Can AI Change How Hollywood Structures Stories? Corto.ai is Launching to Find Out

Sam Blake

Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

Can AI Change How Hollywood Structures Stories? Corto.ai is Launching to Find Out

Having watched his reputation flourish upon a foundation of self-spun fabrications, then crumble into a heap of infamy that led him to change his name, Yves Bergquist knows a thing or two about stories.

As detailed in a November 2019 story in The Hollywood Reporter, Bergquist, who leads artificial intelligence (AI) projects at USC's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), was formerly a national security analyst and ABC News consultant named Alexis Debat. Once his lies were exposed, he left Washington D.C. in 2007, shrouded in shame.


Now, Bergquist is set to go public with Corto, his previously stealth-mode startup that uses AI to help storytellers in the entertainment industry better understand their content, their operations, and their audiences. Since 2016, Corto has worked symbiotically with the ETC, a think tank founded in 1993 by Star Wars creator George Lucas to support cooperative technological advancement in Hollywood.

As the THR story conveyed, Bergquist seems genuinely contrite. He has embraced working extra hard to overcome his tarnished past and salvage his integrity.

"This is a very sensitive thing for me," he told dot.LA. "Twelve years later it's still haunting."

With the coronavirus indefinitely shutting down production and threatening to erode disposable incomes, Bergquist's comeback may be just in time to help Tinseltown recover from a looming downfall of its own.

Introducing Corto

Even in normal times, says Bergquist, Hollywood faces challenges. With front-loaded costs and lengthy investment timelines, it's an inherently risky industry. And Hollywood's customers have unique expertise in the products they consume.

"Cars and yogurt don't deal with car and yogurt experts," he said. "Media sells to customers who are extremely experienced and knowledgeable about the product of media."

Taking a page out of philosopher Yuval Noah Harari's book, Bergquist waxes poetic on the idea that religion, nationality, and modern economies all rely on collective buy-in to stories.

"They're the most important objects in human civilization," he said. "They're the reason we have a society."

Put that way, it's no wonder that people crave stories; and that many seek to profit from satisfying that craving. Indeed, as technology has progressed, the variety and volume of content platforms and stories at our fingertips has exploded.

Where Corto comes in, is to help storytellers–and story sellers–meet that demand and stand out against that competition.

The end goal, according to Bergquist: "Better understand what resonates with whom, and why."

Modern medicine offers a useful analogy. Previously, Bergquist explains, doctors made diagnoses with little information.

"Say you (were to) walk into my office. You seem to have a fever, your tongue is white. Those generally are associated with cold or bronchitis. So there's your diagnosis."

Compare that to modern healthcare, which empowers physicians to collect far more sophisticated and useful information. And soon enough, pundits forecast a new era of medicine, where tech-enabled lifestyle data merge with a patient's medical history, genetics, and more to provide the granular insights needed for personalized healthcare.

"It's the same thing for entertainment," said Bergquist.

So how does Corto aspire to bring about a new era of stories?

The What: Content Genomics

Essential to Corto is its database of stories that it has thoroughly analyzed using several AI techniques. Like a submarine, Corto probes the depths of a story at a level and speed that a human brain cannot, and extracts the extent to which the story contains certain features, including dozens of "emotional tonalities" like melancholy, power, and generosity. Soon, Bergquist says, Corto will be able to extract additional deep features, like those related to specific characters and the story's structure.

For now, Corto's value starts with what it can tell a user about a script that's not in its database.

Bergquist showed dot.LA how it works, using Ad Astra as an example. He expressed that the interface, while functional — and actively used by a "major studio" for the past several months — is in early form, and that the feature set is still just about "5% of the vision."

When a user uploads a script, Corto takes about five seconds to "parse" the document. Then, like a doctor receiving a patient's genetic readout, new doors suddenly open.

Corto has parsed the script, in this case Ad Astra

Typing "emotion for AD ASTRA" in the command bar brings up a table of dozens of those emotional tonalities, each with a score from 0-100. Anything in the 25-75 range is a weak signal, Bergquist explained, meaning that particular emotion is not especially prominent in the script. Scores below 25 suggest a notable absence of the given emotion, while those above 75 indicate a strong presence.

