5 Highlights From a Record-Smashing 2021 for SoCal Startups and VCs

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Hello LA.

The entertainment industry has spent the past several years debating what generative AI could take from creators.

This week, some of its biggest companies put money behind an AI startup promising to build something for them instead.

Los Angeles-based Stability AI raised $76M in Series B funding from an investor group that includes Electronic Arts, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures also joined the round, while LA-based MANTIS Capital and Sound Ventures are among the company’s existing backers.

The financing brings Stability AI’s total funding under CEO Prem Akkaraju to $232M, including two equity rounds and convertible notes. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its creative production tools, applied research and professional services across music, gaming and entertainment.

The amount is notable. The names attached to it are the bigger story.

Generative AI’s arrival in entertainment has been anything but quiet. Artists have questioned whether their work was used to train models without permission. Studios have faced pressure over how the technology could affect jobs. Record labels have pursued AI companies in court while simultaneously exploring how the same technology might fit into their businesses.

Now, several of the world’s largest entertainment companies are investing directly in one.

That does not mean the industry has resolved its concerns about AI. It means some of its biggest players would rather help shape the technology than wait to see what it becomes.

Stability AI is positioning itself for that opening. Rather than focusing solely on general-purpose models, the company is building tools specifically for professional creatives. Its recently launched Stable Audio 3.0 was trained on fully licensed music and lets artists generate, edit and arrange audio through a web platform or directly inside digital audio workstations.

Image Source: Stability AI

That licensed-data approach is central to the pitch. The next phase of creative AI will not be decided only by which company produces the most impressive model. It will also depend on which companies can earn the trust of the artists, studios and rights holders whose work gives those models value.

For its new strategic investors, the round offers more than financial upside. It creates a closer view into how generative AI may change production, a voice in how the tools develop and an opportunity to establish rules before those rules are established for them.

For Stability AI, the backing provides something equally important: credibility inside industries that have every reason to scrutinize what it is building.

The company now has capital and access to some of the largest catalogs, franchises and creative workforces in entertainment. What it does with that access will determine whether this becomes a meaningful alliance or simply an impressive collection of logos.

Either way, the industry is no longer watching from a safe distance.

It has entered the room.

LA’s Air-Taxi Plans Are Coming Downtown

While Stability AI is trying to change how entertainment gets made, Archer Aviation wants to change how people get to it.

AEG and Archer announced plans to develop downtown Los Angeles’ first vertiport at L.A. LIVE, creating a potential new stop in Archer’s proposed electric air-taxi network ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Image Source: Archer

The planned site would sit beside Crypto.com Arena and allow passengers to travel to and from the entertainment district aboard Archer’s Midnight aircraft. The company says its network could turn drives that take an hour or longer into electric flights lasting approximately 10 to 20 minutes.

Archer has already identified SoFi Stadium, USC and Hollywood Burbank Airport as possible locations, with its recently acquired Hawthorne Airport expected to serve as the network’s central operating hub. As the official air-taxi provider of LA28 and Team USA, Archer has an unusually visible deadline for turning those plans into something tangible.

AEG and Archer have completed an initial feasibility study of the L.A. LIVE site, including reviews of land use, airspace, power availability and community impact. The next phase will examine operations and the passenger experience.

There is still a substantial distance between a proposed vertiport and a functioning air-taxi network. The infrastructure must be built, regulatory approvals must be secured and passengers must be persuaded that flying across the city is safer and more practical than staying on the ground.

Still, few locations could make that future feel more real than L.A. LIVE. Millions of people already pass through the district for concerts, games and major events. Placing a vertiport there would bring urban air mobility out of the concept stage and directly into public view.

Together, this week’s announcements show Los Angeles becoming a testing ground for two technologies still moving from promise toward everyday use.

One could reshape how entertainment is created. The other could reshape how Angelenos reach it.

In a city famous for both its creative industries and its traffic, that feels appropriately on brand.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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Happy Friday, Los Angeles.

Castelion has spent the past four years trying to prove that hypersonic missiles do not need to take decades to develop or cost so much that the military can only afford a limited supply.

Now comes the harder part: producing them at scale.

The Torrance-based defense startup raised a $1B Series C at a $13B valuation. The financing includes $800M in equity and a $250M revolving credit facility, making it one of the largest recent raises for an LA defense technology company.

JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group, Andreessen Horowitz and Carlyle co-led the round. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lavrock Ventures, Altimeter, General Catalyst, T. Rowe Price and LA-based Interlagos Capital also participated.

Castelion will use the capital to ramp production of Blackbeard, its low-cost hypersonic strike missile, while developing a longer-range precision weapon and new defensive systems. Hundreds of millions of dollars will go toward expanding manufacturing at Project Ranger, the company’s 1,000-acre production campus in New Mexico.

Image Source: Castelion

Blackbeard was designed in California, will be built in New Mexico and is expected to enter service in 2027. Castelion says it has already secured more than $500M in U.S. military contracts over the past 18 months and moved the missile from a clean-sheet concept to an official program in fewer than four years.

That timeline is central to Castelion’s pitch. Traditional defense programs are often associated with long development cycles, limited production runs and eye-watering costs. Castelion is applying the rapid testing and vertically integrated manufacturing approach popularized by commercial space companies to weapons production.

But a $13B valuation changes the standard. Castelion is no longer being judged as a promising startup with an impressive prototype. It is being funded like a company expected to become a major part of the American defense industrial base.

The question is no longer whether a startup can build a hypersonic missile. It is whether one can manufacture thousands of them without losing the speed, discipline and cost advantages that made it disruptive in the first place.

For LA’s defense ecosystem, that shift matters. The region has become home to a growing number of companies promising to modernize how America builds critical hardware. Castelion now has the capital, contracts and facilities to show what happens when that promise reaches the factory floor.

The next test will not be in a pitch deck. It will be in production.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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Hello, Hello.

This week, one of LA’s most recognizable consumer brands packed its biggest bag yet.

Samsonite Group has agreed to acquire an 85% stake in BÉIS for $178.5M, valuing the Los Angeles-based travel and lifestyle brand at approximately $210M. The deal is expected to close in Q4, pending regulatory approval.

Founded by actress and entrepreneur Shay Mitchell and incubated by LA-based Beach House Group in 2018, BÉIS has grown from a digitally native luggage startup into a profitable business that generated approximately $210M in sales last year. Along the way, it built the kind of fiercely loyal online following that legacy brands spend years and considerable marketing budgets trying to manufacture.

Image Source: BÉIS

That may be the most interesting part of this deal. Samsonite is not simply acquiring another luggage line. It is buying access to a younger, predominantly female customer base, a sophisticated direct-to-consumer operation and a brand that knows how to turn social media attention into actual sales. The suitcases are useful; the cultural relevance is the real carry-on.

BÉIS will continue operating as a standalone brand under CEO Adeela Hussain Johnson and its existing management team. Mitchell will retain a 15% ownership stake and continue guiding the company’s creative and product vision, while Samsonite brings the global distribution, sourcing and logistics infrastructure needed to take the brand further.

For LA’s startup community, the acquisition is another reminder that valuable technology companies do not always look like software companies. BÉIS built its advantage through digital distribution, community and an unusually sharp understanding of its customer. Now, one of the world’s largest luggage companies wants what it created.

Sometimes the strongest exit starts with knowing exactly what people want to pack.

More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

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