Lennar's Stuart Miller: ‘Evolve or Die’ as Homes Go High-Tech

Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

Lennar's Stuart Miller: ‘Evolve or Die’ as Homes Go High-Tech

In this episode of Office Hours, Miller discusses how technology will impact homebuilding and design — and how he helped create a culture that embraces innovation at the 60-plus-year-old company.


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Press Play to hear the full conversation or check out the transcript below. You can also subscribe to Office Hours on Apple Podcasts and PodcastOne.

Spencer Rascoff: Thanks for the tour we just completed. Stuart just walked me around the building, and we saw the innovation center, we talked about the digital marketing initiatives that you have, the in-house content creation, including video production. And it was really interesting learning how Lennar — which is a, gosh, 60-year-old company now, I think?

Stuart Miller: Sixty-plus.

Rascoff: Sixty-plus. Firstly, for listeners — so, I learned that Lennar is actually a portmanteau, a combination of Leonard Miller — your father — and Arnold Rosen. And Leonard and Arnold became “Lennar." [Laughs]

Miller: That's correct.

Rascoff: You very rarely see 60-year-old family businesses that have become publicly traded, $20 billion market companies. So, why do you think Lennar has been able to not be disrupted over the last 60 years? I mean, that's quite a legacy. What is it about the culture of the company that has allowed it to stay competitive through time?

Miller: Well, we have a really good combination. The foundation that was laid from those early days is a strong foundation of integrity, of value, of excellence, that creates a backbone that has stayed very much central to the way that the company has been built over years. Through its beginning years, the evolution of the company has stayed true to its values, and those core values have held us in good stead. Now, even with that kind of stodgy old background of starting from so many years ago, there's also been a culture — and, you know, maybe that's been my contribution of coming in from the outside, not as a pioneer but instead as a next-generation — we've developed a culture of saying, “We're gonna be on our front foot, we're gonna be evolutionary, we're gonna stay with the times."

We live by a mantra of “evolve or die," and inherent in that mantra is almost an envy for today's innovative platforms, new technology companies that are not saddled with yesterday's past. But a different way to look at that is, we, the dinosaur companies — the companies that come from years and years of evolution — do have the benefit of having these very, very strong root systems. And if we can constantly go back and revisit those root systems, there's a lot of virtue in those root systems — we certainly benefit from it.

Rascoff: I like that, thinking about the company's root systems and how it provides strength. So, let's talk about those chasms that you've had to cross over the last, say, 10 years. You know, one of the things that you just showed me was how the company has really pivoted its marketing strategy away from traditional marketing — by which I think you mean primarily newspaper advertising and maybe direct mail, TV, radio —

Miller: Newspaper, radio, TV, right.

Rascoff: — to digital advertising. And, I guess, describe how that, you know, what was that evolution like? How did you become a company that primarily focuses on digital marketing and not legacy, traditional marketing?

Miller: So, the starting point is, you know, structure of the company is we have a strong corporate office, but our geographic divisions really operate as small independent companies. And as you might imagine, getting 33, right now, small independent divisions — not small; some of them actually quite large — to actually pivot away from their comfort zone and towards something that is new and evolutionary is not something that one snaps their fingers and it just happens. We came up with a concept that we have to become part of this digital age. We created a challenge to our divisions, to think about making that migration. One division actually effectuated the change — migrated from all conventional forms, away from all conventional forms and towards all digital forms of marketing — found that cost went down by about 50 percent, found that traffic went down, but qualified traffic went way up, and this was very interesting.

Rascoff: So, let me understand it. I guess what I'm hearing is, many companies have a challenge of trying to sort of change dogma — and it was accepted dogma, internally, that traditional marketing had always worked for the last 40-odd years, you know, therefore, we should continue. Challenge number one is changing at the corporate office, that mindset, at the executive level, at the board-of-directors level. But then your unique challenge was that you have a pretty decentralized company, where these different divisions control their own marketing budgets. So, you could've just issued a fiat and said, “Hey, local divisional marketers, you will now be digital." Or perhaps you did issue that fiat, and maybe it was ignored. So, I guess, help listeners who run decentralized organizations learn from your experience. How did you pull this off? [Laughter]

Miller: So, your characterization is actually right on: I did issue a fiat, and everybody applauded it and nodded their head yes, and then went about their business and went back to their comfort zone of saying, “Hey, conventional marketing has always worked. That's what we're gonna continue to do. That's how we make our numbers, and we are bottom-line responsible." One division actually took the challenge, and they made the migration. Once we saw what happened with their costs and with their opportunity set, it became an interesting challenge for us to get one division to actually teach another. We could prove a concept, then we could test the concept and educate on the concept, and once we made that leap, we had one division teach another. We had a set of opportunities that we could articulate across the platform. From there, we articulated what we thought the opportunity set was, and we gamified it. We actually got our divisions to compete against each other along KPIs, to compete along the lines of making the migration from conventional towards digital — driving costs down, driving qualified leads up and maintaining growth rate.