Corto emotional tonality output

The command "comps for AD ASTRA" yields a list of titles from the Corto database that are similar to the given title based on the deep features that Corto has unearthed. The lower a title's "distance" from another, the more similar they are. "Comp emotion" breaks down these comparisons across each of the dozens of emotional tonalities. Search results can be filtered, such as by type (movie, TV episode, etc.), release year, or country.

Comps for Ad Astra


Ad Astra comps across emotional tonalities

Importantly, these results can reveal unexpected similarities. The comparable titles that Corto yielded for a test user's spy procedural show, for instance, surprisingly included several Sci-Fi titles, said Bergquist.

"Suddenly," he said, "there's a whole new audience that they could potentially market this to."

In the future — later this year, according to Bergquist — Corto will add visual analysis to its text parsing. On top of exploring a script's depths, it will also be able to extract insights from video.

"We want to create a tool," Bergquist explained, "that essentially understands how specific human emotions or narrative structures are expressed visually and from a sensory perspective."

It would function similarly to what Corto currently does with scripts, except it would turn audiovisual footage, rather than text, into data and insights.

Parsing video footage

Encoding and labeling the various elements of video would also theoretically increase pre- and post-production efficiency. For example, explained Bergquist, a film editor could say, "'Show me all the times when a female character was smoking a cigarette in the rain' — things like that. You cannot search content like that currently."

And the content comparisons this would enable–based on attributes that do not exist in a script–would also help to improve recommendation algorithms, which Bergquist describes as the "big kahuna" for Corto's content analysis.

Whether the purpose is to identify just the right title for someone to watch next, or to successfully execute a finely targeted marketing campaign based on a title's comparables, one needs insight not just about the content, but also the audience.

The Who: Audience Genomics

"It's not just, 'okay, people liked Avengers, so they'll probably like this'," Bergquist said. "It's 'why did they like it? What did they like about it? Who liked which attributes?'"

To find these answers, Bergquist explained, Corto probes the wide world of social media.

By analyzing Tweets, Reddit posts and such that are related to a given title, and using analytical methods similar to those used for the content analysis, Corto "can derive positive or negative sentiment for a title based on attributes like the acting, the cast, the director, visual elements, emotional tonalities, the music, the plot and more."

Using a method called knowledge representation to pair this granular data with broader datasets like census data and voting behavior can provide a detailed picture of who these groups are, and where to find them.

"If you give us a script we'll give you all the zip codes where each narrative domain and/or character will resonate the most," Bergquist said.

What's more, Corto layers in network analysis, so that on top of knowing what resonates with whom, and where they are, it also shows how sentiment travels from one group to another. Particularly useful is the identification of "swayable" communities–those whom Corto believes are not yet fans of a given title, but could be converted. Armed with the knowledge of what titles and attributes have historically resonated with such a group, "these are the communities that you can target as a marketer."

"Since we have content analysis integrated directly with audience analysis," Bergquist summarizes, "we can run your script, get a list of comparables, then immediately give you deep insights on the size and type of audience for your script, directly based on millions of social media conversations across all the places where people talk about media."


Helping Hollywood

Though Bergquist shared plenty with dot.LA, he showed a practiced guardedness when asked about specific customers and pricing.

"I would love to tell you everything," he said, "but I would get sued into oblivion if this stuff was identified. Working with Hollywood is like working for the CIA."

He did share, however, that two studios have currently licensed Corto, with a third set to sign up soon. He declined to provide pricing information.

Corto is not the only AI-for-storytelling game in town. Cinelytic, also L.A.-based, uses AI for film analytics and project management. The firm, founded in 2013, recently inked a deal with Warner Bros. And StoryFit, which is headquartered in Austin but does most of its business in Los Angeles, has found some success licensing its tools which, like Corto, include elements of natural language processing (NLP) and sentiment analysis to analyze scripts.

