Design, Bitches
Looking to Build a Granny Flat in Your Backyard? Meet the Firms and Designs Pre-Approved in LA
Adding a backyard home in Los Angeles is now nearly as easy as buying a barbecue.
Homeowners who for years have wanted to build a granny flat in their backyard, but dreaded the red tape, can now choose from 20 pre-designed homes that the city has already approved for use.
The shift, made official last week, will speed up a weeks-long process and bring more badly needed units to an overpriced market. It also has the potential to elevate the 14 startups and firms building the next generation of homes.
The designs for the stand-alone residences range from a 200-square-foot studio to a 1,200-square foot, two-story, two-bedroom unit. And many of the homes are filled with design flourishes, reflecting the diverse architecture of the city, from a house in the silhouette of a flower to one with a spiral outdoor staircase leading to the roof.
It's no surprise. The program was spearheaded by Christopher Hawthorne, a former architecture critic at the Los Angeles Times and now the city's chief design officer.
The firms are primarily local and startup architecture and design firms, while others are well-known with a history of building granny flats, also know as accessory dwelling units, or ADUs.
The standard plans avoid the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety's typical four-to six-week review process and can allow approvals to be completed in as quickly as one day.
Some aspects of the plans can be modified to fit a homeowner's preferences. Eight other designs are pending approval.
Mayor Eric Garcetti believes by adding more such units, the city can diversify its housing supply and tackle the housing crisis. Recent state legislation made it easier to build the small homes on the lot of single-family residences. Since then, ADUs have made up nearly a quarter of Los Angeles' newly permitted housing units.
Because construction costs are relatively low for the granny flats – the pre-approved homes start at $144,000 and can go beyond $300,000 – the housing is generally more affordable. The median home price in L.A. County in January was $690,000.
Here's a quick look at the designs approved so far:
Abodu
Abodu
Abodu, based in Redwood City in the Bay Area, exclusively designs backyard homes. In 2019, it worked with the city of San Jose on a program similar to the one Los Angeles is undertaking.
In October, it closed a seed funding round of $3.5 million led by Initialized Capital.
It has been approved for a one-story 340-square-foot studio, a one-story one-bedroom at 500 square feet, and a one-story, 610-square-foot two-bedroom.
The pricing for the studio is $189,900, while the one-bedroom costs $199,900 and the two-bedroom is $259,900.
Amunátegui Valdés Architects
Connect Homes
Design, Bitches
Escher GuneWardena Architecture
First Office
Fung + Blatt Architects
Fung + Blatt Architects is a Los Angeles-based firm founded in 1990.
The city has approved its 795-square-foot, one-story, one-bedroom unit with a roof deck. It estimates the construction cost to be $240,000 to $300,000, excluding landscape, site work and the solar array. Homeowners can also expect other additional costs.
Taalman Architecture/ IT House Inc.
LA Más
Jennifer Bonner/MALL
Massachusetts-based Jennifer Bonner/MALL designed a "Lean-to ADU" project, reinterpreting the stucco box and exaggerated false front, both Los Angeles architectural mainstays.
The design has been approved for a 525-square-foot one-story, one-bedroom unit with a 125-square-foot roof deck.
sekou cooke STUDIO
New York-based sekou cooke STUDIO is the sole Black-owned architectural firm on the project.
"The twisted forms of this ADU recalls the spin and scratch of a DJ's records" from the early 90s, the firm said.
Its design, still pending approval, is for a 1,200-square-foot, two bedroom and two bathroom can be adapted to a smaller one-bedroom unit or to include an additional half bath.
SO-IL
New York-based SO-IL was founded in 2008. It has completed projects in Leon, Seoul, Lisbon and Brooklyn.
Its one-story, one-bedroom 693-square-foot unit is pending approval. It is estimated the construction cost will be between $200,000 and $250,000.
WELCOME PROJECTS
Los Angeles-based Welcome Projects has worked on projects ranging from buildings, houses and interiors to handbags, games and toys.
