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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CHAOS in the Skies, Valar in the Core and Robotaxis on the 405

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Hello LA!

If you are reading this while watching the clouds stack up over the city, you are not wrong. The forecast is calling for heavy rain and possible flooding through Sunday, so consider this your permission slip to cancel a few plans, stay dry and catch up on what the hard-tech crowd has been building this week.

Let us start with the least subtle name in local defense tech. CHAOS Industries just closed a $510 million dollar round led by Valor Equity Partners, valuing the company at $4.5 billion dollars and pushing its total funding past the $1 billion dollar mark in under three years. The company builds Coherent Distributed Networks radar, essentially a mesh of smaller, lower cost sensors that can pick up drones and other low flying threats minutes earlier than legacy radar systems, a gap that has become painfully obvious on modern battlefields. The new capital is going toward product development and manufacturing so militaries and border agencies can actually field these systems at scale rather than treating them as one-off experiments.

What makes CHAOS interesting is not just the size of the round but the architecture choice. Instead of a single massive radar on a hill, they are betting on distributed, software first networks that can be upgraded, repositioned and re-tasked as threats change. It is a very cloud-era way of thinking about defense hardware, and it is pulling engineers from a mix of aerospace, gaming and traditional software backgrounds into a category that used to be the domain of slow, closed incumbents.

Image Source: Valar Atomics

If CHAOS is focused on keeping the skies manageable, Valar Atomics wants to keep the lights on for everything that needs compute. The Hawthorne based nuclear startup raised $130 million dollars in Series A funding led by Snowpoint Ventures, with participation from Crosscut Ventures and a roster of deep tech backers that includes Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. Valar is building compact, high temperature gas reactors that use TRISO fuel and helium coolant, designed for strong safety characteristics and very high operating temperatures.

Instead of a single gigantic nuclear plant, Valar’s plan is to mass produce one standardized reactor design and cluster hundreds of them on “gigasites” that sit directly behind the meter for big energy users. Think hydrogen production, AI data centers, heavy industry and synthetic fuel plants, not just electrons on the grid. Construction is already underway on a first test reactor in Utah, targeted for completion in 2026, and the company is positioning itself as part of a new wave of nuclear companies that treat reactors as a product you replicate, not a megaproject you tolerate.

Image Source: Waymo

On the consumer side, your weekend mobility options are getting an upgrade too, weather permitting. Waymo has begun routing paid robotaxi rides onto freeways in Los Angeles, alongside San Francisco and Phoenix, after years of staying mostly on surface streets. The company says freeway segments can cut some trip times by as much as half, making a driverless ride to LAX or a cross town trek on the 405 feel less like a novelty and more like a practical option. Regulators and human drivers now have to figure out what it means to share the fast lane with cars that never get tired and never text at red lights.

Image Source: Apple

Apple is also coming for the least fun part of any LA trip: the airport ID check. The new Digital ID feature lets you create a passport based identity inside Apple Wallet that TSA will accept at more than 250 airports for domestic travel, including LAX. You scan your passport, verify with Face ID and then present your Digital ID at TSA checkpoints using your iPhone or Apple Watch without handing over your device. It will not replace a physical passport for international flights, but it does mean boarding passes, credit cards and ID can all live in the same tap-to-go flow the next time you sprint to Terminal 4.

Between radar that sees drones earlier, reactors that promise industrial scale clean power and robotaxis that hop on the freeway, a lot of the future is quietly being wired in while you hunt for an umbrella. Stay safe, stay dry this weekend and keep scrolling for this week’s venture rounds, fund announcements and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Skims has raised $225M in new funding at a $5B valuation, in a round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives with participation from BDT & MSD Partners. The company plans to use the capital to accelerate its shift toward brick-and-mortar retail and international expansion, while continuing to invest in product innovation across intimates, shapewear, apparel, and activewear, including its new NikeSKIMS collaboration; Skims is on track to surpass $1B in net sales in 2025, just six years after launch. - learn more