"Marketing is frequently our first stop when we're introduced to a studio, because they're used to using data," StoryFit Chief Executive Monica Landers told dot.LA. "But we're really a better fit during development."

This often entails helping creatives avoid what Landers calls "red flags."

"You may want a character to be intelligent," she explains as an example, "but our analysis will show that she's actually speaking less intelligently than other characters. Or we can surface that your script is too flat. Or that the balance of dialogue and action is off."

StoryFit does a variety of projects, ranging from focusing on one script to a broader landscape analysis. Landers says customers include large and mid-size studios, and networks.

"Annual subscriptions range for most studios from $5,000 - $40,000 a month," she said.

"We've taken a radically different approach," claimed Bergquist. "As a result, we're able to output much deeper insights from a much wider dataset."

AI Skepticism

"My feeling about using NLP on scripts, is there's just so many places that can go wrong," said Brian Dolan, who formerly managed NLP analytics as director of research at MySpace and with the CIA, and is now Chief Executive of LA-based AI venture accelerator Verdant.ai.

"I'm skeptical it'll hit two marks," he told dot.LA. "I don't think it'll get to the sophistication where it can (predict performance), and more importantly, I'm not sure it can reach a level of sophistication where it can be tested – how do we know where it's making a mistake?"

"That's on top of whether machines should (even) be trying to analyze content," Dolan continued. "Aren't we humans making stories for other humans? Who benefits? The finance department – not the audience."

"Look, this isn't a silver bullet," retorts Bergquist. "And it's going to be a long time until it is. What this is, is a set of powerful tools to give development and marketing executives a lot more context and data than was previously available."

"Tens of billions of dollars are being spent every year making and marketing media content," he wrote. "If we can optimize even 5% of that – and it's likely we could do even more, from what our initial tests tell us – that's an enormous amount of money."

Neither CEO denied that what they are aiming to do is hard. And they both recognize that appealing to the community that will ultimately use these tools is crucial. To that end, each emphasized that what they seek to do is not replace people and processes, but augment them. Bergquist points out that Corto has the advantage of having been developed with a high degree of Hollywood input through ETC members, which include most major studios.

In the future, Bergquist believes Corto can reach the sophistication that's needed to make predictions about a story's bottom line. For now, he is taking it slow.

"The last thing the AI field needs is more buzz."

Knowing full well what can happen when a story gets out of hand, Bergquist appears to be ratcheting up the caution in his personal comeback sequel.

"What bit me in the ass in my last career is I created a story that was false," he reflected.

Time will tell how his story this time around lands with his own target audience.

---

Sam Blake covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Find him on Twitter @hisamblake and email him at samblake@dot.LA

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California Passes Landmark AI Law as Russell Westbrook Backs Eazewell

🔦 Spotlight

Good Morning Los Angeles,

What do a new California law and Russell Westbrook’s latest startup have in common? AI at its most powerful and most personal.

California has officially passed the nation’s first AI safety law (SB 53). Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, the measure requires companies developing large scale AI models to disclose risk assessments and safety testing. On the surface, it sounds procedural. But in practice, it is a potential reset on how quickly AI companies ship new products. For years, the narrative has been “innovation first, oversight later.” With this law, California is betting that transparency can move in tandem with progress. Whether it becomes a model for federal policy or a cautionary tale depends on how the industry responds.

Meanwhile, Eazewell, a newly launched startup co-founded by NBA All Star Russell Westbrook, is tackling one of the most difficult spaces in tech: end of life planning. The company offers an AI platform designed to guide families through complex care transitions. It is not the kind of space most founders rush into. It is emotional, often uncomfortable, and full of fragmented systems. But precisely because of that, the potential impact is significant. By blending AI with healthcare navigation, Eazewell is aiming to make one of life’s hardest processes less overwhelming. Westbrook’s involvement draws attention, but the real story is a startup willing to bring technology into conversations many people would rather avoid.

Taken together, these stories capture the stretch of AI right now. On one end, lawmakers are moving to contain its risks. On the other, founders are pushing it into the most intimate corners of our lives. It is not often that state legislation and end of life care land in the same conversation, but that is the reality of AI in 2025.