Its ADU is nicknamed The Breadbox "for its curved topped walls and slight resemblance to that vintage counter accessory."
It has been approved for a one-story, one-bedroom 560-square-foot unit.
wHY Architecture
Firms that want to participate in the program can learn more here . Angelenos interested in building a standard ADU plan can learn more the approved projects here.
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Image Source: Perelel
The wellness aisle is crowded with influencer brands and one size fits all multivitamins. Perelel is trying to be the adult in the room. The team designs products with OB GYN input, clinical backing and formulas tailored to specific chapters of a woman’s hormonal life, from fertility and pregnancy to postpartum, perimenopause and beyond. Most of its line now carries a Clean Label Project Purity Award, which is a polite way of saying they’re willing to have someone else check what’s actually in the bottle.
This round is less about a splashy launch and more about upgrading the cap table and the support system. The founders used the raise to buy out early angel investors and bring in Prelude Growth, a women-founded firm with a track record in modern consumer health and beauty. The new capital is aimed at deeper research, more life stage specific products and broader distribution rather than chasing the trend of the month.
In a category that has historically treated women’s health as an afterthought, a clinically serious, women led company raising growth capital to build a full lifecycle platform feels like a meaningful data point. Scroll down for this week’s LA venture deals, funds and acquisitions.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Venture Funds
- Anthos Capital participated in Kalshi’s new $1B funding round, which values the CFTC-regulated prediction market platform at $11B and was led by returning investors Sequoia Capital and CapitalG alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and Neo. The capital will help Kalshi scale its event-contracts exchange, expand beyond politics into areas like macro data and business events, and compete more aggressively with rival prediction platforms as institutional and retail interest in trading real-world outcomes grows. - learn more
- UP Partners participated in Point One Navigation’s $35M Series C round, backing the San Francisco-based precise location startup alongside lead investor Khosla Ventures and fellow existing investors IA Ventures and Alumni Ventures. The company provides centimeter-level GNSS correction and positioning services for “physical AI” applications like autonomous vehicles, robots and smart equipment, and plans to use the new funding to expand its Polaris RTK network, enhance its location platform and grow its team across R&D, OEM integrations and international operations. - learn more
- Embark Ventures participated in QSimulate’s latest seed financing, which brings the Boston-based quantum simulation startup’s total funding to just over $11M. The company also launched QUELO v2.3, a new generation of its quantum-powered drug discovery platform that uses real-time quantum mechanics to model drug–protein interactions far faster than traditional methods, and it plans to use the capital to scale operations and support growing collaborations with major pharma and tech partners. - learn more
- Cultivate Next, Chipotle Mexican Grill’s venture fund, participated in Athian’s $4M Series A round, backing the Indianapolis-based startup alongside Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Mondelēz International’s Sustainable Futures platform and a roster of existing strategic investors from across the livestock and food value chain. Athian, founded in 2022, operates a platform that aggregates, verifies and monetizes on-farm greenhouse gas reductions so food brands can hit their Scope 3 climate targets, and it says it has already facilitated $18M in payments to farmers as it expands its protocols, species coverage and international footprint. - learn more
- Fika Ventures joined Coverbase’s $16M Series A as a returning investor from the seed round, backing the company alongside lead investor Canapi Ventures and others. The San Francisco based startup uses AI agents to automate vendor procurement and third-party risk review for regulated enterprises, serving customers like Coinbase, Okta and Nationwide, and the new funding will help it expand into contract management, continuous security monitoring and a larger go-to-market team. - learn more
- BroadLight Capital and HeartBeat Ventures are among the investors backing Function Health’s $298M Series B round, which values the company at $2.5B and supports its push to become a new standard in proactive, data-driven healthcare. The Austin-based startup offers a membership platform that combines extensive lab testing with AI to help people track and manage their health, and it’s using the new capital to launch its Medical Intelligence Lab, an initiative aimed at turning that data into personalized medical insights at scale. - learn more
