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XLooking to Build a Granny Flat in Your Backyard? Meet the Firms and Designs Pre-Approved in LA
Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.
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
Led by Cristobal Amunátegui and Alejandro Valdés, the firm was founded in 2011 and has offices in Los Angeles and Santiago, Chile. Amunátegui is an assistant professor at the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA.
The firm designs work in various scales and mediums, including buildings, furniture and exhibitions.
Its one-story, two-bedroom with a covered roof deck 934-square-foot unit is pending approval from the city.
Connect Homes
Connect Homes has a 100,000-square foot factory in San Bernardino and an architecture studio in Downtown L.A.
It specializes in glass and steel homes and has completed 80 homes in California. Its designs have an aesthetic of mid-century modern California residential architecture.
It has two one-bedroom models pre-approved by the city, one is 460 square feet, which costs $144,500 with a total average project cost of $205,000. The other is 640 square feet, which costs $195,200 with a total project cost of $280,000.
Design, Bitches
The Los Angeles-based architectural firm founded in 2010 describes itself as having a "bold and irreverent vision." Its projects include urban infill ground-up offices to single-family homes, adaptive re-use of derelict commercial buildings and renovations of historic landmarks.
Its pre-approved design, named "Midnight Room," is a guest house/ studio. Its bedroom can be left open for a loft feel or enclosed as a separate room. The design is a one-story, one-bedroom at 454 square feet.
Escher GuneWardena Architecture
Founded in Los Angeles in 1996, Escher GuneWardena Architecture has received international recognition and has collaborated with contemporary artists, worked on historical preservation projects and more.
The company has been approved for two different one-story, one- or two-bedroom units, one at 532 square feet with an estimated cost of $200,000 and another at 784 square feet with an estimated cost of $300,000. The firm noted the costs depend on site conditions and do not include soft costs. Those could add 10% to 12% to the total construction costs.
First Office
First Office is an architecture firm based in Downtown Los Angeles. Its approved ADUs will be built using prefabricated structural insulated panels, which allow for expedited construction schedules and high environmental ratings.
The interior finishes include concrete floors, stainless steel counters and an occasional element of conduit.
There are five options:
- A one-story studio, 309 to 589 square feet
- A one-story one-bedroom, 534 to 794 square feet
- And a one-story two-bedroom, 1,200 square feet
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.
The design team behind "IT House" is Los Angeles-based studio Taalman Architecture. Over the past 15 years, IT House has built more than 20 homes throughout California and the U.S.
The IT House ADU standard plans include the tower, bar, box, cube, pod and court.
The city has approved four options, including:
- A two-story including mechanical room, 660 square feet
- A two-story including mechanical room, 430 square feet
- A one-story studio, 200 square feet
- A one-story including mechanical room, 700 square feet
The firm also has another two projects pending approval: a 360-square-foot one-story studio and a one-story, three-bedroom at 1,149 square feet.
LA Más
LA Más is a nonprofit based in Northeast Los Angeles that designs and builds initiatives promoting neighborhood resilience and elevating the agency of working-class communities of color. Homeowners who are considering their design must commit to renting to Section 8 tenants.
The city has approved two of LA Más' designs: a one-story, one-bedroom, 528 square feet unit and a one-story, two-bedroom, 768 square feet unit. The firm has another design for a one-story studio pending approval. That design would be the first 3D-printed ADU design in the city's program.
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
Founded in 2004, wHY is based in Los Angeles and New York City. It has taken on a landmark affordable housing and historic renovation initiative in Watts.
Its one-story, one- or two-bedroom 480 to 800-square-foot unit is pending approval.
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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Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.
🔦 Spotlight
Hey there, Los Angeles.
For the past decade, Alex Heath has made a career out of figuring out what the technology industry is doing before everyone else.
Now, he is going to invest in it.
Heath announced this week that he is joining Los Angeles-based Sound Ventures as a partner on its investing team. The veteran technology journalist will continue independently operating Sources, the newsletter and podcast business he launched after leaving The Verge last year.
It is an unusual career move, but perhaps not as unusual as it initially appears.
Journalists and venture capitalists spend much of their time doing surprisingly similar work. Both look for signals before they become obvious, build relationships with people who know what is coming next and attempt to distinguish a lasting shift from a convincing story.
The crucial difference is what happens after they find one.
A journalist publishes. An investor writes a check.
Heath has spent years reporting on some of the technology industry’s most powerful companies and executives. At The Verge, where he served as deputy editor, his work focused on the internal decisions shaping companies such as Meta. More recently, Sources has taken readers inside the AI race through reporting and interviews with executives including Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg.
That experience gives Sound something venture firms increasingly want: someone who already understands the founders, companies and narratives competing to define the next era of technology.