🤝 Venture Deals

      LA Companies

      • Midi Health raised $50M in a Series C round led by Advance Venture Partners. The women’s health startup, which focuses on perimenopause, menopause, and midlife care, claims a $150 million revenue run rate and is now building its own AI powered search engine tailored for women’s health. The funding will support scaling operations, expanding the longevity and care services it offers, and investing in AI and infrastructure to advance its platform. - learn more
      • PINC Technologies, a Caltech spinout, announced a $6.8M Seed+ round led by Quantonation, with backing from investors including Wilson Hill Ventures, Freeflow Ventures, Hamamatsu Ventures, Qubits Ventures, Santec, and the Caltech Seed Fund. The company develops integrated nonlinear photonic devices and circuits aimed at making scalable nonlinear photonics practical for real-world applications. The funding will be used to accelerate commercialization, scale the team, and bring the technology built in Caltech’s Nonlinear Photonics Lab into broader markets. - learn more
      • Swan announced a Series C financing to support the launch of Swan International, expanding its concierge Bitcoin wealth services globally under U.S.-regulated custody. The company also added a Head of Private Wealth to its team to lead this expansion into new markets. This move aims to position Swan as a high-touch, cross-border wealth platform anchored in crypto. - learn more
      • Vatom announced a strategic investment led by the Hilton Family Office, supporting its mission to power next-generation digital finance engagement. The funding will help Vatom deepen its infrastructure for tokenized assets, NFTs, and blockchain experiences across Web3 ecosystems. This injection positions the company to expand its reach and build tools that make digital finance more immersive and user-centric. - learn more

      LA Venture Funds

      • Powerhouse Capital led a growth funding round for Five Iron Golf UAE’s franchisees, backed by a network of investors and professional athletes. The capital is targeted to fuel expansion, new venues, and enhanced operations across the UAE market. This investment reflects confidence in pairing tech-driven sports entertainment with scalable hospitality models. - learn more
      • MTech Capital remains a backer as CyberCube announces a fresh infusion of more than $180M led by Spectrum Equity. The cyber risk analytics firm is using the capital to accelerate product innovation, expand globally, and deepen its presence across insurance, reinsurance, and broking markets. The investment will help CyberCube scale solutions that quantify cyber risk at portfolio levels and power smarter underwriting decisions. - learn more
      • Helena participated in Phaidra’s $50M Series B round, joining lead investor Collaborative Fund and backers like Index Ventures and NVIDIA. Phaidra builds AI systems to optimize energy, cooling, and operational efficiency in data centers, striving to help infrastructure run smarter. The new funding will be used to scale its platform, deepen customer deployments, and expand its reach in facility control and AI automation. - learn more
      • Lasagna joined DeepWork Capital, Florida Opportunity Fund, and Lookout Ventures in backing Circuitry.ai’s seed financing round. Circuitry.ai offers a Decision Intelligence platform that powers “Autonomous Service Journeys” for manufacturers, layering AI advisors, agents, and analytics to optimize service operations. The funding will help scale engineering and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations with service platforms, and expand the solution across industries like automotive, industrial systems, and medical devices. - learn more
      • B Capital led a $64M seed round in Axiom Math, the startup founded by a Stanford dropout aiming to build an AI system that not only solves the hardest math problems, but also invents new ones. Axiom has pulled talent from top places like Meta to push toward next-gen mathematical reasoning. The funds will support scaling research, expanding the team, and accelerating their vision of AI that thinks deeper in pure and applied math. - learn more
      • Alexandria Venture Investments and Wedbush Healthcare Partners joined the $205M capital raise for Crystalys Therapeutics, which emerged from stealth mode to fund late-stage trials of its gout treatment. The San Diego based biotech is pushing forward dotinurad, a once-daily oral drug being tested across U.S. and European trials for patients who don’t respond to first-line therapies. With this backing, Crystalys aims to fast-track clinical development and bring a needed second-line gout treatment to market. - learn more
      • GordonMD Global Investments joined new and existing backers in Star Therapeutics’ oversubscribed $125M Series D financing round. The biotech, co-led by Sanofi Ventures and Viking Global, is deploying the capital to push forward its lead program VGA039, a monoclonal antibody targeting bleeding disorders. The funds will help accelerate its clinical trials and advance its pipeline toward commercialization. - learn more
      • Hawke Ventures joined a funding round in Tie, which raised $10M in Series A to support its AI identity platform for e-commerce brands. Tie helps retailers reclaim hidden website visitors by identifying and enriching anonymous traffic to build better marketing audiences. The capital will go toward scaling the team, deepening integrations with commerce and marketing stacks, and expanding reach among D2C brands. - learn more
      • Foxhog Ventures led a ₹44.37 crore (~$5.3M USD) seed investment in Assessli, a Kolkata deep-tech startup developing what it calls “Large Behavioural Models” (LBMs) that combine genomics, psychology, and digital life data into highly personalized AI twins. The funding will support Assessli’s expansion into the U.S. and U.K., accelerate product commercialization, and increase its technical hiring to scale out its platform. - learn more
      • Bonfire Ventures participated in Alvys’ $40M Series B round, alongside RTP Global, Alpha Square Group, Titanium Ventures, Picus Capital, and others. Alvys offers an AI powered transportation management system (TMS) that streamlines freight operations including dispatch, load management, billing and analytics by automating workflows and integrating across platforms. The funding will help the company build out enterprise features, scale engineering, deepen integrations, and accelerate growth in the logistics and freight sector. - learn more
      • M13 participated in an $11M Series A round for Anything, an AI platform that turns natural-language prompts into production-ready mobile and web applications. Rather than just generating prototypes, Anything’s backend includes infrastructure like authentication, payments, and storage under the hood. With this funding, the company will scale development, expand its user base (now over 700,000), and deepen its platform capabilities to support full app deployment. - learn more
      • Halogen Ventures closed a $30M Fund III and has committed to invest in early stage startups in Alabama, becoming the first out of state VC to partner with Innovate Alabama’s InvestAL program. They have already begun deploying capital into the state, backing startups like Moxi, Auditocity and Croux, and are actively running pitch events to build a local pipeline. - learn more

