💡 Creative Synergy Between Hollywood and Artificial Intelligence

Christian Hetrick

Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.

💡 Creative Synergy Between Hollywood and Artificial Intelligence
Image Source: Toonstar.com

🔦 Spotlight

Executives in the media and entertainment industry are betting that AI can be a positive force by augmenting human creativity in addition to increasing efficiency. These companies range from brand new startups like Strada, an AI-enabled cloud platform with tools for production and postproduction to more established AI-powered companies including Invisible Universe, developing family friendly franchises on social media, and Toonstar, developing irreverent adult franchises on web3. This is not to mention the incumbent Hollywood studios who are snapping up AI talent while their hands are full with a striking workforce worried about AI.

We had the opportunity to delve into how ToonStar uses AI and web3 to create community-driven franchises.✍️🤝🤖

🏃♀️ Quick hits

The Founder: John Attanasio and Luisa Huang are both Hollywood veterans. Prior to launching Toonstar, John spent nearly fifteen years developing franchise properties and driving innovation at Warner Bros. and DreamWorks where he held roles in marketing, business development, digital content creation and tech commercialization. Luisa also spent over a decade at entertainment behemoths such as Disney and Warner Bros. holding a variety of roles in strategy, consumer products, business development, and digital content creation.

The Company: Today, Toonstar is an interactive story studio focused on creating entertainment franchises through community-driven storytelling. In essence, it bridges the creative minds in the writing room with everyday fans, inviting them to actively participate in the content creation process. This unique process is made possible through technology, namely Web3, blockchain, and AI.

LA Connection: Toonstar is headquartered in Los Angeles and is deeply integrated with the Los Angeles entertainment ecosystem given the extensive industry experience of its founders.

Toonstar, founded about eight years ago by Disney, Warner Bros., and Dreamworks veterans John Attanasio and Luisa Huang, operates as an interactive story studio. Its main focus is on building entertainment franchises through community-driven storytelling. Essentially, Toonstar connects writers with everyday fans, allowing them to actively participate in content creation. This unique collaboration is made possible through technology, including Web3, blockchain, and AI.

The Role of Blockchain and NFT in Franchises:

Toonstar uses blockchain technology and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) as a key part of its approach. They distribute NFTs representing characters in their franchises to the community. NFT owners can then shape their character's backstory, with more NFTs giving greater voting power in deciding the story's direction. The creative process at Toonstar is similar to traditional studios, where writers create scripts for each episode. However, there's a twist - each episode ends with a cliffhanger, and the community decides what happens next. These choices are presented for voting, sometimes with full creative freedom. Toonstar's machine learning tools facilitate this interaction, blending fan input with professional storytelling seamlessly.

The Role of AI in Franchises:

At first, AI mainly sped up episode creation behind the scenes. But gradually, it moved beyond that and became part of the community-facing aspect. In "Space Junk," Welbecca became the first AI-voiced character, serving as both a character and a tool to help NFT owners develop their characters and stories.

The upcoming Toonstar franchise, "Fortun3," goes even further in integrating AI. It includes an AI-powered simulation game that blends with the episodes, adding a real-time dimension to the storytelling, coinciding with the FTX trial.

Exploring Toonstar's Franchises:

Toonstar has made its mark with past franchises like "The Gimmicks" and "Space Junk." "Gimmicks" was the first interactive TV series in the Web3 realm, co-produced with Mila Kunis, featuring a comedic storyline about wrestlers. "Space Junk," created by Dominic Russo, explored humor among space garbage collectors.

Toonstar is not oblivious to the fact that anything related to blockchain is out of favor with the public, in fact, it is the subject of their next franchise. "Fortun3" is inspired by the FTX implosion, mixing elements of "South Park," "Silicon Valley," and "BoJack Horseman," and will feature T.J. Miller from "Silicon Valley."

While entertainment titans are in the midst of a hiring frenzy still trying to grapple with how best to incorporate generative AI into their business practices, Toonstar is one of many creative businesses driving progress by innovating their way past the enormous barriers to entry in standard production companies. As the entertainment industry evolves, Toonstar's dedication to inclusivity and innovation is creating opportunities for new voices and unique storytelling experiences. 🎭🎬🌟

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Real estate has outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 20 years as an asset class - but it's not easy to get into. Arrived's seamless platform fixes this. So what's stopping you from becoming a real estate mogul?