Sound Ventures is not exactly starting from scratch. Led in Los Angeles by Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein, the firm manages nearly $2B and has backed companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, World Labs, Brex, Affirm and GitLab. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sound deployed more than $800M into early positions in OpenAI, Anthropic and World Labs as it intensified its focus on artificial intelligence.
Heath is joining during an important transition for the firm. Ashton Kutcher, who co-founded Sound with Oseary in 2015, departed earlier this year to launch a new venture firm. Oseary and Epstein are continuing to lead Sound while raising its fifth flagship fund and sharpening its strategy around companies with the potential to reach meaningful commercial scale.
Adding Heath suggests that Sound’s next phase will not be defined by capital alone.
As AI makes it faster and less expensive to build software, technical capability may become less effective as a differentiator. More startups will be able to create credible products, and more of them will compete for the same finite supply of customers, talent and attention.
In that environment, knowing how to identify a compelling founder is only part of the job. Venture firms also need to understand how companies earn trust, communicate what makes them different and remain culturally relevant in an increasingly crowded market.
That is familiar territory for Sound. Oseary built his career managing artists including Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, where recognizing talent was inseparable from helping that talent connect with an audience. Heath brings a different version of the same instinct, developed through finding important stories and understanding why people should pay attention to them.
Heath will continue owning and operating Sources independently while expanding its podcast and interviewing prominent voices across the technology industry. That means he is not abandoning the platform or audience he built. He is adding a new vantage point.
The combination could prove especially valuable to Sound. Heath brings the instincts of a reporter, the reach of an independent media founder and years of relationships with the people shaping technology. Now, he can apply that experience to finding and supporting the next generation of founders.
It is a fitting evolution for someone who has spent his career identifying important technology stories early.
This time, he will have the opportunity to help write what happens next.
Venture firms once competed primarily through capital, networks and operating expertise. Now, access to attention is becoming an asset of its own. Founders need help reaching customers and shaping public understanding, while investors want better ways to recognize which people and ideas will command that attention next.
Sound Ventures hired someone who has spent a decade doing exactly that.
Heath used to decide which technology stories were worth following.
Now, he will help decide which ones get funded.
More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Maven Robotics emerged from stealth with a $100M Series A and humanoid robots already operating in warehouse deployments. The company says its robots can work for 16 hours a day with 99% uptime and is positioning itself as a reliable alternative for businesses whose existing robotics providers fail to meet deployment targets. - learn more
- Bedrock Capital participated in Mach Industries’ $600M Series C extension alongside Ribbit Capital, Infinite Capital and Sequoia, bringing the round’s total to $900M and doubling the defense startup’s valuation to $3.7B in three months. The Huntington Beach company manufactures lower-cost unmanned aircraft, strike weapons and counter-drone systems, while expanding into solid rocket motors and jet-engine production to address critical defense supply-chain bottlenecks. - learn more
- U First Capital participated in Positron AI’s $875M funding round, which was co-led by NEA, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Andra Capital, SemiAnalysis Capital and Jim Clark, valuing the AI chip startup at $5B. Positron will use the capital to bring its memory-focused Asimov processor and Titan server system to market, offering an energy-efficient alternative to GPUs for running AI models. - learn more
- WndrCo participated in Harvey’s $550M funding round, co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the legal AI company at $15.5B. Harvey will use the capital to expand its team and advance its AI platform, which helps law firms, in-house legal departments and professional-services organizations build and manage proprietary legal intelligence. - learn more
- Nolan Capital participated in Encoded Therapeutics’ $275M Series F, which was co-led by GV and another healthcare-focused fund and included several new and returning investors. The biotech will use the capital to advance its lead gene therapy for Dravet syndrome through pivotal studies, expand its manufacturing capabilities and prepare another treatment for post-amputation nerve pain for clinical testing in 2027. - learn more
- UP Partners led Overroute’s $5.5M seed round to expand its AI-powered freight execution platform for large trucking fleets and logistics operators. The company’s AI agents automate load monitoring, exception management and freight coordination, helping fleets respond to disruptions and keep shipments moving with less manual work. - learn more
- Patron Fund participated in System’s $20M funding round alongside Will Ventures, Vine, Courtside, Daybreak, SV Angel and RiverPark Ventures. The San Francisco company will use the capital to expand its vertically integrated peptide platform, which connects patients with licensed clinicians and personalized treatments from U.S. compounding pharmacies while emphasizing testing, traceability and regulatory compliance. - learn more
- Alpha Edison led Onix’s $5M pre-seed round, with participation from Garage Capital, Ride Home Fund and strategic investors including UTA co-founder Jeremy Zimmer and Real Ventures co-founder JS Cournoyer. The Montreal startup will use the funding to develop its private AI platform, onboard more specialists and prepare for a public launch, offering personalized guidance built exclusively from licensed expert knowledge rather than information scraped from the internet. - learn more
- Rebel Fund participated in VideoGen’s $3.3M seed round alongside Y Combinator, Lobster Capital, Stretford End Capital, Mento VC, Pioneer Fund and Decacorn VC. The San Francisco startup, which has reached more than 5M users across 190 countries, will use the funding to expand its team and grow its AI platform for producing editable, copyright-free videos. - learn more
Rainmaker Just Raised $100M to Solve the Weather
🔦 Spotlight
Hey Los Angeles.