      LA Exits

      • Griffin Club has been acquired by Bay Club, deepening Bay Club’s footprint in Los Angeles. Griffin Club is a legacy athletic, aquatic, and social club in West LA, known for features like tennis and pickleball courts, pools, wellness classes, and high-end amenities. Bay Club intends to bring Griffin into its LA campus and integrate it into its broader network of fitness and lifestyle clubs. - learn more
      • Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center has been acquired by Motivant, with Sarah Gabriel installed as its new CEO. The deal brings the med spa franchise into Motivant’s portfolio, aligning it with a growth-focused investment platform. Gabriel’s appointment signals a strategic push to leverage new leadership and scale operations under Motivant’s guidance. - learn more

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            Salt AI Secures $10M to Untangle Healthcare’s Toughest Workflows

            🔦 Spotlight

            Hello Los Angeles,

            Not every startup raise deserves the spotlight, but this week’s news from Salt AI is worth paying attention to. The LA based company just closed a $10 million round led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Struck Capital, Marbruck Investments and CoreWeave. The goal is to expand what it calls “contextual AI,” and if it works, it could quietly change how some of the most complex corners of healthcare get untangled.

            Healthcare is notorious for slow, clunky systems. Even the smallest workflow, like drug trial data, clinical documentation, or compliance reviews, can drag on for weeks because the tools were never built for speed. Salt AI is betting that the fix is not flashy consumer apps or billion parameter models, but something more practical: AI that slots directly into the day to day grind of life sciences. Their platform lets non technical teams visually build and deploy workflows that would normally take months of coding. Drag, drop, done.

            It sounds simple, but the implications are not. Imagine a biopharma team testing a new drug, able to cut through compliance hurdles in days instead of months. Or clinical researchers spinning up experiments and seeing usable results in real time. Salt AI’s pitch is not about replacing scientists, it is about giving them back time in an industry where time can literally mean lives.