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Startups

  • Afterparty, a fan connection and monetization platform for creators, raised a $5M Funding Round led by Blockchange Ventures, joined by Acrew Capital, Act One Ventures, Tamarack Global and Wilson Sonsin. - learn more
  • Bevz, a software platform for independently operated and small chain liquor/convenience stores raised a $3.1M Funding Round led by Dynamism Capital and Golden Section Ventures with participation from Stage 2 Capital, Hustle Fund, Bridge Investments, Tiller Partners, Irish Angels and others.- learn more
  • Gametree, a cross-platform gamer social network and universal gamer login system, raised a $1.75M Seed Round. - learn more
  • Estate Media, a personality driven real estate media company, raised a $1.65M Funding Round from investors including Powerhouse Capital, Upstate Shredding CEO Adam Weitsman and others. - learn more
LA Funds
  • WndrCo participated in a $100M Series B for Writer, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that uses LLMs trained on extensive online text datasets to improve corporate content creation. - learn more

📅 LA Tech Calendar

Friday, September 22nd

Monday, September 25th

  • Tech Networking - Studio City🗽 - Join other tech enthusiasts at an exceptional gathering, attracting diverse professionals from all corners of the tech industry, including investors, founders, marketers, sales experts, engineers, and more.

Wednesday, September 27th

Thursday, September 28th

🗽 - Free

📙 What We’re Reading

  • Deloitte AI Institute's new Generative AI Dossier reveals key business-ready use cases for Generative AI Deployment. - read more
  • See how compensation at startups has changed significantly in 2023 in Carta’s State of Startup Compensation, H1 2023 Report. - read more
  • Listen to (or read) an engaging conversation between Minnie Ingersoll, Partner at TenOneTen, and Adrian Fenty, founding managing partner at MaC Venture Capital and former mayor of Washington, DC. In this episode, Adrian dives into the intersections of government and technology. - listen here
Brex’s $5.15B Deal With Capital One Marks A New Era For Fintech

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, Los Angeles. 💳

The first big fintech plot twist of 2026 is here. Capital One is buying Brex in a cash and stock deal valued at about $5.15 billion, in what the companies are calling the largest bank - fintech deal in history.

From college dropouts to a multibillion exit

Brex launched in 2017, when Brazilian founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, then in their early 20s after dropping out of Stanford, set out to fix the “startup card” problem. That project turned into an AI-native finance platform that now serves tens of thousands of companies, from early-stage startups to hundreds of public enterprises.

A few years into that journey, both founders moved to Los Angeles and continued running Brex from here as the company embraced a fully remote model. Now that same LA-based duo is steering a multibillion-dollar acquisition that will plug their software directly into one of the biggest banks in the country. Pedro will stay on as CEO of Brex inside Capital One, with the brand and product continuing rather than disappearing into a rebrand.

Why this looks like a win

“Big bank buys fintech” can sound like the end of the startup story, but here it reads more like an expansion pack. Capital One gets Brex’s cloud-based spend stack, AI-powered controls and roughly $13 billion in commercial deposits. Brex gets a massive balance sheet, a regulated rails partner and access to the mainstream business market it has been edging toward for years.

For founders and operators here, it is also quiet validation that building hard fintech infrastructure still pays off. Brex spent years doing the unglamorous work of licenses, compliance, underwriting and integrations. The outcome isn’t a hype cycle spike; it is a classic, real-money exit for a very modern stack.

What it signals for LA’s ecosystem

LA is not getting a new headquarters out of this. Brex has embraced a “no HQ” model. What the city does have is a pair of founders who chose to build their lives here and just proved that you can run a global finance platform from Los Angeles and end up selling it to a top-six U.S. bank.

It also fits a broader pattern our ecosystem is leaning into. Whether it is fintech, defense tech or climate, the most interesting LA stories right now are not about front-end apps. They are about deep, regulated infrastructure that incumbents eventually need more than startups need them.

For Brex, this is the start of a new chapter inside Capital One. For LA, it is one more data point that the city’s founders can build products the rest of the financial system has to buy.

