Mexico moves about $5B–$7B a day in local currency bond trading, and more than 98% of it still happens the old way. Phones. Relationship capital. “Call me back.” In a world that trades equities and crypto at light speed, that stat just sits there like a rotary dial in a fiber optic era.
Cicada, a U.S. regulated electronic trading platform, just raised $13.5M in Series A funding to modernize local currency Latin American bond trading. The round was led by Citi through its Markets Strategic Investments unit, with B3 investing via its independent venture arm L4, alongside Kaszek, Dila, and Crestone. That is not tourist capital. That is infrastructure money. That is conviction.
Ignacio Tovar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Cicada, and Javier Hernandez, Co-CEO of Cicada, are building an all to all electronic venue for emerging market local currency bonds, starting with Mexican local currency bonds. Through an SEC registered alternative trading system and proprietary execution protocols, they are connecting global buy side and sell side institutions across borders. Transparency where there was opacity. Structure where there was noise.
Cicada is not just a clever name. In nature, cicadas wait, then rise in force. In markets, the quiet ones build pipes while everyone else argues about spreads. The platform introduces one of the first central limit order books for Mexican local currency bonds, layered with RFQ workflows and proprietary tools like Spread Trading and Double Downs. It is a modern execution stack in a market that has been anything but modern.
The opportunity is not subtle. Mexico represents a roughly $500B fixed income market. Mexican TIIE swaps trade about $24B a day. Yet the majority of this activity remains non electronic. Cicada is positioning itself where electronification meets institutional demand, with a parallel strategic equity program designed to anchor liquidity through committed market makers, drawing in leading Wall Street institutions as early participants.
Tiago Wigman of L4 called out the structural shift underway in Latin America’s local currency markets. Aldo Alvarez, LatAm Lead at Citi’s Markets Strategic Investments unit, emphasized the potential to expand across emerging markets where electronification is still in its early innings. When exchanges and global banks lean in, they are not chasing headlines. They are underwriting the future plumbing of capital markets.
The fresh capital will expand commercial efforts, boost liquidity, add new products and geographies, deepen integrations with third party global platforms, and continue investing in regulatory, compliance, and risk infrastructure built for global institutions. Translation: build the rails first, then run more trains.
For institutional traders navigating emerging market debt, Cicada is offering something simple and rare. Access. Efficiency. A level playing field in markets that have historically favored the loudest voice on the line.