Neros has raised $75M in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Vy Capital US and Interlagos, bringing its total funding to over $120M. The El Segundo based defense drone startup will use the capital to massively scale production of its Archer and Archer Strike FPV drone platforms and ground control systems, expand industrial capacity, and deepen a China-free, allied supply chain. The raise coincides with Neros being selected as one of the primary FPV drone suppliers for the U.S. Army’s Purpose-Built Attritable Systems program, following a major Marine Corps drone order. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

BAM Ventures joined Exowatt’s new $50M financing round, backing the Miami based company’s push to deliver dispatchable, American made solar power to AI data centers and other energy hungry industrial sites. The round, an extension of Exowatt’s $70M Series A led by MVP Ventures and 8090 Industries, brings the company’s total funding to $140M in under two years. Exowatt will use the capital to expand U.S. manufacturing and scale deployments of its modular P3 system, which stores solar energy as heat and converts it to electricity on demand to provide round the clock, grid independent power. - learn more

WndrCo joined the $145M Series B round for Alembic, the AI marketing analytics startup it first backed in early 2024, as the company’s valuation jumped to $645M. The round was led by Prysm Capital and Accenture and will help Alembic scale its platform, which uses AI to link brand marketing across channels like TV, podcasts and social media to real sales outcomes. Alembic also plans to use part of the funding to build a new Nvidia powered supercomputing cluster in San Jose to support growing demand from enterprise customers. - learn more

Magnify Ventures joined Joy’s $14M Series A round, backing the San Francisco based startup’s push to build an AI powered parenting platform that blends machine intelligence with real human experts. Co-led by Forerunner and Raga Partners, the funding coincides with the launch of the Joy Parenting Club app, which gives new parents and parents of toddlers 24/7 access to certified coaches plus AI driven guidance, milestone tracking and personalized product recommendations. Joy plans to use the capital to further develop its AI model, expand partnerships with baby and parenting brands, and grow its expert network to support families through more stages of childhood. - learn more

Overture VC, via its climate focused Overture Climate fund, reupped in Harbinger’s $160M Series C round as the medium duty electric and hybrid truck maker continues to scale its U.S. built EV platform. The round was co led by FedEx, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, and THOR Industries, and includes existing backers like Tiger Global, Ridgeline, Maniv Mobility, Schematic Ventures, Ironspring Ventures, ArcTern Ventures, Litquidity Ventures, and The Coca Cola System Sustainability Fund. Harbinger will use the capital to ramp production of its electric stripped chassis platform and fulfill an initial FedEx order for 53 Class 5 and 6 trucks, supporting large fleet electrification and last mile delivery use cases. - learn more

Sound Ventures joined the $60M Series B round for GC AI, an AI platform built for in-house legal teams, alongside lead investors Scale Venture Partners and Northzone. The new funding values the San Francisco based startup at $555M and brings its total capital raised to $73M. GC AI will use the money to accelerate product development and deepen its integrations and AI agents, building on rapid growth to more than 1,000 customers, $10M in ARR, and 1.75 million legal prompts processed in under a year. - learn more

Fulcrum Venture Group doubled down on its backing of Code Metal, joining the startup’s $36.5M Series A to support its push to bring verifiable AI powered code translation to mission critical industries. Led by Accel at a $250M valuation, the round also brought in RTX Ventures, Bosch Ventures, Smith Point Capital, Overmatch VC, AE Ventures, Shield Capital, J2 Ventures, and several strategic angels. Code Metal will use the capital to expand its platform across defense, automotive, and semiconductor customers, promising formally verified, regulation-ready code that can be ported between chips and modernized much faster than traditional methods. - learn more

MarcyPen Capital Partners led Rebel’s $25M oversubscribed Series B to scale the company’s returns recommerce marketplace, which helps retailers resell open box and overstock goods instead of sending them to landfills. The new capital will fund expansion into outdoor and sporting goods categories with existing retail partners and support broader growth of Rebel’s tech platform, which processes and resells returned products at up to 70 percent off retail while tackling the trillion dollar returns problem. - learn more