Scroll on for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

      LA Companies


      • L-Nutra secured a new $36.5M investment from Mubadala, bringing its total Series D proceeds to $83.5M. The company, which develops longevity-focused and medical nutrition therapies, plans to use the funding to accelerate global expansion, advance clinical research, and scale adoption of its nutrition programs across healthcare providers and consumers. - learn more
      • RiskFront AI raised $3.3M in pre-seed funding to make financial crime and compliance work far less manual. The US-based startup uses “agentic AI” to automate time-consuming tasks like research, data analysis and documentation, with its Airos platform handling much of the day-to-day workload so human analysts can focus on higher-value judgment calls. The new capital will help expand engineering and product teams and deepen integrations with banks and fintechs already piloting the system. - learn more
      • Balance Homes relaunched with a $30M investment led by Falco Group to scale its equity-sharing model for homeowners who are “house rich but cash and credit constrained.” The company buys a co-ownership stake in a home to free up trapped equity so owners can pay down mortgages and high-interest debt while staying in their homes, instead of being forced to sell. After stabilizing its existing portfolio following EasyKnock’s shutdown, Balance Homes is now resuming originations in six states, with plans to expand as affordability and household debt pressures intensify. - learn more

              LA Venture Funds

              • Distributed Global co-led Superstate’s $82.5M Series B, backing the Robert Leshner - founded tokenization platform as it builds regulated, on-chain capital markets infrastructure. The round, alongside Bain Capital Crypto and other institutional investors, will help Superstate expand beyond its existing tokenized U.S. Treasury funds to a full issuance layer for SEC-registered equities on Ethereum and Solana. The company, which already manages over $1.1B in tokenized assets, plans to scale its Opening Bell platform and transfer agent stack so public companies can issue and manage compliant on-chain shares directly. - learn more
              • Krew Capital participated in GIGR (Playad.ai)’s $5.4M pre-seed round, backing the San Francisco based startup as it builds multi-agent AI workflows for marketing teams. GIGR’s Playad platform starts with interactive ads, using AI agents to help marketers create, test and iterate on playable and other ad formats much faster while turning performance data into continuous creative improvement. The new funding will support product development, expansion of its AI-native creative workflow and scaling to more customers looking to cut production costs and tighten the loop between ad performance and creative decisions. - learn more
              • Trousdale Ventures participated in AheadComputing’s additional $30M Seed2 round, backing the Portland-based chip startup as it reimagines CPU architecture for the AI era. AheadComputing is developing high-performance RISC-V based CPUs and breakthrough microarchitecture aimed at handling the growing wave of AI data center, workstation and embedded workloads where CPU performance has become a bottleneck. The new funding, which brings total capital raised to $53M, will support R&D, software innovation and test chip development as the company races to deliver next-generation general purpose processors. - learn more
              • Untapped Ventures participated in Nexxa.ai’s $9M seed round, backing the Sunnyvale-based startup as it scales specialized AI agents for heavy-industry workflows. Nexxa’s Nitro platform layers multi-agent automation on top of existing tools used in sectors like rail, construction, manufacturing and critical infrastructure, helping engineers plan and execute complex projects without ripping out legacy systems. The new funding brings Nexxa.ai’s total capital raised to $14M and will go toward expanding deployments, forward-deployed engineering teams and support for more industrial customers. - learn more
              • UP.Partners participated in Zanskar’s $115M Series C, backing the Salt Lake City based geothermal startup as it uses AI to uncover overlooked conventional geothermal resources across the Western U.S. The company has already validated several high-potential sites and plans to use the funding to expand its discovery platform and begin developing multiple greenfield power plants, with a goal of bringing significant new clean baseload capacity to the grid before 2030. - learn more
              • Smash Capital participated in Stream’s $90M Series D, backing the UK based workplace finance startup as it ramps expansion into the U.S. market. Formerly known as Wagestream, Stream partners with employers to offer workers tools like earned wage access, savings, budgeting and pensions in a single app, targeting financial stress for lower and middle income employees. The new funding, led by Sofina, brings total capital raised to about $228M and will help Stream scale its multi-product platform across more brands and workers globally. - learn more
              • Fika Ventures participated in Ivo’s $55M funding round, backing the San Francisco based legal AI startup alongside lead investor Blackbird and others. Ivo builds contract intelligence tools for in-house legal teams and enterprises, using a highly structured approach that breaks reviews into hundreds of smaller AI tasks to boost accuracy and reduce hallucinations. The new capital, which reportedly values the company at around $355M, will go toward accelerating product development and hiring more sales and go-to-market talent to meet growing demand. - learn more
              • Amplify.LA participated in Overworld’s latest funding round, backing the AI startup as it unveils a real-time diffusion world model for playable, AI-native worlds. Overworld’s system runs locally and generates persistent, interactive environments on the fly, aiming to become core infrastructure for next-generation games, simulations and creative tools built around world models rather than static assets. The new capital will support further development of its Waypoint 1 research preview and help the team expand its platform for researchers, engineers and builders working on interactive AI experiences. - learn more
              • Dangerous Ventures participated in Carbogenics’ $3M investment and grant funding round, backing the Edinburgh-based bio-carbon startup as it scales its carbon removal technology. Carbogenics turns difficult-to-recycle organic waste into CreChar, a biochar product that boosts biogas production, supports wastewater treatment and locks away carbon. The new funding will help the company expand manufacturing in the US, grow its centralized UK operations and deploy its biocarbon products across the UK, Europe and North America. - learn more