Rascoff: Reflecting on it now, does making it through that shift to a digital marketing company — did that represent an existential threat to the company? In other words, let's say you hadn't. Let's say you hadn't woken up that day, seven years ago, whenever it was, and said, “You know what, we're gonna go digital first for marketing." What would the company be like today?

Miller: I think that story is still to be written. I think that we are advantaged for having made the step because where we sit today is — I believe we're in the first inning of understanding digital marketing. All of our marketing across our platform — I would say 95 percent of it — is digitally focused today. We have driven our costs down, across the platform, 50 percent. But the targeting that we are able to do with digital marketing, and the enhancement of that targeting with digital or video kind of content, and delivering to our customer information and inspiration about our product, our company, and an affiliation with us, is just at its very beginning stages. So, I think we'd be way behind our potential — I don't think we would've been disintermediated yet, but I think the potential to be disintermediated is out there for those who don't get on board.

Rascoff: So, one of the ways that you've created a culture of innovation is by changing your office space. In fact, the office that you're in is the office that your father was in when he was CEO.

Miller: That's right.

Rascoff: And yet, just over the last year or so, you've changed the office space quite significantly on some of the floors. Describe why you did that and what impact you think that's having.

Miller: Yeah, so, we actually gutted our third floor (we're a four-floor building). We gutted our third floor, and we redesigned it and created an innovation center. It's an open floor plan; it was really developed under the thought process that innovation is a contact sport. Innovation happens where ideas collide — sometimes purposefully and sometimes by accident. Many of the initiatives that we have on our third floor were taking place in various silos around the company; we've brought them together in one place, where concepts, ideas, programs can collide, people can intersect and interact in ways that were not initially thought of. We didn't go quite the full direction — [crosstalk]

Rascoff: Not full dot-com, but — [Laughs]

Miller: Not full dot-com: We don't have a foosball table and we don't have a Ping-Pong table. But what we do have is an open floor plan with a lot of technology for people to interact with each other and with technologies to evolve our business. And the mantra is to think outside the box and to think together with people who you don't necessarily work with all the time.

Rascoff: In another episode with Mike Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup, he talks a lot about this as well — how he removed offices from their New York headquarters to encourage innovation, get people to literally break down barriers between divisions and the importance of office space to drive innovation.

Miller: Now, we did this right here in the heart of the dinosaur. I mean, this is our corporate office, this is the 60-plus-year company. We can be considered yesterday's company in technology, but we did it right here in the heart of the corporate office so that it activated all of the artery systems through the company.

Rascoff: So, you are making a potentially company-changing transaction. You're currently, I think, the second-largest homebuilder buying the fifth-largest homebuilder. Together, you will be the largest homebuilder in the country — it's an almost, I think, an almost $10 billion acquisition of CalAtlantic. Describe for me what that thought process was like around the acquisition. Firstly, have you done a lot of acquisitions before? And when you were thinking about buying CalAtlantic, what are the things that went through your head?

Miller: So, first of all, we've done many acquisitions before. We've made some of our biggest, most strategic steps forward on the pivot point of acquisitions. It's been a rich tradition within our company of using strategic combinations and acquisitions to elevate our game. The CalAtlantic acquisition is — or, really, it's not an acquisition; it is a strategic combination — was about looking at a terrific group of people, terrific group of land assets, and finding markets that we know and products that we know combined in geographic locations to create scale. Scale, in our opinion — in local geographic markets, 20 to 40 percent market share in many of these markets — enables us to up our game in terms of the innovation that you've seen here in this office. But also innovation strategies as it relates to things that we might do in the field, the construction part of our business.

Rascoff: So, the scale synergies in your business come from reducing construction costs and marketing efficiencies. Are those the two general categories?

Miller: So, reducing construction costs is a little bit too aggressive and draconian. It's all about creating better relationships with subcontractor bases. All of our subcontractor bases are generally local in nature; manufacturing or distribution might be more national, but our subcontractors are primarily local. Having the market share and the ability to develop better partnerships with our subcontractor base enables us to be a better version of ourselves. It enables us to explore how we can reduce costs while making better profitability for the subcontractor and for us as well. It enables us to start looking at different building systems — cooperative systems that we can work with our subcontractors to develop. All of these things are evolutionary tracks that will define the way forward for the homebuilders of the future.

Rascoff: So, let's close with a brief discussion about the future of homebuilding. Your company has been at the top of its field for more than 50 years. I won't ask you to prognosticate 50 years out, 'cause who knows what the world will look like, but even over the next 10 or 15 years, what trends do you think will impact your industry and your company?

