LA Tech Week: The Auctioning of an NFT From AI LA

Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is an editor at dot.LA. He was previously a features writer at MEL Magazine where he covered masculinity, tech and true crime. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Long Reads and Vice, among other publications.
LA Tech Week: The Auctioning of an NFT From AI LA
Fun for Funds Festival (Image c/o AI LA)

A Custom Home Built in 33 Days

In the suburbs of Silver Lake, Cover — a technology company that builds custom backyard homes is showcasing their latest, life-size lego abode. Their latest $270,000 accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is built atop a garage on a slanted hill that required some standard contracting work. But other than laying the concrete foundation every other part of this home was built in Cover’s new 80,000 square feet factory in Gardena.

If Tesla was in the home-building business, this is what it would look like.


“Our approach is similar to Tesla,” says Cover’s technological advisor to the CEO Rico Jaeggi. “Start with high-end products then, through scaling we can bring the cost down.” In other words, as a few of their other employees tell me, Cover’s current model is equivalent to Tesla’s roadster.

The idea is to streamline the homebuilding process so that, “if you work an eight-hour job, you never see us in your backyard,” says Jaeggi. In other words, with Cover you’ll never have to worry about seeing a contractor drop a stack of lumber in your backyard then disappear for a few weeks.

The 550 square-foot, single-room home I’m touring was built in 33 days. The bathroom is aseptic and white and the paneling on the ceiling–also white–can be unscrewed and removed like a car bumper in case there’s a leak. Cover co-founder Alexis Rivas tells me that although the homes are built on production lines using algorithms, the layouts are custom.

“You can move the door to this side of the home and you can put the bathroom and the kitchen anywhere you want,” he adds.

On my way out, the valet attendant who works in construction asks what I thought of the house. I tell him it looks good. That his job might soon be automated and, instead of laboring in the sun, he may be working behind a computer for a software company. He looks at me like I just told him he’s had a death in the family. Then he shakes his head. “Nah man,” he says. “That ain’t me.”

The VC Fund in Silver Lake

Inside a small office space that was recently vacated by reselling platform Depop, Worklife Ventures is hosting one of only a handful of L.A. Tech Week events on the Eastside of Los Angeles.

“They [presumably the folks that helped put on L.A. Tech Week] encouraged us to relocate our event to the Westside, but the Eastside is the heart of L.A.,” says Brian Yip, head of marketing at Worklife.

The small studio space looks like what you’d imagine from a V.C. fund aiming for some Silver Lake street cred: a panel of vinyl records, recessed ceilings coated in yellow paint and a Cup Noodles placard the size of a movie poster hanging on the wall. The event is jam-packed and Nelly’s “Country Grammar” blaring through the speakers makes it difficult to hear anyone say anything.

Currently, the space features merch from Canadian YouTuber Cody Ko. Last month, Yip tells me, they hosted Grailed superseller 4Gseller for an in-person retail pop-up. Worklife, per Yip, is a fund aimed at helping to connect digital communities in real life.

Inside Worklife’s Silver Lake studio, I also meet Joshua Blackwell, founder of Blck Unicrn — a Web3 project he describes as Netflix meets Spotify. Blackwell further explains that the idea is “to bring stories to life via immersive experiences and through augmented reality.” For example, he continues, “what if the ‘Thriller’ video kept going and you could be in the house with the zombies?” In other words, Blackwell says, “the concept is to mix the concert experience with the immersive nature of being inside an escape room.”

His idea sounds promising. If it were me though, I’d maybe consider reframing the pitch.

Auctioning an NFT of an AI’s Interpretation of LA

A few blocks from Downtown Los Angeles’s Skid Row, where roughly 8,000 men and women live in encampments, sits the steel and glass 1010 Wilshire building guarded by a brass Buddha statue as tall as a middling palm tree. On 1010’s labyrinthine rooftop, AI LA is hosting its luxurious $150 per ticket ($250 for V.I.P.) Fun for Funds Festival to promote AI literacy in the city of Los Angeles.

Here, the ills that plague society have been given the NFT treatment: Five 10x4 feet screens display glittering images with a variable backstory. Their similarity to a Microsoft music visualizer circa Windows 2000 is uncanny.