                    LA Exits

                    • Farcaster is being acquired by Neynar, the infrastructure company that already powers much of the Farcaster ecosystem, in a full-stack handoff from Merkle Manufactory. Neynar will assume control of the decentralized social protocol’s smart contracts, code repositories, official app and Clanker client, while Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan step back from day-to-day operations after five years. The deal keeps the network running without disruption and sets Neynar up to roll out a new, builder-focused roadmap for on-chain social. - learn more
                    • ScribbleVet has been acquired by Instinct Science, which is folding the veterinary AI-scribing startup into its Instinct EMR platform to create what it calls an “intelligent-native” practice management system. The combined offering aims to move traditional PIMS beyond record-keeping by embedding AI scribing, workflow automation and clinical decision support in one system, reducing documentation burden and helping veterinary teams focus more on patient care. ScribbleVet’s team is joining Instinct, with founder and CEO Rohan Relan taking on a key role leading product strategy for intelligence features across the platform. - learn more

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                                        JetZero Just Raised $175M to Rewrite How We Fly

                                        🔦 Spotlight

                                        Happy Friday, Los Angeles ✈️

                                        While everyone in tech is still busy arguing about the next AI model, one startup based out of Long Beach just raised a whole lot of money to change the shape of the airplane itself.

                                        Image Source: JetZero

                                        JetZero closed a $175 million Series B to build its blended wing body “all-wing” airliner, with B Capital leading the round alongside United Airlines Ventures, Northrop Grumman, 3M Ventures, Trucks VC and RTX Ventures. The company is working toward a full-scale Demonstrator aircraft that targets at least 30% better fuel efficiency than today’s tube-and-wing jets, with a first flight planned for 2027 and a commercial Z4 airliner to follow in the early 2030s.

                                        This is not a small bet. JetZero’s pitch is that airlines and regulators need a way to hit climate targets without waiting on sci-fi batteries or hydrogen infrastructure, and that a radically more efficient airframe is the most realistic path. It is also very much an LA story: deep aerospace talent, strategic money at the table, and a product that looks like a mashup of climate tech, defense tech and old-school manufacturing rather than another SaaS dashboard.

                                        There is still a long way to go. The next few years are about turning simulations and wind-tunnel charts into flight data, working with regulators and proving that a manta-ray-shaped jet can slot into a world built for Boeings and Airbuses. But if JetZero gets anywhere close, it will mean that one of the most ambitious hardware bets in commercial aviation is being engineered out of Long Beach.

                                        Scroll on for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.

                                        🤝 Venture Deals

                                            LA Companies


                                            • No Agent List secured $10M in private investment to launch its AI powered real estate platform ahead of a planned Spring 2026 debut. The Los Angeles based company aims to put “agent level” tools directly in the hands of buyers, sellers and vendors, offering direct access to off market properties, FSBOs, distressed assets, foreclosures, tax liens and auctions that have traditionally been gated by agents and insiders. The funding will support product development and rollout of the platform, which promises more control over transactions while using AI to surface opportunities and streamline the deal process. - learn more
                                            • Hadrian, the Los Angeles based advanced manufacturing startup, announced new capital led by accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates to accelerate its push to “reindustrialize” American manufacturing. The financing, which also includes Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, StepStone Group, 1789 Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, a16z, Construct Capital and others, values the company at $1.6B and will be used to expand its high-throughput factories, grow its workforce and deploy more AI, software and automation across its “factories-as-a-service” platform for aerospace, defense and critical infrastructure customers.- learn more