Halogen Ventures joined Auditocity’s $2M seed round alongside Techstars, Innovate Alabama, and several angel investors to help scale the company’s AI driven HR compliance auditing platform. The Alabama based startup plans to use the capital to expand nationally and deepen its intelligent automation tools so HR teams can spot compliance risks in real time and resolve issues before they become costly problems. - learn more

Upfront Ventures joined Majestic Labs’ more than $100M financing as the AI infrastructure startup emerged from stealth with a new memory centric server architecture. Founded by ex Google and Meta executives, the company claims its all in one servers deliver up to 1000 times the memory capacity of top tier GPU systems, effectively replacing multiple racks with a single box for the largest AI workloads. Majestic will use the capital to grow its team, finish its full software stack, and run pilot deployments with customers looking to cut power use and costs while training massive models. - learn more

Alexandria Venture Investments and Freeflow Ventures joined an oversubscribed round of more than $100M for Iambic, a San Diego based biotech using an AI driven discovery platform to develop new cancer therapies. The clinical stage company will use the fresh capital to expand its operations and advance a pipeline that includes IAM1363, a HER2 targeted candidate that has already shown early anti tumor activity, as well as additional AI designed programs and pharma partnerships. - learn more

EGB Capital joined Extellis’ $6.8M oversubscribed seed round, backing the Durham based startup’s push to deliver reliable, all weather satellite imagery at industrial scale. Led by Oval Park Capital with participation from Duke Capital Partners, First Star Ventures, New Industry Ventures, Front Porch Venture Partners, and Blue Lake VC, the funding will support Extellis’ first satellite launch and initial product rollout. - learn more

Core Innovation Capital joined Arrived’s $27M Series B style funding round, backing the Seattle startup’s push to make fractional real estate investing feel more like buying stocks. Led by Neo with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and other investors, the new capital will help Arrived scale its “stock market for real estate” platform and recently launched Secondary Market, which lets investors buy and sell shares of individual rental homes across the U.S. with just a few clicks. - learn more

Strong Ventures participated in a new pre Series A round for Provotive, the company behind AI packaging design platform Packative. The round was led by Japanese VC firm Miraise, with Korean fund VNTG and a Japan based strategic CVC also joining. Provotive plans to use the capital to expand its AI driven packaging services across Japan, Korea, and the broader Asian market, helping brands quickly generate localized, customized packaging at scale. - learn more

LA Exits

Nativo is being acquired by family safety and location app Life360 in a cash and stock deal valued at about $120M. The acquisition folds Nativo’s native ad platform, programmatic tools, and publisher network into Life360’s advertising business so brands can reach families both inside the Life360 app and across CTV, mobile, and premium web environments. The companies say the combined platform will offer a full funnel, privacy minded, “family safe” ad solution and expect the deal to close in January 2026, pending customary approvals. - learn more

RealtyMogul, an online real estate crowdfunding and investment platform, has been acquired from its venture backers by The Wideman Company, a cash flow focused, high touch real estate investment firm. The deal gives RealtyMogul a long term owner while keeping its brand and digital marketplace intact, supporting a member base that has invested more than $1.2B of equity into properties valued above $8B. The Wideman Company says the acquisition will bring additional capital and strategic support to expand RealtyMogul’s offerings and deal flow for individual investors and real estate sponsors. - learn more

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Swipe Less, Know More, Build Faster: LA’s AI Push

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday LA!

This week was about AI moving from side feature to core product strategy. Tinder is testing an opt-in “Chemistry” flow that learns your interests with permission, including signals from your camera roll, to propose fewer, higher quality matches. Snap is wiring Perplexity’s conversational, source linked answers directly into Snapchat. And Rivian spun out Mind Robotics to take the industrial AI it built for its own lines to a broader market.

