in beta for six months with a few clients; Startups writes that the round paid for 11 months of work in stealth. NeoFeed and Startups put its staff at 26.⁠[18][16][17][15][13]

Decade combines AI, Brazil’s Open Finance system and human advisors to consolidate clients’ assets and expenses, monitor portfolios and flag fees, tax inefficiencies, concentration risks and liquidity gaps; Brazil Journal and NeoFeed give its price as R$200 a month. NeoFeed writes that the company operates under an investment advisory licence from the CVM, Brazil’s securities regulator, and has applied for authorization as an asset manager. Forbes Brasil writes that the company says it tracks some billions of reais in assets of a small group of clients; NeoFeed describes these as assets managed on an experimental basis for clients close to the founders.⁠[15][13][16][19]

In Decade’s press release he said: “Há um ano, seria impossível construir o que estamos construindo” (A year ago it would have been impossible to build what we are building). The Next Web’s article carries his statements in English: “Financial services are complex by design and often monetised through asymmetry of information” and “AI collapses that asymmetry,” as well as “That level of attention used to be reserved for the ultra-rich” and “Now we can create an entire generation of millionaires.”⁠[17][18][20]

The Next Web’s article judges that Decade, then still at the waitlist stage, had no launched product or track record and had yet to prove that its model beats a cheaper robo-adviser, and calls “a generation of millionaires” a marketing line rather than a forecast.⁠[20]

His LinkedIn profile, as it stood in November 2026, gives his location as São Paulo, Brazil, and his organization as Frontier Technologies, and its summary reads: “Making money work for people who earned it. Stanford dropout, Thiel Fellow.” The languages listed on the profile are English, Portuguese, French and Spanish.⁠[4]

The volunteer section of the profile lists two roles: mentor in Fundação Estudar’s Prep Estudar Fora programme, described there as free, merit-based guidance for Brazilian students who apply to universities abroad, with mentees of his admitted to Stanford and YaleYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry, and shown as ongoing for 7 years and 11 months; and organizer of the Brazil at Silicon Valley Conference, for 8 months.⁠[4]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipebpm/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

Nubank: Official website: https://nu.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]