Zapia powers local commerce for millions across Latin America with Claude and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI

Originally published on anthropic.com

Zapia helps Latin American consumers discover products, make purchases, and get support through popular messaging apps like WhatsApp. With Claude on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, Zapia is transforming commerce for millions across the region. Vertex AI is a fully-managed, unified AI development platform for building and using generative AI.

Bringing AI-powered commerce to Latin America's messaging culture

In Latin America, messaging apps are central to daily life and commerce. Over 70% of consumer transactions involve WhatsApp, with buyers messaging sellers directly to ask questions and negotiate purchases. While convenient, this creates inefficiencies as businesses struggle to keep up with high message volumes.

BrainLogic, a startup building cutting-edge GenAI-first products for Latin Americans, launched Zapia to streamline these message-based commerce interactions. Zapia is an AI assistant that engages in natural, localized conversations with Latin American consumers to help them discover products, get recommendations, make purchases, and receive support through familiar messaging interfaces tailored to their specific country and region.

Choosing Claude on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI

Claude's robust multilingual support and advanced reasoning capabilities combined with Vertex AI's scalability, flexibility, and reliability, made it the ideal solution for BrainLogic's AI-driven platform.

Localization was a crucial requirement for Zapia's success. While other large language models could engage in general conversations, they lacked Claude's nuanced understanding of Latin American cultures, dialects, and commerce norms. "Claude understands the particularities of each region and speaks differently to a user in Uruguay versus Colombia," said Nicolás Loeff, CTO of BrainLogic.

The implementation process was smooth and efficient. "Integrating Claude into our platform was quick, required minimal prompt engineering and had high-quality outputs," noted Juan Olloniego, Head of Engineering at BrainLogic. "It took us a couple of days plus testing. So it worked out of the box."

Google Cloud was also key to Zapia's rapid growth, providing a scalable, reliable infrastructure. Loeff said, "We built functionality on top of Google Cloud services specific to our use cases. It was super simple to start." The team used services like Cloud Run, Cloud Firestore, and Vertex AI to quickly develop and scale their AI-powered platform to its 2.5 million — and growing — users.

Vertex AI helped BrainLogic deploy and manage Claude models easily. Olloniego noted, "Having Claude on Vertex AI makes it faster to call other APIs and services." The integrated observability and monitoring tools helped the lean engineering team maintain high performance as usage scaled rapidly.

Driving rapid growth and user satisfaction

Zapia has achieved significant growth and user engagement using Claude on Vertex AI. Zapia demonstrates its impact on Latin American commerce and communication with 2.5 million users in its first year and handling hundreds of thousands of messages per hour.

The AI-powered experience has resonated with Latin American users who prefer chat-based interactions for business and personal matters, resulting in over 90% positive user feedback. "Users like the quick responses from Zapia," said Nicolás Loeff, CTO of BrainLogic. "In general, sentiment has been very positive."

Empowering Latin American commerce with AI

BrainLogic sees Zapia as the start of AI's impact on commerce in Latin America. They aim to make Zapia a vital commerce companion for millions in the region by using Claude's evolving capabilities on Vertex AI. Loeff explains, "AI will help people in remote regions without access to most services but with a cell phone connection. They can talk to a personal AI assistant about their problems and get responses in their own dialect and cultural context."

Looking ahead, Zapia is poised to play a crucial role in Latin America's technological advancement. Loeff concludes, “It will empower local artisans in remote villages and ambitious digital entrepreneurs alike. AI has the potential to democratize high-quality services across Latin America, regardless of location or economic status. It's a tool that helps everyone."