Tinder Bets on AI for Quality Over Quantity

Tinder is piloting Chemistry, an opt-in experience that starts with a short Q&A and, with permission, analyzes cues from your camera roll to build a richer picture of what you like. The aim is to cut through swipe fatigue by presenting a smaller set of high intent matches each day, first in New Zealand and Australia, as part of Match Group’s larger 2026 product overhaul. The pitch is relevance and control, with phased rollout and consent front and center; if engagement lifts, expect tighter loops between real world signals and match recommendations.

Snap Brings Perplexity Answers into Snapchat

Snap struck a deal with Perplexity to deliver conversational, source linked results inside Snapchat starting in early 2026, backed by a one year cash and equity package reportedly worth about 400 million dollars. Ask a question where you already spend time and get a cited answer without hopping to a mobile browser, with Snap emphasizing that Snapchat data will not train Perplexity’s models. The announcement landed alongside improving fundamentals, signaling Snap’s plan to make trustworthy answers feel native to social habits rather than a separate destination.

Rivian Spins Out Mind Robotics

Rivian formed Mind Robotics to productize the software and systems that coordinate its own manufacturing, raising roughly 110 to 115 million dollars led by Eclipse. The goal is to sell factory floor intelligence beyond vehicles, including adaptive quality control, smarter material handling, and autonomous workflows that reduce downtime. With Rivian’s headquarters in Irvine and a growing regional robotics talent base, this puts Southern California on the map for next generation industrial automation tied to the EV supply chain.

Bottom line

LA’s tech scene is pushing AI toward measurable outcomes: better match quality, faster answers with clear citations, and more efficient production. Keep an eye on the unsexy details, including privacy choices and user consent, data boundaries between partners, and how each team turns these features into monetization. That is where this week’s announcements will turn into lasting advantage.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Evotrex exited stealth with a $16M Pre-A round led by Xstar Capital, with Unity Ventures, Kylinhall Partners, Vision Plus Capital, and founders of Anker Innovations participating; the capital will expand engineering and speed commercialization of its first product. The California startup plans to debut what it calls the world’s first power-generating RV trailer at CES 2026, designed to provide off-grid power and help extend EV range while towing. - learn more

Zest AI, which provides AI-driven credit underwriting and lending intelligence for banks and credit unions, closed an oversubscribed, customer-led financing round from SchoolsFirst, Members 1st, ORNL, and Truliant credit unions, with participation from Citi Ventures. The company says the round came at a higher valuation than its prior growth raise and will fund more automation across the borrower journey and a broader rollout of LuLu, its generative AI lending-intelligence platform. - learn more

Estate Media, the social first real estate media startup co-founded by “Million Dollar Listing” star Josh Flagg, says it has surpassed $6M in revenue and closed a $1M seed round, bringing total funding to $2.65M. New investors include Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and real estate and media figures such as Samir Mezrahi (“Zillow Gone Wild”), Tracy Tutor, and Hudson Advisory, which the company says positions it for profitability and further growth. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

Cedars Sinai Ventures joined Amae Health’s $25M Series B, led by Altos Ventures with participation from Quiet Capital, Bling Capital, Healthier Capital, and 8VC. The company, which is building an AI enabled clinic model for severe mental illness, says the funding will accelerate nationwide clinic openings, advance its AI care platform, and support research into conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and treatment resistant depression. Total funding now tops $50 million. - learn more

Magnify Ventures participated in MiSalud Health’s new funding round led by IGNIA, alongside Ulu Ventures, Redwood Ventures, Amplifica Capital, and client investor Taylor Farms. MiSalud, which delivers bilingual virtual and on-site care for blue-collar workforces, says the capital will help it expand into 20 new states and add services typically offered only in person; reports peg total funding at about $18.3 million. - learn more

Alexandria Venture Investments participated in Accipiter Biosciences’ $12.7M seed round, which was co-led by Takeda and Flying Fish Partners. The Seattle startup is developing AI-designed de novo protein therapeutics that can combine multiple mechanisms in a single molecule, and it also announced partnerships with Pfizer and Kite Pharma alongside the financing. The company says the funds will advance preclinical programs in immunology and oncology and further build out its computational design platform. - learn more