- Hallwood Media joined Menlo Ventures and other investors in Suno’s $250M Series C round, which values the AI music startup at $2.45B. The Cambridge based company lets users generate fully produced songs from text prompts and is using the new funding to expand tools like its Suno Studio workstation and next-generation music models, even as it navigates high-profile copyright lawsuits from major record labels. - learn more
- Upfront Ventures joined the $7M seed round for alphaXiv, investing alongside co-leads Menlo Ventures and Haystack, plus Shakti VC, Conviction Embed and several high-profile angels. The San Francisco based company runs a platform that helps AI practitioners and researchers discover, compare and apply cutting-edge AI papers, benchmarks and implementations, and it plans to use the new funding to further bridge the gap between fast-moving AI research and real-world production deployments. - learn more
- Regeneration.vc joined TULU’s $37M Series A extension as an existing investor, backing the company alongside GreenSoil PropTech Ventures, Bosch Ventures, New Era Capital Partners and others. TULU runs an AI powered product access platform that installs shared, IoT enabled units inside residential and commercial buildings so residents can rent or buy items like appliances, e scooters and household essentials on demand, and the new funding will help the company scale its “TULU Brain” data engine and expand its footprint beyond the 500,000 residents it already serves across North America and Europe. - learn more
- WndrCo has joined Method Security’s $26M combined seed and Series A round, alongside Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Blackstone Innovations and others. The startup, which operates out of New York and Washington DC, is building an autonomous cyber platform that combines offensive and defensive tools into a digital twin of an organization, helping US government agencies, the Department of Defense and large enterprises continuously test and strengthen their defenses against AI driven threats, a thesis that fits neatly with WndrCo’s focus on infrastructure and security. - learn more
- Coral Tree Partners has led a new Series B round for KERV.ai, backing the Austin based company as it scales its AI-powered contextual commerce and video advertising platform. The funding will be used to invest in R&D, technology, talent and infrastructure so KERV.ai can further expand its interactive, shoppable video solutions and first-party data targeting tools for brands, agencies and publishers, while pushing into new markets and strategic partnerships. - learn more
- CIM Group and Group 11 are backing Venn’s new $52M Series B, with CIM co-leading the round alongside NOA and Group 11 re-upping as an existing investor. The New York and Tel Aviv based company builds an operating system for multifamily housing that unifies data and workflows so landlords and operators can run buildings more efficiently and treat them like modern consumer brands. Over the last 18 months, Venn says it has expanded across dozens of U.S. states, partnered with hundreds of owners and operators, and grown annual recurring revenue ninefold, setting up this round to fuel further product development and market expansion. - learn more
- Walkabout Ventures led Barker’s $3.5M seed round, backing the New York based fintech as it builds warrantied AI valuations for illiquid, hard-to-price assets in asset-backed lending. Barker’s platform uses an “agentic valuation system” and insurance from Munich Re to warranty its AI-generated prices on assets like aircraft, equipment, art and GPUs, so lenders are protected if the collateral ultimately sells for less than the model predicted, and the new funding will help the company expand into more asset classes and deepen partnerships across banks and private lenders. - learn more
- Freeflow Ventures joined Erg Bio’s $6.5M seed round, investing alongside lead Azolla Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Plug and Play and other strategic backers. Erg Bio is developing its Aspire platform, a flexible, low-temperature pretreatment and catalytic process that turns agricultural and forestry waste into intermediates for synthetic aviation fuel and critical biobased chemicals, and the new capital will help scale the technology, expand engineering and bioprocessing teams, and move toward pilot-scale demos. - learn more
- Pinegrove Venture Partners participated in Ramp’s new $300M financing round, joining Lightspeed Venture Partners and a long list of existing and new backers as the company’s valuation hit $32B. The New York based spend management and corporate card platform now generates over $1B in annualized revenue, serves more than 50,000 business customers and processes upwards of $100B in annual purchase volume, and this fresh capital will support continued product expansion and enterprise growth. - learn more