                                                  LA Venture Funds

                                                  • Blue Bear Capital joined Hydrosat’s $60M Series B, backing the thermal infrared satellite data company alongside lead investors Hartree Partners, Subutai Capital Partners and Space 4 Earth. The funding will help Hydrosat expand its constellation beyond its two current satellites, ramp global coverage and deepen its AI-powered “thermal intelligence” products for water resource management, agriculture, civil government and defense customers worldwide. - learn more
                                                  • Elysian Park Ventures led a $12M growth round for Diamond Kinetics, backing the Pittsburgh-based baseball tech company as it doubles down on youth development. The new capital will help Diamond Kinetics scale sidelineHD, its AI-powered youth baseball and softball live streaming and highlights platform, and expand its broader suite of training tools as MLB’s Trusted Youth Development Platform. - learn more
                                                  • MANTIS Ventures participated in Depthfirst’s $40M Series A round, backing the San Francisco based applied AI lab alongside lead investor Accel, Alt Capital, BoxGroup, Liquid 2 Ventures and SV Angel. Depthfirst is building an AI-native “General Security Intelligence” platform that uses autonomous agents to detect, triage and remediate software vulnerabilities across code and infrastructure, aiming to outpace a new wave of AI-powered cyberattacks. The fresh capital will fund R&D, go-to-market efforts and hiring as the company scales its security platform for enterprise customers. - learn more
                                                  • Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures participated in Vista AI’s $29.5M Series B, joining a slate of leading health systems backing the company’s automated MRI scanning software. The Palo Alto-based startup will use the funding to expand its FDA-cleared cardiac MRI platform to additional anatomies like brain, prostate and spine, and to roll out remote scanning services that let hospitals without in-house MRI expertise offer advanced imaging while easing backlogs and technologist shortages - learn more
                                                  • Fourward Ventures is leading a new strategic growth investment in Mermaid Gin, backing the Isle of Wight–based premium spirits brand as it accelerates expansion in the U.S. market. The round brings Fourward’s founder Will Ward onto the board as lead investor and is paired with a national distribution partnership with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, plus the appointment of longtime Moët Hennessy veteran Jim Clerkin as CEO for the U.S. push. The capital and partnership are aimed at scaling Mermaid Gin in the fast-growing U.S. super-premium gin segment while preserving its sustainability-focused, Isle of Wight roots. - learn more
                                                  • Hyperion Capital joined Haiqu’s $11M seed round, backing the quantum software startup alongside Primary Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund, Alumni Ventures, Qudit Ventures, Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Harlow Capital, Toyota Ventures and MaC Venture Capital. Haiqu is building a hardware-aware quantum operating system and middleware layer that boosts the performance of today’s noisy quantum hardware, with the new funding going toward productizing its platform and enabling near-term commercial use cases in areas like finance, cybersecurity and scientific computing. - learn more
                                                  • Sound Ventures led WitnessAI’s $58M strategic funding round, backing the Mountain View based AI security and governance platform alongside investors including Fin Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Forgepoint Capital Partners. The company will use the capital to accelerate global go-to-market efforts and expand its platform, which secures AI agents and models by monitoring agent activity, linking human and agent actions, and blocking prompt injection and other attacks in real time. WitnessAI also unveiled new agentic AI governance tools that give enterprises deeper observability and policy control as they scale AI agents across their operations. - learn more
                                                  • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Proxima’s oversubscribed $80M seed financing, backing the newly rebranded AI-native biotech (formerly VantAI) alongside lead investor DCVC, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Braidwell, Roivant and others. Proxima is building a generative AI driven platform for “proximity-based medicines” that modulate protein protein interactions, including molecular glues and PROTACs, to go after historically undruggable targets in oncology, immunology and beyond. The new capital will accelerate its NeoLink structural proteomics and Neo AI model stack, and advance a pipeline of first-in-class proximity-modulating therapeutics toward the clinic. - learn more
                                                  • Clocktower Technology Ventures participated in WeatherPromise’s oversubscribed $12.8M Series A, backing the weather-guarantee startup alongside lead investor Maveron, 1Sharpe, Lerer Hippeau, Commerce Ventures, MS Transverse, Start Ventures, 1Flourish and others. WeatherPromise partners with major travel brands like Marriott, Expedia and JetBlue to offer “weather guarantees” that automatically refund trips when conditions are worse than promised, driving demand for travel, events and outdoor experiences. The new capital will accelerate product development, expand strategic partnerships and scale the platform across more consumer categories. - learn more
                                                  • MANTIS Ventures participated in Sandstone’s $10M seed round, backing the AI-native legal tech startup alongside lead investor Sequoia Capital and others. Sandstone is building an operating system for in-house legal teams that uses AI agents to route requests, draft and review contracts, and surface answers directly inside tools like email, Slack and Salesforce, turning institutional legal knowledge into reusable workflows. The new capital will help the Brooklyn-based company scale its product and grow its customer base of corporate legal departments. - learn more
                                                  • Strong Ventures participated in Hupo’s $10M Series A round, backing the Singapore-based AI sales coaching startup alongside lead investor DST Global Partners, Collaborative Fund, January Capital and Goodwater Capital. Hupo’s platform uses AI to coach frontline banking, insurance and financial services sales teams in real time, helping them ramp faster and close more deals across highly regulated markets in APAC and Europe. The new funding will support product development, expansion of its coaching features and scaling enterprise deployments as the company eyes broader international growth. - learn more
                                                  • Freeflow Ventures joined Vivere Oncotherapies’ more than $10M funding round, backing the UC Berkeley spinout alongside YK Bioventures, Pillar, Berkeley Frontier Fund and the National Cancer Institute. Vivere is developing targeted immunotherapies for “cold” solid tumors like colorectal and ovarian cancers, aiming to activate the immune system against tumors that typically evade detection and resist existing treatments. The new capital will support advancement of its proprietary bioengineering platform and pipeline of therapies for patients with few effective options today. - learn more
                                                  • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Precede Biosciences’ $63.5M Series B equity round, part of an $83.5M total financing package that also includes a $20M strategic, non-dilutive credit facility. The Boston based precision diagnostics and data company is scaling its blood-based platform, which measures target expression and pathway activity to support next-generation cancer therapies like drug, radio and immune conjugates. The new capital will help Precede meet growing demand from biopharma partners developing these precision medicines and accelerate commercialization and health system adoption. - learn more
                                                  • Alexandria Venture Investments participated in Recludix Pharma’s new equity financing round alongside Access Biotechnology, NEA and Westlake BioPartners, with additional strategic investment from Eli Lilly. The San Diego based, clinical-stage biotech will use the $123M in total equity raised to advance clinical development of its novel SH2 domain inhibitor pipeline for inflammatory diseases and to tap Lilly’s TuneLab AI/ML platform to accelerate discovery across its broader SH2 domain program. - learn more
                                                  • BOLD Capital Partners participated in MagicCube’s $10M funding round, backing the Cupertino-based software security company alongside strategic investor Verifone and other existing backers. MagicCube plans to use the capital to expand beyond its core tap-to-phone payments offering into biometrics, identity verification and AI-driven device security, while scaling its Software Defined Trust platform that delivers hardware-grade protection through software on standard mobile and IoT devices.- learn more