Rebel Fund participated in Cactus’s $7M seed round alongside Wellington Management, Y Combinator, and Pelion Venture Partners. Cactus builds a 24/7 AI copilot for home service businesses that answers calls, qualifies leads, books jobs, and manages follow ups to capture after hours demand. The company says the funding will support product expansion and go to market growth in the United States. - learn more

B Capital joined the angel round for Microtide Biotechnology (also known as Weitao Bio), which raised over RMB 100 million, led by Qiming Venture Partners. The Shanghai company, spun out from Sile Biomedicine’s in vivo CAR T platform, is developing targeted LNP delivered in vivo CAR T therapies for blood cancers and autoimmune diseases, and will use the funds to advance its first candidate and further develop its core platform. - learn more

Patron co led Flint’s $15M Series A, with participation from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering alongside Basis Set Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Afore Capital, and Y Combinator. Flint builds an AI platform that helps teachers personalize K 12 learning, and the company says the funding will accelerate product development and scale the service to more schools. - learn more

Rebel Fund participated in Freya’s $3.5M round alongside Y Combinator, 212 VC, N1 Tech, BD Partners, and others. Freya is building voice automation tools that let companies create and manage natural language voice workflows, aiming to replace brittle IVR systems with more flexible, AI powered voice agents. The company says the funding will accelerate product development and early go to market efforts. - learn more

Regeneration.VC led Hullbot’s roughly $10.6M Series A, with participation from Climate Tech Partners, Katapult Ocean, Folklore, Trinity Ventures, Rypples, NewSouth Innovations, and Bandera Capital. The Australian startup builds autonomous hull-cleaning robots that remove biofouling to cut ship fuel use and emissions, and it plans to use the funding to ramp manufacturing, expand global service hubs, and develop larger robotic platforms. - learn more

M13 led Teleskope’s $25M Series A, with continued participation from Primary Venture Partners and Lerer Hippeau. Teleskope builds an agentic data security platform for the AI era, and says the capital brings total funding to $32.2M to accelerate product development and scale go to market. - learn more

SmartGateVC participated in Coherence Neuro’s $10M seed round led by Topology Ventures and Artesian, alongside Blackbird, Possible Ventures, XEIA, Jumpspace, Divergent, Spacewalk VC, and others. San Francisco based Coherence Neuro is developing a closed-loop, bi-directional neurotechnology platform to treat cancers like glioblastoma by decoding and modulating electrical signals; the funding will support its first human trials and further product development. - learn more

Rebel Fund participated in Mecha Health’s $4.1M seed round led by Valia Ventures, alongside Y Combinator, Reach Capital, and Phosphor Capital. Mecha Health is an applied AI lab that builds foundation models for radiology which read medical images and generate fully structured reports, and the new capital supports continued development and deployment of these systems. - learn more

LA Exits

Green Econome was acquired by VCA Green, the sustainability practice of VCA Consultants. The Los Angeles firm is known for lifecycle strategies, building performance reporting, and compliance services like ENERGY STAR, LEED, CALGreen, and Title 24; combining it with VCA Green’s energy modeling, project management, and field verification creates a single team serving both new construction and existing buildings. Marika Erdely, Green Econome’s founder, is joining VCA Green as a principal. - learn more

InData Consulting was acquired by The 20 MSP as part of a three-company deal that also included Red Level Group and iStreet Solutions. The additions expand The 20 MSP’s footprint in California, Arizona, Michigan, and the Sacramento area, bringing its total to 44 acquisitions in about three years. The company says it sources targets from its peer group to speed integrations and reduce attrition. - learn more

Caulipower was acquired by Urban Farmer, a Paine Schwartz Partners portfolio company, creating a vertically integrated “better for you” frozen foods platform that pairs Urban Farmer’s manufacturing with Caulipower’s nationwide brand and distribution. Caulipower will continue operating under its name, with founder Gail Becker joining Urban Farmer’s board; financial terms were not disclosed. - learn more

StudyOS was acquired by Sitero, a technology-enabled CRO, which simultaneously launched SiteroAI to position itself as the industry’s first fully AI-powered CRO. StudyOS’s Ash clinical-trial agent will be integrated with Sitero’s Mentor eClinical suite, with Sitero projecting 20–30% efficiency gains across the trial lifecycle beginning in 2026; terms were not disclosed. - learn more

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Cap Tables to Costumes: Whatnot’s Mega Round and Your LA Weekend Plan 🎃

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday Los Angeles!