Each screen represents a different district in Los Angeles, something participants learn after they’ve scanned the screen-adjacent QR code. Each district has a 15-second clip from the NFT collection. The first display– or “District 1” as it’s referred to–covers Downtown and East L.A. According to the information drawn from the QR code, the main challenge in District 1 is “access to quality jobs, retail stores and perhaps most importantly—food.”

This being an AI event, the solution, as suggested by the information drawn from the QR code, is reinventing the supply chain “through smart supply systems” and via “AI-based monitoring.”

So what do the mashing molecules on the screen have to do with any of this? James Macion, the data analyst tasked with pulling public data and grouping the data into themes tried his best to put it in terms I can understand.

“For example, District 4 represents racial equity,” says Macion. So Macion pulled data sets related to racial equity: population, education, social depression and language. The data was then given to award-winning independent media studio Ouchhh to create AI-generated NFTs. In other words, the psychedelic renderings are the visual incarnation of the data that tells us everything that’s wrong with our society. The idea, Macion says, was to make the AI-generated art, “homegrown for L.A.”

According to the summary of “District 3’s” future, AI predictive models will play a role in “anticipating housing needs of individuals who are encountering circumstances that may cause them to be unhoused and connecting them to relevant resources before they become unhoused.” This is all to suggest that AI is the future and it’s here to save the world from suffering.

The event is the brainchild of AI LA’s founder, president and executive director Todd Terrazas, who tells me that AI LA’s goal–among other things–is to promote AI literacy to “fewer white guys.” The way he plans to do this is by piloting AI literacy programs in community colleges where students of color comprise 60% of enrollment.

Early in the evening, Terrazas promises that when the sun goes down the screens will change. That they will then display one-of-one NFTs produced by Ouchhh that will soon travel to a Mozilla conference in Hawaii and that the attendants of the AI LA event can bid on to become owners of the NFT.

The other major AI enterprise at the event is Jeremy Fojut’s friendship-finding platform Like|Minded. After diving into psychological research about friendship and personalities, Fojut, also the co-founder of NEWaukee, known for hosting community events in Milwaukee, turned his attention to developing a platform that uses a personality assessment to match individuals within an organization to help them form meaningful connections and increase their engagement within their company.

The algorithm is based on HEXACO, a personality inventory that assesses a person's honesty, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. Fojut promises the algorithm won’t lead to issues oft-associated with group think or conformity since the algorithm “doesn’t define your entire identity, but rather highlights the parts of you that are most present in your worldview and interactions with other people.”

Perhaps even more compelling is Like|Minded’s use in establishing mentorships within organizations by leveraging the inverse of the algorithm to match people, which Fojut refers to as “growth matches.”

An hour or so before nightfall, Stephen Piron is staring at an installation of old TVs of variable sizes displaying the footage of cameras recording different parts of the party. Piron is the founder of Dessa — acquired by Square in 2016 and famous for creating deep fakes, the most notable of which was a Joe Rogan clip that went viral in 2019. Piron is a veteran of the deep learning space and he seems eager to leave this party. But not before he tells me about how he and his colleagues at Dessa tripped and fell onto their AI-generated deep-fake notoriety.

“It was an accident,” he says. They were bored working on projects that helped banks detect fraud, so, he says, “some of us started working on this other thing.”

Near the end of the evening, as promised, the NFT auction begins when the electric-blue NFT graphic transforms into an abstract red, white and black animation. The bidding begins at $500.

“If you don’t buy this for $500,” begins the auctioneer, comedian Alli Goldberg. “You’re a broke bitch and we hate you.”

The bidding on the first of five, one-of-one NFTs reaches $4,300. From the ground floor, I can still hear the auctioneer as I exit the building.

Wonder Dynamics: Redefining the Animation Landscape
Wonder Animation

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, LA!

Wonder Dynamics, a Los Angeles-based company founded by Tye Sheridan and Nikola Todorovic, has launched Wonder Animation, a beta feature that is poised to transform the landscape of video production. Acquired by Autodesk in May, Wonder Dynamics is leveraging this innovative tool, which harnesses artificial intelligence to turn standard video footage into captivating 3D animated scenes, making sophisticated animation techniques more accessible to filmmakers of all budgets.