                                                        LA Exits

                                                        • Webalo is being acquired by Prometheus Group, which is folding the Los Angeles based “no-code for the frontline” platform into its enterprise asset management software suite. The deal will combine Webalo’s mobile, real-time workflows for frontline workers with Prometheus Group’s planning and scheduling tools, aiming to create a closed-loop digital execution platform that connects shopfloor actions directly back into systems of record like SAP and Oracle. - learn more

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                                                                            Inside Tinder’s 380-Matches-Per-Second Sunday

                                                                            🔦 Spotlight

                                                                            Happy New Year, Los Angeles. 💘

                                                                            If you want a clear read on how people actually behave when the calendar flips, you do not need a survey. You need Tinder’s Dating Sunday data. The numbers below are from January 2025, compared with 2024, and they show a pattern the app sees every year when millions of people log in and take their love life off pause.

                                                                            🔥 Tinder’s Annual Traffic Spike, By The Numbers

                                                                            On Dating Sunday, the first Sunday of the year, Tinder hit its biggest activity spike on the calendar. Compared with the app’s typical daily averages for that year, and trends versus the prior year:

                                                                            📈 Swipes were nearly 13% higher

                                                                            💬 Messages were nearly 10% higher

                                                                            ❤️ Likes were over 10% higher

                                                                            🗣️ Users had almost 7% more conversations

                                                                            🤝 Matches climbed to about 380 matches per second, roughly a 10% lift compared to the rest of the year

                                                                            Across Peak Season, from January 1 through February 14, Tinder saw on the order of 10 million more messages per day and roughly 40 million additional likes than its non peak baseline.