Live shopping’s LA moment

Whatnot, the LA born marketplace for live auctions, raised $225 million at an $11.5 billion valuation. The round was co led by DST Global and CapitalG, with Sequoia, Alkeon, a16z, Greycroft, BOND, and others participating. The company says the money goes to international expansion, trust and safety, and seller tools - fuel for a category that has moved from “Is this a fad?” to “How big does this get in the West?”

Why it matters

If that valuation sounds sudden, you’re not imagining it. Whatnot’s last raise in January valued the company around $5 billion. Less than 10 months later, the number has more than doubled, tracking a year of surging GMV and a social commerce flywheel spinning across TikTok Shop, YouTube, and Amazon. For LA, it’s a marquee bet on the creator commerce stack we do best: community, content, and culture that converts

The bigger picture

The implications go well beyond trading cards. Live, personality led storefronts are evolving from hobby to underwritable small business. If Whatnot uses this cash to keep fraud low and throughput high, we could see an LA export take root globally, not just as an app category but as a job category. That is a storyline to watch into Q4 and beyond.

From cap tables to costumes: Halloween in LA 🎃

You’ve earned some offline fun. Heading into Halloween weekend (Oct. 31–Nov. 2), LAist’s guide has a little of everything: neighborhood Día de los Muertos celebrations (from the Canoga Park family festival to an ofrenda for pets at Annenberg PetSpace in Playa Vista), the Frogtown Arts weekend along the LA River, plus plenty of screenings and concerts across town. Bookmark the list, pick your neighborhood, and maybe swap “add to cart” for “add to calendar.”

Send tips, sightings, and spooky term sheets our way. Venture deals for LA companies, funds, and acquisitions are below.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Bryan Johnson’s longevity startup Blueprint raised $60M from a celebrity heavy group of backers including Kim Kardashian, Naval Ravikant, Alex Hormozi, Ari Emanuel, and the Winklevoss twins to turn Johnson’s personal Blueprint regimen into a broader consumer platform. The company says the funding will help package diagnostics, biomarker tracking, prescriptions, nutrition, and other longevity services into an accessible offering. The round underscores mainstream interest in data driven wellness despite past questions about Blueprint’s trajectory. - learn more

Rarity PBC raised $4.6M in seed financing to advance a one-time, autologous blood-stem-cell gene therapy for ADA-SCID (“bubble baby” disease) that it has licensed from UCLA researcher Dr. Donald Kohn. The round, led by biotech investor Steve Oliveira (Nemean Asset Management), will support manufacturing and steps toward commercial readiness. - learn more

Fruitist raised $150M led by a vehicle managed by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with participation from Aliment Capital and Ray Dalio’s family office. The LA-based superfruit brand says the funding will fuel crop expansion, cold storage, and automation as it scales distribution to 12,500+ stores and targets continued growth following roughly $400M in trailing sales. - learn more

Homecourt, the Los Angeles based luxury home and personal fragrance brand founded by Courteney Cox, raised an $8M Series A led by CULT Capital. The company says the funding will fuel brand marketing, team hires, and infrastructure as it expands beyond DTC into 300+ retail doors including Nordstrom, Bluemercury, and Revolve. Homecourt has broadened from home care into body and laundry collections since launching in 2022. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

Aliavia Ventures participated in Human Health’s $8.5M raise, joining LocalGlobe, Airtree, Skip Capital and Scale Investors to back the precision health platform from former Canva product leaders Georgia Vidler and Kate Lambridis. The funding will support international expansion, deepen product intelligence in areas like women’s health, respiratory and pain, and scale Human Evidence for patient driven research; Human Health reports more than 200,000 users and 20 million logged health actions to date. - learn more