Wonder Animation allows creators to shoot from multiple angles, with the AI reconstructing these shots into a dynamic 3D space. This functionality enables filmmakers to seamlessly blend live-action scenes with interactive virtual environments while preserving original camera movements. Users can customize various aspects, including animations, characters, lighting, and camera tracking data, and the tool integrates smoothly with popular software like Maya, Blender, and Unreal Engine.

What sets Wonder Animation apart is its emphasis on artistic control. Unlike many AI tools that impose rigid outcomes, this feature empowers creators to guide their projects, ensuring that their unique style remains front and center.

As the boundary between video and 3D animation blurs, Wonder Animation invites creators to experiment and innovate in exciting ways. This development marks a significant step forward in digital storytelling, democratizing access to high-quality visual effects and making sophisticated animation achievable for a broader range of filmmakers.

With the global animation market projected to reach approximately $400 billion in 2024 and grow to over $587 billion by 2030—reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 5%—tools like Wonder Animation are more relevant than ever. This growth underscores the increasing demand for animated content and highlights the necessity of innovative solutions to meet filmmakers’ evolving needs. For those looking to elevate their storytelling, Wonder Animation may just be the key to unlocking new creative horizons. According to Statista, this upward trend in the animation market emphasizes the significant opportunities ahead.


🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

  • Evite, an online platform enabling users to design, send, and manage digital invitations and eCards with tools for event organization and guest tracking, has received a strategic growth investment from Francisco Partners to accelerate innovation and expand its product offerings. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
  • F4 Fund participated in a $4.1M Pre-Seed funding round for Further, a platform designed to help first-time homebuyers determine how much home they can afford by providing personalized insights on interest rates and lender requirements, giving users a clear view of their purchasing power. - learn more
  • Alexandria Venture Investments participated in a $10M Seed funding round for CrossBridge Bio, a company focused on developing advanced dual-payload antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapies, with the funds supporting preclinical development of its next-generation cancer treatments. - learn more
  • Clocktower Ventures participated in a $5.6M Series A funding round for Morada Uno, a startup in Mexico focused on making apartment rentals easier by providing a platform that connects tenants with landlords and simplifies processes like lease agreements and rent payments. - learn more
  • Skyview Capital participated in a $5M Series A funding round for Web3 chain game A-World, a tower defense battle game set in the metaverse on the BNB Chain, where players build hero towers to defeat waves of monsters. - learn more

      LA Exits

      • Drive Hospitality, a leading provider of personalized parking and hospitality services, including valet, concierge, bell services, parking management, and advanced technology integration, has been acquired by Propark Mobility. - learn more
      • Vebu Labs, located in El Segundo and specializing in custom automation solutions for the food industry—including the innovative 'Autocado' system that automates the peeling, coring, and scooping of avocados to enhance operational efficiency—will be acquired by Serve Robotics. - learn more

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            Big Wins: Dodgers Take the Title ⚾, ChatGPT Levels Up🚀

            🔦 Spotlight

            Happy Friday, LA! It’s been a week of big wins, on and off the field. 🎉

            ⚾️ First up, let’s talk Dodgers. With a thrilling 7-6 comeback victory over the Yankees in Game 5, the Dodgers clinched their eighth World Series title, their first since 2020. The city is buzzing, and fans are ready to celebrate! A parade kicks off this morning at 11 a.m., starting at City Hall and winding down to Flower Street, with a ticketed celebration at Dodger Stadium for those wanting to keep the festivities going.

            Image Source: Dodgers

            💻 Meanwhile, in the tech, OpenAI just rolled out a game-changing update for ChatGPT. Plus and Enterprise users can now access real-time internet search, powered by Microsoft Bing, bringing ChatGPT's responses fully up-to-date. This means users can now ask about the latest news, hotspots, or recent LA startup announcements, and ChatGPT will pull in fresh, relevant answers directly from the web. Previously limited to information up to 2021, ChatGPT’s new browsing capabilities make it a valuable digital assistant for anyone needing real-time insights in fast-paced industries like tech and entertainment.

            Image Source: ChatGPT

            🔍 The real-time search feature also includes “Browse with Bing,” allowing ChatGPT to source information from multiple sites for detailed answers to complex questions. Whether you’re exploring the latest venture capital trends in LA or curious about the best local spots, ChatGPT’s new browsing power helps you stay ahead with the latest info. This leap forward in AI functionality makes ChatGPT even more versatile and powerful for everyone, from business owners to everyday users.