                                                                            The figures are from last January, but the shape of this curve is remarkably consistent year after year, which is why they are a solid proxy for what is happening again at the start of 2026.

                                                                            ⚡ Not Just More Use, Different Use

                                                                            What makes the Dating Sunday data more interesting than a simple “usage went up” story is how behavior shifted compared with the same day the year before.

                                                                            Users replied about 2 hours and 25 minutes faster on average while also sending more messages, more likes and starting more conversations. That looks less like background swiping and more like a concentrated intent spike, people coming back to the app with a clear goal and actually engaging.

                                                                            From a product and infrastructure perspective, that turns this one Sunday into a full stack exercise. Ranking, recommendations, notifications, trust and safety and core scale all get hammered at once, with high signal data flooding the system over a short window. Most apps only see that kind of behavior during a one off viral moment or a big launch. Tinder sees it every January.

                                                                            📊 What The Surge Actually Signals

                                                                            There is plenty of talk about people being tired of apps. The behavior here tells a more nuanced story.

                                                                            When the calendar flipped last year, people reopened Tinder, used it more, started more conversations and replied faster than they had the year before. That does not look like a category that has lost its grip on users. It looks like a mature consumer network that can still generate predictable, measurable spikes of attention and intent on cue.

                                                                            If those patterns hold, the first few weeks of 2026 once again look less like a slow reset and more like a live load test for an LA built product at global scale.

                                                                            Now keep scrolling for this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.

                                                                            🤝 Venture Deals

                                                                                LA Companies

                                                                                • Cambium, an El Segundo based advanced materials startup, raised a $100M Series B led by 8VC. The company uses AI, chemical informatics and high-performance computing to design new polymers and composites for defense, aerospace and other high-performance sectors, and will use the funding to accelerate its product pipeline and scale manufacturing capacity across the U.S. and Europe following its acquisition of SHD. - learn more

                                                                                      LA Venture Funds

                                                                                      • Plus Capital joined Pomelo Care’s $92M Series C, backing the New York based virtual care company at a $1.7B valuation alongside lead investor Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Atomico, BoxGroup and SV Angel. Pomelo, which already covers about 25 million lives and nearly 7% of U.S. births, will use the funding to take its proven, outcomes-driven maternity model and expand it across women’s and children’s health more broadly, from reproductive care and pediatrics through hormonal health, perimenopause and menopause. - learn more
                                                                                      • Kittyhawk Frontier is leading a $2M seed round in Denver based encoord, joining new and existing investors to back the company’s grid-planning software platform. encoord’s flagship product, SAInt, is designed to give utilities, developers, data centers and grid operators an integrated financial and operational view of the power system, helping cut interconnection timelines by up to five years and optimize capital planning. The new capital will go toward expanding the team, advancing the platform and scaling into key markets as demand for smarter, electrification-ready grid planning tools accelerates. - learn more
                                                                                      • Alexandria Real Estate Equities participated in Mediar Therapeutics’ oversubscribed $76M Series B, joining new investors like Longwood Fund and Asahi Kasei Pharma Ventures in a round co-led by Amplitude Ventures and ICG. The Boston-based biotech will use the funding to advance its first-in-class fibrosis portfolio, including MTX-474, now in a global Phase 2a trial for systemic sclerosis, and MTX-439, which is moving into Phase 1 studies for fibrosis associated with chronic kidney disease, alongside its partnered MTX-463 program with Eli Lilly. - learn more
                                                                                      • GordonMD Global Investments joined Soley Therapeutics’ $200M Series C, backing the South San Francisco based biotech as it advances its AI-enabled cell stress sensing platform and oncology pipeline. The round, led by Surveyor Capital with participation from new and existing investors, will fund IND-enabling work and early clinical trials for Soley’s lead acute myeloid leukemia (AML) program and a second solid-tumor asset, while also expanding non-oncology programs in neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases and scaling the platform. - learn more

                                                                                          LA Exits

                                                                                          • CareRev is being acquired by IntelyCare, which is combining its post-acute healthcare staffing platform with CareRev’s on-demand workforce marketplace for acute care. The deal creates one of the more comprehensive clinical labor platforms in the market, spanning clinician-facing job boards, internal resource pool tools, contingent labor and recruiter solutions to help health systems manage permanent and flexible staff in one place. Both brands will continue operating under their existing names while integrating offerings for hospitals, health systems and clinicians. - learn more

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