Riot Ventures participated in EnduroSat’s $104M funding round, alongside Google Ventures, Lux Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, and Shrug Capital. The Sofia based satellite manufacturer says the capital will scale production of its ESPA class (200 to 500 kg) modular satellite buses, targeting capacity of up to two satellites per day at a new 188,340 square foot Space Center so constellation customers can get to orbit faster. The raise is EnduroSat’s second this year and follows a €43 million round in May. - learn more

Rocana Venture Partners participated in Recess’s $30M Series B, which was led by CAVU Consumer Partners and included Midnight Ventures, Torch Capital, Doehler Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Vanquish, and Craig Kallman. The relaxation-beverage company will use the capital to grow its team, expand retail distribution, and ramp marketing, and it also named former Nutrabolt executive Kyle Thomas as President and Co-CEO to help scale the brand. Recess says it now sells in more than 15,000 U.S. stores, positioning it to capitalize on demand for functional relaxation and alcohol-alternative drinks. - learn more

Terasaki Institute participated in iOrganBio’s $2M launch financing, joining First Star Ventures (lead), IndieBio, Cape Fear BioCapital, 2ndF, and Alix Ventures. The Chapel Hill based startup unveiled CellForge, an AI powered cell-manufacturing platform that pairs predictive models with high throughput control to engineer reproducible human cells and organoids for drug discovery and cell therapies. The funds support product development and early deployments. - learn more

Fox Sports made a strategic investment in Shadow Lion, the creative agency and IP studio co-founded by Tom Brady, forming a partnership to develop talent-led originals, digital content, long-form projects, and marquee live events. The deal includes a new Los Angeles hub for Shadow Lion on the Fox lot, with early tentpoles including a University of Michigan football docuseries from executive producers Brady and Jim Harbaugh and collaboration on the Fanatics Flag Football Classic. - learn more

EB Medical Research Foundation participated in Eliksa Therapeutics’ funding to advance ELK-003, a biological eye drop for ocular complications in epidermolysis bullosa. The round, led by DEBRA Research with support from Cure EB, the Abe Fund, and EB Research Partnership, backs an ongoing pilot study with 18 patients enrolled and no drug-related side effects reported among the first eight who completed treatment. - learn more

Patron and HartBeat Ventures participated in Sweatpals’ $12M seed round alongside a16z speedrun, backing the community fitness platform as it expands its “daylife” model of IRL wellness events. The funding will support product and market expansion for hosts and gyms using Sweatpals for discovery, ticketing, memberships, and marketing. Business Insider reports the startup now reaches over 1 million monthly users and is growing into new U.S. cities. - learn more

UP.Partners participated in Lula Commerce’s $8M Series A, led by SEMCAP AI with Rich Products Ventures, GO PA Fund, NZVC, Green Circle Foodtech Ventures, and Outlander VC also joining. The Philadelphia company, active with more than 2,000 retailers, offers an AI powered digital commerce suite for convenience stores covering order ahead, pickup, delivery, and back office tools, and says the round brings total funding to over $16M to meet rising demand. - learn more

Navitas Capital led WorkHero’s $5M seed to scale its AI powered back office platform for small HVAC contractors, with Workshop Ventures, York IE, and strategic angels also participating. WorkHero combines agentic AI with human account managers to handle invoicing, permits, rebates, warranty registrations, and pricebooks so owners spend less time on admin. The funding will expand engineering and product and add new services such as call answering and bookkeeping. - learn more

LA Exits

DMI was acquired by Stingray, adding about 8,500 U.S. retail locations to Stingray’s in-store audio advertising network and bringing its total footprint to roughly 33,500 sites. The deal cements Stingray’s leadership in pharmacy retail audio across the two largest chains and brings DMI’s creative services, including cinema advertising and brand marketing, under its umbrella, with CEO Tena Clark staying on to help integrate and expand the offering. - learn more

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