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VC Mx: Angel Cisneros, Co-Founder Septiva AI
Mexican entrepreneur Angel Cisneros built Quiubas, sold it to Twilio, and is now leading Saptiva AI to redefine Latin America’s tech future.
Mack Meyer
November 20, 2025
In partnership with
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Angel Cisneros has lived two entrepreneurial lives. The first made him one of Mexico’s quietest success stories, the engineer-turned-founder who bootstrapped a small SMS gateway called Quiubas into the country’s dominant messaging infrastructure before it was acquired by Twilio. The second, which he’s living now, finds him building again, this time in artificial intelligence, with Saptiva AI, a company born from the belief that Latin America can produce, not just consume, the next wave of technology.
But for Cisneros, none of it came easy. His journey from a one-man startup running on caffeine and grit to leading a venture-backed AI company says as much about his philosophy as it does about Mexico’s growing tech ambition.
How Does Someone With No Tech Background Build a National Infrastructure Company?
Cisneros didn’t grow up in a tech-savvy family. There was no Silicon Valley blueprint waiting for him, only curiosity, and the sense that he could build something from scratch if he refused to quit.
In the mid-2000s, when mobile adoption in Mexico was still nascent and SMS was seen as a novelty, he started tinkering with the idea that text messaging could be more than personal communication, it could be infrastructure. The reaction from potential customers was almost comical.
I’d go into these meetings,and they’d look at me like I was crazy. One HR manager literally asked me, ‘How do you expect me to communicate with employees who don’t even own phones?
But he kept showing up. Hospitals, retailers, gas distributors, small wins that validated his instinct that the timing was right.
Then we had a couple of hospitals, some retailers, a couple of large natural gas distributors. So that kept me excited. There’s something here.
Those small signals of traction were enough to keep him going. He didn’t have investors or mentors. What he did have was the willingness to out-work everyone.
What Does It Take to Bootstrap a Company From Scratch?
The early Quiubas years were brutal. Cisneros bootstrapped entirely, no external funding, no safety net, no breaks.
I always say, if you can do it, it only takes one week of not sleeping. Why don’t you do it?
That wasn’t just bravado. For nearly seven years, he coded the product, handled support tickets, closed sales, and did every single piece of the work himself. There were no vacations, no employees for long stretches, and no guarantees it would work.
I was doing everything, tech, finance, operations, support. People think bootstrapping is romantic, but it’s not. It’s you, your computer, and an inbox that never sleeps.
That stubbornness, the refusal to cut corners or compromise on delivery quality, would later become Quiubas’ moat.
When SMS Became Essential
By 2012, the mobile market in Mexico shifted overnight. Smartphones were taking over, and SMS became the backbone of user authentication, two-factor verification, and digital transactions. Suddenly, the thing people had laughed at was mission-critical.
We were so good, so damn good,” Cisneros says, still sounding amazed. We were the best in the industry. Not in LatAm, I’m talking Twilio. Twilio couldn’t even compete with my quality of delivery.
Companies that once dismissed him were now desperate for reliable routing. Quiubas became the gold standard, the quiet layer beneath Mexico’s exploding app economy.
My mission was that every single message that goes into Mexico has to go through Quiubas. That’s the mission. And for a while, we almost got there.
Competitors appeared, running Google ads claiming “better and cheaper than Quiubas.” Cisneros ignored them.
Everybody that tried to do what we did was dead by 2016 or 2017. We killed them all.
By the mid-2010s, Quiubas controlled roughly 95% of Mexico’s SMS traffic.
The Twilio Acquisition
Acquisition offers had come before, at least five, according to Cisneros, but none felt right. He wasn’t building to sell; he was building to dominate.
Twilio, ironically, had long been a partner, routing Mexican traffic through Quiubas because it couldn’t match its reliability locally. Then one day, the email arrived.
I got an email right away with an NDA and the terms and everything. That’s how the process started.
What surprised him most wasn’t the offer itself, but the nature of the transaction.
One thing I learned is that it’s completely different to sell your company than to be acquired. I wasn’t selling my company. I got acquired.
It was validation, but also a full-circle moment, the global giant that couldn’t beat him chose to join him instead.
What Would He Do Differently Now?