            From the Dodgers’ World Series win to OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT update, there’s a lot to celebrate in LA this week. Here’s to champions, innovation, and a city that’s always pushing boundaries. 🌆✨


            🤝 Venture Deals

            LA Companies

            • Final Boss Sour, a Los Angeles-based gaming-themed snack company specializing in healthier sour snacks, has raised a $3M Seed funding round led by Science Inc. to expand its product offerings and operational capabilities. - learn more
            LA Venture Funds
            • Smash Capital led a $50M Series B round for Read AI, a productivity-focused AI company, bringing its total funding to $81M. The company offers a platform that enhances meeting efficiency through features like note-taking, summarization, and transcription. Additionally, Read AI introduced "Read AI for Gmail," a free Chrome extension that integrates information from various applications, reducing the need to switch between apps. The funds will be used to increase the company's headcount in engineering, data science, and business teams. - learn more
            • Distributed Global participated in a $25M funding round for Nillion, a company that provides decentralized privacy solutions designed to secure sensitive data using advanced technologies like secure multi-party computation. - learn more
            • Act One Ventures participated in a $5M Seed funding round for Latii, a construction materials supply chain startup, to enhance its platform that connects contractors with suppliers, aiming to streamline procurement processes and reduce costs in the construction industry. - learn more
            • SmartGateVC participated in a pre-seed funding round for Ritual Dental, a company revolutionizing dental care by integrating advanced technology and microbiome science to provide personalized, preventive treatments. - learn more

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                Billion-Dollar Milestones and Snapchat’s New Features

                🔦 Spotlight

                Happy Friday Los Angeles!

                This week’s spotlight showcases LA’s thriving tech scene, featuring Snapchat’s latest feature updates and two local startups Liquid Death and Altruist, making TechCrunch’s Unicorn List for 2024.

                Image Source: Snap

                Snapchat’s recent fall updates bring fresh features, including a new iPhone camera shortcut for instant snaps, Halloween-inspired AI-powered Lenses, and Bitmoji costumes inspired by Mean Girls and Yellowstone. Bitmoji stickers now reflect trending Gen-Z expressions like “slay” and heart symbols for added flair in chats. Plus, the “Footsteps” feature on Snap Map allows users to track their past adventures privately, adding a nostalgic touch.

                Image Source: Liquid Death

                ICYMI, two LA startups joined the Unicorn Club—achieving valuations over $1 billion. Liquid Death, based in Santa Monica, is a canned water company with edgy branding and a humorous sustainability focus. Known for viral marketing and brand partnerships, it redefines bottled water as a lifestyle brand and environmental statement. In March, Liquid Death closed $67 million in strategic financing, raising its total funding to over $267 million and valuing it at $1.4 billion.

                Image Source: Altruist

                Altruist, a Culver City-based fintech platform, offers financial advisors streamlined tools to better serve their clients. With a user-friendly investment and account management platform, Altruist has gained strong traction in the finance world. In May, it announced a $169 million Series E funding round, bringing its total funding to over $449 million and earning a valuation of $1.5 billion.

                Together, Liquid Death and Altruist exemplify LA’s capacity for innovation across diverse sectors, from lifestyle branding to fintech. Whether reshaping financial tools or redefining sustainable branding, these companies showcase LA’s unique entrepreneurial spirit. Go LA!

                Check out TechCrunch’s 2024 Unicorn List here. And don’t miss Snapchat’s latest features—perfect for adding some fun, connection and maybe a few selfies this weekend!


                🤝 Venture Deals

                LA Companies

                • Freeform, a company bringing AI to metal 3D printing, raised $14M in funding from NVIDIA’s NVentures and AE Ventures to further develop its AI-powered 3D printing technology for industrial-scale production. - learn more
                LA Venture Funds
                • Anthos Capital participated in a $70M Series D round for Carbon Robotics, which develops AI-powered robotics for precision agriculture, and the funding will be used to accelerate the growth of its autonomous weeding technology. - learn more
                • Anthos Capital participated in a $3.5M seed round for Plasma Network, aimed at expanding access to USDT stablecoins on the Bitcoin network, with the investment supporting the network’s growth and efforts to enhance stablecoin accessibility through the Lightning Network. - learn more

                LA Exits


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