            The new capital will help scale engineering, grow its customer footprint, and push further into healthcare and biopharma. But more importantly, it gives Salt AI the chance to prove that “contextual AI” is more than a buzzword. If they succeed, the company will not just chip away at bottlenecks, it could reshape how innovation itself moves through one of the world’s most heavily regulated and mission critical industries.

            🤝 Venture Deals

                LA Companies

                • Bonsai Health raised $7M in a seed round led by Bonfire Ventures and Wonder Ventures. The Santa Monica based company builds an agentic AI platform that automates front office healthcare workflows, things like patient outreach, scheduling and clinical follow-ups, working behind the scenes to keep patients connected to care and reduce administrative burden. It plans to use the funding to accelerate its specialty AI agents, expand into new medical specialties, and scale its commercialization nationwide. - learn more
                • Genstore raised a $10M Seed round led by Weimob, with participation from Lighthouse Founders’ Fund. The Los Angeles based startup is building an AI-native e-commerce platform that lets merchants launch and run online stores using conversational prompts, automating everything from product listings and copywriting to customer service. The funds will go toward accelerating product development, expanding into new markets, and refining features that simplify online commerce for small and midsized sellers. - learn more
                • TransAstra secured a $5M investment to scale its asteroid capture technology in partnership with NASA. The company aims to advance systems that can snag and repurpose small bodies in space, contributing to sustainable space infrastructure and debris mitigation. With this funding, TransAstra will expand development, deepen its relationship with NASA, and accelerate deployment of its capture hardware. - learn more

                LA Venture Funds

                • Fika Ventures led a seed round investing in MaxHome, joining BBG Ventures, Four Acres and 1Sharpe Ventures. MaxHome is building an AI-native platform focused on automating real estate transaction coordination, the messy, manual work that slows deals. Fika backed the team because it sees a huge opportunity in streamlining broker workflows, reducing errors, and improving the experience for agents and homebuyers alike. - learn more
                • MANTIS Ventures joined NEA, Sequoia, NVIDIA, J.P. Morgan and others in leading a $50M Series B for Factory, valuing the AI coding company at $300 million. Factory builds “droids,” AI agents that automate software development tasks across environments, and claims their platform now tops the Terminal Bench benchmark. With this capital, Factory aims to expand enterprise adoption, deepen integrations, and scale its engineering team globally. - learn more
                • SafeHill (formerly Tacticly) announced a $2.6M pre-seed round led by Mucker Capital, with participation from Chingona Ventures, Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, and others. The Chicago-based cybersecurity startup is launching from stealth with SecureIQ, a continuous Threat Exposure Management platform that blends AI-driven testing with human validation to help organizations find and shore up attack paths. The funding will be used to expand engineering, enhance AI-assisted ethical hacking, deepen enterprise partnerships, and broaden compliance and monitoring capabilities. - learn more
                • Prototype Capital was among the investors in Nilo Technologies’ $4M seed round, alongside backers like Supercell, a16z Speedrun, KFund, and Flex Capital. Nilo is building an AI native 3D creation platform that makes game development more accessible, letting creators build interactive worlds in their browser without complex tooling. The funding will help accelerate product development, bring in more users as “Founding Builders,” and expand the platform’s capabilities for real time, multiplayer creation. - learn more
                • Rebel Fund participated in a $7.5M funding round for Indian fintech Gold Firm Gullak backed by Y Combinator. Gullak offers digital gold savings and lending solutions targeted at underbanked consumers in India. Rebel Fund’s investment will help Gullak scale operations, deepen financial inclusion, and expand its product offerings. - learn more
                • B Capital joined Wellington Management, General Catalyst and others in a $400M funding round for Capital Rx, which is rebranding as Judi Health. The company, which operates a pharmacy benefits management platform, will use the capital to expand into full-spectrum health benefits, integrating medical, dental and vision claims processing with its existing PBM capabilities. The move positions Judi Health as a unified tech backbone for benefits administration across employer and plan clients. - learn more
                • Supply Change Capital joined a seed funding round that raised $4.7M for Helios AI, a startup building the first AI co-pilot for food and agriculture supply chains. Helios’ platform combines climate modeling, commodity forecasting, and real-time data to help buyers and suppliers make smarter decisions in volatile markets. The funding will be used to scale the product, expand data coverage globally, and bring its AI tools to more players across the agri-food sector. - learn more

