Asaas, a Brazilian financial and operations platform for small and medium-sized businesses, announced on June 9, 2026 that it had bought HelenaCRM, a conversational CRM that runs inside WhatsApp, for R$150 million (about $29 million). The company said it was the largest cheque it had ever written for an acquisition.
The deal is Asaas's fifth acquisition and its second of 2026. HelenaCRM will keep operating independently as an Asaas-controlled subsidiary until the end of 2028, with its own structure and its partner-led growth strategy. Startups.com.br reported that the founders will stay in charge of the business during that period.
Full integration is planned for the end of 2029, when HelenaCRM's teams are due to move inside Asaas and the two operations will run as one. The companies did not say whether the price was paid in cash, shares or a mix.
What HelenaCRM built
HelenaCRM was founded in 2021 and is based in Belo Horizonte, according to Baguete. Its software lets businesses run customer service, chatbots, sales automation and their sales funnel through WhatsApp, with integrations into Meta's other channels, Instagram and Facebook. It covers both the pre-sale and post-sale stages of a customer relationship.
The company holds Meta's Business Solution Provider status, a credential Meta gives to providers that build official tools on its messaging platforms after technical audits. HelenaCRM sells largely through a distribution network of more than 500 partners.
Its CEO is Guilherme Rocha. He said 35% of HelenaCRM's partners were already active Asaas customers, and that Asaas knew the small business market and its financial management well while serving the same type of company.
“Estamos expandindo as capacidades de geração de valor do Asaas de forma disciplinada, com foco nas dores de nossos clientes.”
Why Asaas is buying
Asaas built its business on payments, billing and collections for small companies. With HelenaCRM it wants to reach those customers earlier, at the point where they generate leads and close sales, rather than only when they collect the money. Piero Contezini, Asaas's chairman and co-founder, said the deal would connect the company's payment and billing tools to an autonomous, agent-based CRM layer.
In practice, Contezini said, customers would be able to automate their sales process from lead generation through to invoicing using the conversational AI models already available on HelenaCRM's platform. Asaas plans to tie conversation data to the moments of billing, payment and reconciliation.
HelenaCRM's product roadmap includes voice service and AI analytics features, such as metadata extraction, suggested actions, lead scoring, automatic summaries and periodic insights. Asaas also cited a WhatsApp consumer behaviour report saying 89% of people use the app to talk to brands and 67% buy after personalised service.
The buyer's acquisitions and finances
Asaas, based in Joinville, Santa Catarina, was started by brothers Piero and Diego Contezini, according to Money Times and Baguete. Earlier in 2026 it entered insurance by buying Mutuus, and in previous years it acquired Base ERP, CodeMoney and Nexinvoice. Money Times, citing Reuters, reported that Asaas had spent R$50 million (about $10 million) on acquisitions before the HelenaCRM deal, which on its own is three times that amount.
The company reported gross revenue of R$563 million (about $110 million) in 2025, up 64% on the year before, with net profit of around R$41 million (about $8 million), up 234%. Money Times put its customer base at around 300,000 small and medium-sized businesses and aims to reach R$1 billion (about $190 million) in revenue in 2026.
Asaas has raised more than R$1 billion from investors including BOND Capital, SoftBank and Vivo Ventures. In 2024 it closed a R$820 million (about $150 million) Series C led by BOND Capital, with SoftBank and 23S Capital taking part, and it later took R$35 million (about $7 million) from Vivo Ventures. It also has a distribution partnership with telecom operator Vivo, which will offer its tools to up to 1.8 million companies served by Vivo's corporate unit.
What was not disclosed
Neither company disclosed HelenaCRM's revenue, number of customers, headcount or any outside funding it had raised before the sale. The names of HelenaCRM's founders other than CEO Guilherme Rocha were not given in the announcement or the press coverage.