Last year, we introduced you to an El Segundo startup that had raised $25M to make it rain.
This year, rain is apparently just the beginning.
Rainmaker raised a $100M Series B to expand its cloud-seeding technology and pursue a much larger ambition: building the scientific and technical infrastructure to understand, influence and eventually mitigate extreme weather.
In startup parlance, it is a pivot from “make it rain” to “solve the weather.” Subtle.
The round included NOA VC, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital, Dream Ventures and LA-based Upfront Ventures.
When we covered Rainmaker last year, the company was preparing to expand its drone fleet, atmospheric research and commercial partnerships.
It now says it has generated more than 145M verified gallons of precipitation during a four-month period. During a summer research program near Homer, Alaska, Rainmaker says one operation produced 19M gallons in three hours.
Those are eye-catching numbers. The company’s ambitions are considerably larger.
Rainmaker is working to build what it calls a “Weather Prime,” combining atmospheric science, autonomous aircraft, sensors and predictive software into an infrastructure platform capable of responding to water scarcity and extreme weather.
The idea is to make cloud seeding cheaper, more measurable and easier to deploy at scale. Rainmaker’s drones deliver specialized particles into carefully selected clouds, while radar and software help determine where to operate and measure how much additional rain or snow may have been produced.
The new funding will help Rainmaker hire more atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, chemists and engineers while expanding its research and data-collection capabilities. The company also plans to move toward increasingly autonomous operations, allowing more missions to be conducted at a lower cost.
Rainmaker expects its cost per acre-foot of water to fall below alternatives such as desalination and agricultural fallowing in the Colorado River Basin during the upcoming water season. If that projection holds, cloud seeding could begin looking less like an experimental intervention and more like another piece of water infrastructure.
That “if” is doing some serious atmospheric lifting.
Cloud seeding has existed for decades, but measuring its precise effects remains scientifically difficult. A successful operation requires the right type of cloud at the right moment, and proving exactly how much precipitation would have fallen without intervention is no simple task.
Rainmaker’s next challenge, therefore, is not merely to produce more rain. It must make the results measurable, repeatable and credible enough for governments, farmers and communities to trust.
That responsibility becomes even more important as the company expands its vision beyond water. Rainmaker describes cloud seeding as the first step toward eventually mitigating hail, heat and other weather-related threats.
It is a grand ambition, even by startup standards. Most founders promise to disrupt an industry. Rainmaker wants to influence the atmosphere.
The company’s location makes the mission particularly fitting. El Segundo has become a center for startups tackling physical problems with drones, satellites, factories and defense systems. Rainmaker is applying that same aerospace-minded approach to one of the West’s oldest constraints.
For Los Angeles, this story is about more than another substantial funding round. Rainmaker has progressed from proposing that cloud-seeding technology could be modernized to claiming it has produced rainfall at a meaningful scale.
Now, with four times the capital it announced last year, the company must prove that those results can become dependable infrastructure.
California has never been shy about reshaping nature to support its growth. Rainmaker is betting that the next great water project will not be built across the landscape.
It will fly into the clouds.