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                    ServiceTitan Ups the AI Stakes

                    🔦 Spotlight

                    Hello Los Angeles,

                    ServiceTitan is making it clear: the trades are getting a tech glow up. At its annual Pantheon conference in Glendale, the home services software giant rolled out a bold AI vision and topped it off with a fresh acquisition that could change the way HVAC contractors do business.

                    First, the AI. ServiceTitan unveiled what it calls the “next evolution” of its platform, and this is not just window dressing. Think automated call summaries so techs spend less time typing, predictive scheduling that knows when your AC is likely to fail before you do, and estimates that generate faster than a homeowner can ask, “So, how much is this going to cost me?” For small and mid sized contractors, these are the kinds of tools that level the playing field against the big chains and maybe even help them get home before dinner. It is AI built not for hype, but for the day to day grind of the trades, where minutes saved can mean jobs won and customers kept.

                    Then came the news that ServiceTitan is acquiring Conduit Tech, a Boston startup best known for its LiDAR powered HVAC design software. Instead of squinting at tape measures and crunching numbers in clunky spreadsheets, contractors can now scan a home, generate a 3D model, and deliver a polished, ACCA certified proposal on the spot. Translation: faster bids, more trust, and fewer “I will get back to you next week” moments.

                    Put together, the AI rollout and Conduit deal are more than product updates. They are a signal of where ServiceTitan wants to take the industry. This is not just software that keeps the books balanced or trucks dispatched. It is an attempt to make technology an advantage in a field where labor is scarce, expectations are high, and every interaction with a customer matters. In short, ServiceTitan is not just keeping the lights on, it is rewiring how the trades get work done.

                    🤝 Venture Deals

                        LA Companies

                        • Modern Animal has hit a $100M annual run rate and closed a new $46M funding round led by Addition, True Ventures and Upfront Ventures with participation from Founders Fund. The company delivers veterinary care both in clinics and virtually, and it is using the funds to expand services such as specialty care, 24/7 virtual access, integrated pharmacy and ecommerce, along with extended urgent care hours. The company also announced a board expansion with new leadership added to support scaling operations and enhancing its technology infrastructure. - learn more
                        • MarqVision raised a $48M Series B round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from investors including Salesforce Ventures, HSG, Coral Capital, and returning backers like Y Combinator and Altos Ventures. Based in Los Angeles, MarqVision offers AI-powered brand protection tools—monitoring marketplaces, removing counterfeit listings, managing trademarks, and protecting brand reputation online. The new funds will go toward expanding its AI and engineering teams, accelerating automation, enabling enterprise-grade features, and growing its global presence in markets like Japan, Korea, China, Europe and beyond. - learn more
                        • Divergent Technologies raised $290M in a Series E round led by Rochefort Asset Management, with $250M in equity and $40M in debt, bringing its valuation to about $2.3 billion. Using its proprietary DAPS (Divergent Adaptive Production System) platform, the Torrance based company builds hardware for aerospace, defense and automotive sectors by combining rapid design, additive manufacturing and automated assembly. The new capital will help Divergent scale its manufacturing capacity, build out its team and develop new capabilities for upcoming product lines. - learn more
                        • Apex raised $200M in a Series D round led by Interlagos, giving the Los Angeles company a valuation above $1 billion. Apex builds configurable “satellite bus” platforms used by commercial and government clients, including for communications, sensing, and national security constellations. The capital will boost production capacity by 50 percent, expand its manufacturing footprint in Los Angeles, and strengthen vertical integration including acquiring propulsion technology and insourcing more subsystems. - learn more