- Alexandria Venture Investments and B Capital joined Solve Therapeutics’ new $120M financing round, backing the San Diego based biotech alongside lead investor Yosemite and a broader syndicate that includes Merck & Co. and other life sciences funds. The company is developing next-generation antibody-drug conjugates for solid tumors using its proprietary CloakLink linker platform, and it plans to use the capital to advance its lead programs SLV-154 and SLV-324 through Phase 1b trials and further build out its ADC and diagnostics pipeline. - learn more
- Factorial Funds joined Sakana AI’s $135M Series B round, backing the Tokyo-based startup as it doubles down on building efficient, Japan-focused AI models rather than chasing ever-larger, compute-heavy systems. The financing, which values Sakana at about $2.65B, will help expand its “sustainable AI” research and grow its team as it rolls out sovereign, culturally tailored AI solutions for Japanese enterprises and sectors like finance, manufacturing, and government. - learn more
- Smash Capital joined AVP and other investors in backing Flatpay’s latest round, which raised roughly €145–170M and crowned the Danish SMB payments startup as Europe’s newest fintech unicorn at around a €1.5B valuation. The company, which offers flat-rate card terminals and POS systems for small merchants, has scaled to roughly 60,000 customers and over €100M in ARR, and will use the fresh capital to accelerate European expansion, deepen its product stack and significantly grow headcount. - learn more
- Fusion joined No Barrier’s oversubscribed $2.7M seed round, investing alongside lead backers A-Squared Ventures, Esplanade Ventures and Rock Health Capital to scale the company’s AI-first approach to medical interpretation. The San Francisco based startup integrates real-time, HIPAA-compliant language interpretation into hospital systems and EHRs across 40+ languages, and will use the new funding to expand deployment across U.S. care settings and further reduce health disparities for patients with limited English proficiency. - learn more
- Matter Venture Partners joined Vertex Ventures and other global investors in backing Ruochuang Technology’s Pre A round, which totals tens of millions of dollars to fuel the company’s next stage of growth. The startup develops low speed robotics and related IoT hardware, spanning technology R and D, device manufacturing and sales, and this new capital will help it deepen intelligent hardware research and expand its market footprint as demand for smart manufacturing and IoT applications accelerates. - learn more
- B Capital joined Shipday’s $7M Series A as a participating investor, re-upping after leading the company’s 2023 seed round and backing the Menlo Park–based startup alongside co-leads ECP Growth and Ibex Investors. Shipday provides an AI-powered last-mile delivery and logistics platform for SMBs like restaurants and local retailers, and it plans to use the new funding to build out features such as its AgentFlow automation engine, deepen integrations, and expand its global reach beyond the 5,000 businesses it already serves in 100+ countries. - learn more
- MANTIS Venture Capital participated in Bedrock Data’s $25M Series A round, joining lead investor Greylock Partners alongside Mangusta Capital, Pier 88 Investment Partners and others to back the Menlo Park based data security startup. Bedrock Data provides an AI-native, data-centric security and governance platform powered by its “Metadata Lake,” and it plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development and expand go-to-market efforts as enterprises look to secure data across cloud, SaaS and AI systems at multi-petabyte scale. - learn more
- TenOneTen Ventures and Wedbush Ventures joined Meadow AI’s $6M in total funding, including a $4.5M seed round they backed alongside co-lead Leadout Ventures and other investors. The Seattle-based startup is emerging from stealth with a multimodal AI platform that helps restaurants and retailers monitor real-time operations and automate “secret shopper” audits across 10–300-location chains, already driving more than $2.5M in contracted ARR as it targets further growth in physical retail. - learn more
LA Exits
- Neotech, a long-time provider of high-reliability electronic manufacturing services, has been acquired by private equity firm Arkview Capital in a deal that marks a major new chapter for the company. With Arkview as its new owner, Neotech plans to strengthen its balance sheet, invest in next-generation manufacturing, and expand its capabilities across core markets like defense, aerospace, medical and industrial electronics, while continuing to emphasize quality, reliability and customer service. - learn more
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