Even with the acquisition behind him, Cisneros is blunt about what he’d change.
For starters, I would have delegated more. I used to be the guy who said, ‘You cannot do that, I’ll do it.’ Even in 2016, I was replying to support tickets. Looking back, it’s a signal something could have been done faster or bigger.
He doesn’t romanticize burnout or obsession. For him, it was simply survival.
I don’t care about being on magazine covers. I just want to build the best tech company in LatAm, in the world, Galaxy, whatever. I wasn’t doing PR. That’s why you don’t know me.
Delegation, he says, would have allowed Quiubas to scale even more aggressively, but the discipline it took to reach that point remains his biggest edge.
Starting Saptiva AI
The Twilio exit could have been the end of the story. But instead of retiring or turning to venture capital, Cisneros went back to what he loved, building from zero.
At the beginning, we thought maybe a VC fund would be the next step. But I realized I’m not a good VC at this point in my life. I want to be hands-on, I’m critical, and that doesn’t work in investing.
That decision led to Saptiva AI, his new company focused on helping enterprises deploy artificial intelligence across complex and fragmented infrastructures.
“Life is completely different when you’re operating at that speed,” he says, comparing the shift to driving a Ferrari after years behind a truck.
Saptiva AI’s Founders
Funding
2024, $1.8M (Pre-Seed) including Semilla Ventures, Magma Partners, DCG Expeditions, Crucible Capital, 99 Startups and others.
Why Saptiva Exists
At its core, Saptiva AI was born out of frustration, frustration that Latin America’s talent was being used to consume AI tools, not create them.
In LatAm, we consume AI, we don’t produce AI. That doesn’t have to be the case. AI is changing life as we know it, and Saptiva is here to make sure our region plays a role in shaping its future.
He doesn’t sugarcoat the uncertainty of the field, either.
When people ask me where Saptiva will be in 10 years, I say I have no idea. Anyone who tells you otherwise in AI doesn’t know what they’re talking about. We just rang the bell and opened the door, we don’t yet know what’s behind it. But Saptiva will be there, working at the fundamentals.
The Challenge of Legacy Systems
Saptiva’s biggest obstacle isn't technology, it’s the reality of outdated systems that dominate Latin American enterprises.
AI right now is 90% expectation and 10% reality. The problem isn’t that AI can’t do things, it’s that most companies don’t have the data infrastructure. We once worked with a 120-year-old company where all their data sets were still on paper.
To solve that, Saptiva emphasizes orchestration and flexibility, letting clients run models wherever their data lives, whether in the cloud, a local data center, or even under a desk.
Hyperscalers like AWS and Google are amazing,” he explains, “but they were built for the U.S. market. LatAm needs AI infrastructure that reflects its own needs.
It’s a bold ambition, but one that Cisneros insists is both practical and urgent.
Why Does Latin America Need Its Own AI Infrastructure?
Beyond software, Cisneros sees a bigger mission, building sovereign AI infrastructure for the region.
Latam is a big region.Why shouldn’t we have our own AI infrastructure? We’re big enough, we’re good enough, so why not?
It’s not just a question of pride, but of long-term resilience.
If we don’t build it ourselves. We’ll always be consumers of someone else’s platform. And that limits how far we can go.
For him, AI sovereignty is the next chapter in Latin America’s technological independence, a continuation of the same self-reliance that defined his Quiubas years.
What’s His Advice to Founders Trying to Build From Mexico?
What’s your life goal? Do you want to be the next Elon Musk, or do you just want a lifestyle business that gives you freedom? Both are fine, but you have to decide. If you want a lifestyle business, don’t raise money. If you want to build a legacy company, prepare for sacrifices.
Can Mexico Compete Globally in Tech?
Cisneros sees enormous promise in Mexico’s ecosystem but doesn’t shy away from pointing out its structural gaps.
Talent is distributed equally, but opportunities are not. Too many VC funds and startups are still tied to big family names. That closes doors for a lot of talented founders. What we need is to support the people building the next generation of startups.
He envisions a future where local founders can scale globally without needing validation from abroad.
In 20 years, I hope we see more opportunities for founders. Talent is already here. What’s missing is access. If we get that right, Mexico and LatAm can compete with any market in the world.
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