More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Hair care brand Arey raised an undisclosed Series A led by Unilever Ventures, with returning investors Greycroft and Female Founders Fund also participating. The company, which develops supplements and topical treatments for graying and aging hair, will use the funding for product development, clinical research, hiring and retail expansion. - learn more
- Fluxnium raised a $7M seed round led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Constellation Technology Ventures and Active Impact Investments. The company will use the funding to develop, test and scale its fiber technology for extracting uranium from seawater, aiming to create a secure domestic alternative to conventional uranium mining. - learn more
- Alexandria Venture Investments participated in BigHat Biosciences’ $75M Series C, co-led by DFJ Growth and Premji Invest, bringing the AI-driven biotech’s total funding to $223M. BigHat will use the capital to expand its autonomous protein-design platform and advance its AI-designed cancer therapies, including BHB810 and BHB299, toward key clinical milestones. - learn more
- Alt Capital participated in Trebellar’s $18M Series A, led by Blossom Capital and joined by Haystack, 1Flourish and Bynd Venture Capital. Trebellar will use the funding to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams and enhance its AI platform, which helps enterprises combine fragmented workplace data to make better real estate decisions. - learn more
- B Capital participated in Precision Neuroscience’s oversubscribed $250M Series D, co-led by Pershing Square, the Ackman Oxman Institute and an undisclosed life sciences fund, bringing the brain-computer interface company’s total funding to $430M. Precision will use the capital to expand clinical trials, advance its Layer 7 brain implant through additional FDA review and build the infrastructure needed for commercialization. - learn more
- Mantis Venture Capital participated in Pilgrim’s $25M seed round, led by Buckley Ventures, which valued the Redwood City defense-biotech startup at $150M. Pilgrim is developing a portable system that monitors the air for viruses and other biological threats, with additional backing from Anthropic leaders, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and other technology investors. - learn more
- Starshot Capital participated as a returning investor in Mojave Energy Systems’ $19M Series B, led by Fairtree Elevant Ventures with a significant investment from River Bay Investments. The Sunnyvale company will use the funding to expand manufacturing, grow its sales team and develop new products for its energy-efficient commercial heating, cooling and humidity-control platform. - learn more
- 4th Revolution Capital participated in infiniFi’s $3M-plus funding round, led by Electric Capital and joined by New Form Capital, Generative Ventures, Fasanara Capital and others. The decentralized finance platform will use the capital to launch infiniFi Prime, expand its products through neobanks and consumer finance apps and prepare for its Q4 token generation event. - learn more
- Riot Ventures participated in American Supercritical’s $8M pre-seed round, led by Silent Ventures and joined by Harpoon, Reveille VC, Hillwood, Mana Ventures, Climate Capital and Alumni Ventures. The Denver startup is developing compact systems that use supercritical carbon dioxide to convert gas-turbine waste heat into additional electricity, potentially helping data centers generate up to 50% more power without using more fuel or water. - learn more
- M13 led Baselayer’s $35M Series A, with participation from Torch Capital, Picus Ventures, Afore Capital and Socure executive Matt Thompson. The company will use the funding to expand its identity and risk infrastructure beyond businesses to AI agents, helping financial institutions verify who an agent represents, what it is authorized to do and whether it can be trusted. - learn more
- BAM Ventures participated in Bird&Be’s $13M funding round, which was led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners and joined by Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures and HSR Ventures. The fertility and wellness brand will use the capital to develop new supplements and at-home diagnostic tests, expand its retail presence and broaden access to evidence-backed reproductive care. - learn more
- March Capital joined Snorkel AI’s $350M Series E as a new investor, participating in a round co-led by Insight Partners and S32 that valued the company at $3.5B. Snorkel will use the funding to expand its platform for creating the specialized datasets and training environments needed to develop and evaluate advanced AI models and agents. - learn more
- Clocktower Technology Ventures is among the investors backing Soteris, which has raised more than $8M in seed funding led by Spider Capital. The Y Combinator-backed insurtech company has emerged from stealth with an AI platform that helps property and casualty insurers identify the profitability and expected losses of individual policies, potentially improving margins without changing rates or staffing. - learn more
- Smash Capital led Firecrawl’s $75M Series B, with participation from Altos Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Freestyle and Offline Ventures. Firecrawl will use the capital to expand Alexandria, its new platform that gives AI agents one place to access the live web, specialized indexes and licensed data while compensating the people and organizations supplying that knowledge. - learn more
- ND Capital participated in Ramona’s $25M Series A, which was led by ARCH Venture Partners and joined by Stealthpoint, Fall Line Capital, Hamamatsu, Murchison Capital Partners and Overlap Holdings. Ramona will use the funding to expand production and grow its team as it scales a 24-camera microscope that captures entire biological experiments at cellular resolution, generating richer data for drug discovery and AI models. - learn more
- Chisos Capital participated in Axio BioPharma’s $2.4M pre-seed round alongside Elmstead Partners, the Chemical Angel Network and several angel investors. The Madison-based company will use the funding to deploy its Axio Lattice platform, which connects manufacturing data across pharmaceutical companies and their partners without requiring either side to replace existing systems or relinquish control of its data. - learn more
LA Exits
- Zuma has been acquired by real estate technology company Venn for $50M, bringing its AI leasing tools and engineering team into Venn’s platform. The combined company plans to help multifamily operators automate leasing and eventually expand its AI capabilities into collections, renewals and resident support. - learn more
- GTXN was acquired by digital asset platform Luno for an undisclosed amount, bringing its licensed collection and payout infrastructure into Luno’s operations. GTXN will serve as Luno’s cross-border payments arm, helping enterprise customers move money between developed and emerging markets through a single provider with fewer intermediaries and faster settlement. - learn more
- Podium Entertainment was acquired by private equity firms Shamrock Capital and Flexpoint Ford for more than $400M, with GoldState Music also taking a minority stake. The audiobook and publishing company, which has built a catalog of roughly 15,000 titles by working with independent authors, will retain its existing management team. - learn more


