US Companies Look to Latin America for AI Talent as Demand for LLM Expertise Surges
Revelo Sees Accelerated Growth Amid AI-Driven Hiring Wave
As many major tech firms push for a return to physical offices and emphasize rebuilding in-house teams, a contrasting hiring trend is quietly gaining momentum: the increasing reliance on Latin American developers to support advanced AI initiatives, particularly around post-training large language models (LLMs).
Revelo, a talent-matching platform specializing in connecting vetted Latin American developers with U.S.-based companies, is experiencing a strong uptick in demand. According to Revelo co-founder and CEO Lucas Mendes, this surge is being fueled by AI’s next frontier—enhancing LLM performance after their initial training phase.
“There’s a race for data, and especially expert human data, that can actually help LLMs be better at very specific high-value tasks,” Mendes told TechCrunch. “Coding is one of those tasks.”
The demand for developers supporting post-training LLM tasks has grown so substantially that it now represents 22% of Revelo’s total revenue in 2024.
Targeted Coding Expertise in High Demand
The companies approaching Revelo aren’t merely looking for generic programming skills—they seek specialists in particular programming languages who can contribute nuanced, human-coded data to refine AI models.
“What happened last year is that we saw a surge in demand from [companies] building foundational models that are looking for engineers that can be effective experts and that can provide that human data to help their LLM code better,” Mendes added.
This specialized hiring is part of a broader shift in how U.S. enterprises manage their AI development pipelines. Revelo is now supplying talent to prominent companies such as Intuit, Oracle, and Dell, as well as “nearly every major hyperscale AI provider,” Mendes noted.
Nearshoring vs. Offshoring: Why Time Zones Matter
Despite the growing push among U.S. tech firms to bring employees back into the office, Revelo’s business continues to thrive. One reason, Mendes believes, is the strategic advantage of nearshoring—sourcing talent from countries in the same or similar time zones.
“All of a sudden we started getting inbound from U.S. companies who suddenly realized that you can actually have really high-quality distributed teams and have some of those engineers in Latin America,” Mendes said, recalling the post-pandemic surge.
Unlike traditional offshoring, which often involves hiring across vastly different time zones, nearshoring offers companies the ability to maintain real-time collaboration with international teams—a critical factor for high-stakes AI development.
A Decade-Long Bet on Latin American Talent
Revelo’s recent success builds on a foundation laid in 2014, when Mendes and co-founder Lachlan de Crespigny launched the company in Brazil amid a tight labor market for developers.
Their initial thesis was straightforward: create a vetted talent network in Latin America that U.S. companies could tap into. That bet paid off. Revelo has since raised over $48 million in venture capital from firms like Social Capital, FJ Labs, and Valor Capital Group, and has expanded operations beyond Brazil to cover the broader Latin American region.
Pandemic Growth and Post-Pandemic Resilience
The Covid-19 pandemic served as a major catalyst for Revelo’s business. As remote work became mainstream, U.S. companies suddenly became more open to sourcing talent internationally.
“What would happen usually is that they would hire one or two and really like the quality and especially the quality-cost tradeoff and say, ‘Hey, I want more of these, where do I find them?’” Mendes said.
Even as the remote work trend has cooled post-pandemic, Revelo continues to thrive.
“I hate to be the guy that goes against the buzz, but the demand for our LatAm talent has not diminished,” Mendes joked.
Consolidation and Future Plans in the Age of AI
In response to booming demand, Revelo has made five acquisitions over the past 30 months—including Alto and Paretisa, both announced in March 2025—to strengthen its foothold in the Latin American hiring space.
“We’re building that global talent backbone for the age of AI,” Mendes said. “And there will be more acquisitions in the future.”
Revelo isn’t alone in this market. Competitors such as Terminal, Tecla, and Near are also actively connecting U.S. firms with Latin American developers. However, Revelo’s strategic positioning, platform scale, and acquisition strategy have made it a front-runner in this rapidly evolving landscape.
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