                          LA Venture Funds

                          • Mantis Venture Capital joined Benchmark, Uncork, Y Combinator and Mayfield in backing Numeral’s $35M Series B, part of a $57M total funding haul. Numeral is an AI powered platform that automates everything around sales tax for e-commerce and SaaS brands including filing, remittance, exemption certificates, state registrations, nexus detection and more. The money will go to speeding up product innovation, building out its global compliance footprint, and adding smarter automation so finance teams can stop wrestling with tax rules and start scaling. - learn more
                          • Magnify Ventures participated in Series A for Seven Starling, contributing to an $8M funding round led by Rethink Impact. Seven Starling is a virtual women’s mental health company focused on maternal mental health, offering group therapy, medication management, patient advocates, and digital tools. The new capital will fuel its expansion into more U.S. states (aiming for over 30 by the end of 2026), deepen partnerships with healthcare providers, and scale its model to help more mothers. - learn more
                          • Calibrate Ventures led Vibranium Labs’ $4.6M seed round, joined by Mirae Asset and investors including a16z and Franklin Templeton. Vibranium Labs’ flagship product, “Vibe AI,” acts as a full-time AI incident engineer, monitoring, triaging, and resolving IT incidents automatically. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development, and deepen integrations so Vibe AI can be embedded into more incident response systems across industries. - learn more
                          • B Capital led a $20M financing round in Extend, with additional participation by March Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, and Commerce Ventures. Extend, a spend-and-expense management platform, allows businesses to use virtual cards with their existing bank or card programs while offering workflow tools like receipt capture, approvals, and automated reconciliation. The new capital will help Extend scale issuer partnerships, launch new expense management services, accelerate its path to profitability, and the company also added Francois Horikawa as CFO to help guide the financial strategy forward. - learn more
                          • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Versant Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners USA in a $65M Series A for Dualitas Therapeutics, a South San Francisco company developing bispecific antibodies through its DualScreen discovery engine. Dualitas is advancing two lead programs, DTX-103 for allergic disease and DTX-102 for autoimmune conditions, both showing strong preclinical results. The funding will support these programs and expand the company’s platform to discover new bispecific candidates in immunology, inflammation and beyond. - learn more
                          • Oversubscribed Ventures joined a syndicate that invested in Noble Mobile’s $10 million seed round. Noble Mobile, founded by Andrew Yang, is a telecom startup offering unlimited data plans while giving customers cash back when they use less data. The funds will be used to launch operations, roll out its mobile virtual network service, and build features that encourage better digital wellness. - learn more
                          • Mantis Venture Capital participated in Doctronic’s $20M Series A round, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also backed by Union Square Ventures, Tusk Ventures, Seven Stars, and others. Doctronic is a healthcare AI startup building a platform for fast, personalized medical advice and virtual visits with licensed physicians, aiming to reduce wait times and costs. The new funds will help the company scale its operations across the U.S., expand partnerships with insurers and health systems, and extend its reach to more patients. - learn more
                          • Strong Ventures led a Series A round investing about ₩1 billion in Ares3, with Seoul National University Technology Holdings also participating. Ares3 runs florist subscription service “Honest Flower” for consumers and “FlowerGo,” a B2B platform for floral suppliers, with steady growth thanks to brand partnerships and solid demand. The new capital will help Ares3 extend its reach via offline experience locations and campaigns to shift public perception of flowers from luxury to everyday goods. - learn more
                          • Gold House Ventures participated in MedSetGo’s oversubscribed $2.4M seed round led by TurboStart. MedSetGo is an AI-driven healthcare company based in San Francisco that is working to streamline patient care transitions by helping people find and schedule the right care after discharge. The funding will go toward accelerating product development and hiring, especially expanding the engineering, data science, and commercialization teams. - learn more
                          • March Capital was among the investors in Lila Sciences’ $235M Series A round, which was co-led by Braidwell and Collective Global. Lila builds an autonomous science platform combining AI, robotics and software to automate the scientific method - generating hypotheses, designing experiments, running them, learning from results. The funds will be used to scale Lila’s “AI Science Factories,” expand globally in cities like Boston, San Francisco and London, and accelerate its ability to explore materials, chemistry, life sciences and diagnostics more quickly. - learn more

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