Miller: Interesting question. It's very hard to look around the corner — it's always hard to look around the corner, but we're very respectful of the world that we're in. I think that we all recognize that today we are witnessing the slowest rate of change that we will ever see in our life from today going forward. It is accelerating at a blinding speed, and what that means for our business is that all parts of our business are going to evolve. The way that people look for homes, the way that people find their homes, even the kind of homes that they're looking for are going to evolve. We have to think about the uberization of the homebuilding world — how are we going to better utilize the assets that people have? We have a lot of people who are empty nesters, who have three empty bedrooms where their children used to reside. What is that going to do and how will that impact the housing market in the future? The points of intersection between customer-homebuilder or customer and realtor are going to change. It is going to happen more and more on digital platforms. How are we going to ignite, excite and inspire people to think about the products that we have, and, to the extent that we engage them digitally, how can that conversation leading up to sale help define the products that people are actually looking for?

One last thought is: I've always wondered when we would see obsolescence filter into the homebuilding world. Spencer, you would never buy a car, today, that has rolldown windows unless you really wanted vintage. And so, obsolescence, natural and technological obsolescence, has made its way into the automobile industry and every other industry we've seen. To the extent that, whether it's Wi-Fi distribution in the home, home automation, energy efficiency or a myriad of other things, the home will give way to technology innovation that makes older homes more obsolete. And people will be looking for new styles, new technologies and new ways to live, and I think that will benefit the homebuilding industry, as long as we're able to adapt.

Rascoff: So, at a very high level, I think the era of home automation should be a huge boon to homebuilders, because it's going to seem a lot easier, cheaper, more reliable to buy a new wired home than to retrofit a used home. Would you agree with that?

Miller: Yeah, well, absolutely the case — it starts with Wi-Fi distribution. We've developed a concept called “Wi-Fi certified." A Wi-Fi certified home is something you can do with a new home; it's very hard to do with an existing.

Rascoff: It drives me crazy that my old brick house has bad Wi-Fi in certain spots, and I've had countless experts come and try to improve it, from Zillow and other companies, and it can't be done. [Laughs]

Miller: So, that's a big benefit to the new home market because we can distribute Wi-Fi seamlessly, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. And here's the thing: With retrofit, you're always gonna have dark spots, and more importantly, you're gonna have speed loss or speed variation through the home. We can evenly distribute, without dead spots, evenly distribute Wi-Fi through the home if we think about it while we're building the home.

Rascoff: What about innovations on building itself? I mean, on what timescale, when will I see, you know, robots on construction sites — I mean, literally, like, robots — or more prefab-built, kind of modularized homes? Such that, is there an innovation coming that might bring construction costs down so significantly that the cost of a new home could be a fantastic value? Or is that not likely? [Laughs]

Miller: So, part of that is that “Terminator" stuff that you're asking about, and I'm not ready to get out on those soft limbs quite yet. There will be innovations in homebuilding. They're not here yet. The cost structures don't — and we spend a lot of time looking at these and thinking about these things — and you will see innovations around the edges, whether it's truss plants or wall plants or some manufacturing components. But ultimately, cost structures, and shortages of labor, and labor costs will mitigate in favor of finding new ways to build homes. People have asked about 3D printing of homes, because there are some podcasts and some dream-oriented videos on the —

Rascoff: Yeah, I've seen them.

Miller: Right, most people have. You know, I've tested some of these questions. We wear a name badge every day; it's really almost a two-dimensional piece of plastic. I have tried to find out how easy it is to 3D print this small piece of plastic. We're not there yet. When we can digitally print the name badge, then I'll start thinking about how we digitally [laughs] print the home. And in the meantime, we'll be taking steps, innovative steps, to rethink the building process — driving down cycle time, driving down cost structures and building a better mousetrap as we go forward.

Rascoff: And, of course, self-driving cars might also change our whole approach to urban planning and consumer preferences.

Miller: Absolutely.

Rascoff: I mean, we at Zillow Group are just starting to do research on this to figure out what impact it might have on real estate, but it's possible that if your hour-commute is suddenly productive because you're not driving that people will be willing to commute longer. We don't really know yet what impact it will have. Do you have a theory on this? [Laughs]

Miller: I think we're gonna have to wait and see, and, I mean, we could sit here all day and think about some of the innovations that are out there, that are going to affect the way that we live. To me, that innovation center that you and I toured a little while ago is all about having a cork in the water of a fast-moving stream, and making sure that we're sensitive, aware of the things that are happening that are going to affect the industry. And maybe we won't see around the corner, but maybe as we get to the corner we'll be tuned-in and ready to react. That's how we're thinking about it.

Rascoff: Stuart, congratulations on the success of Lennar through the decades. What I've heard today makes me feel quite confident that it will be successful for decades to come. Thank you for the conversation.

Miller: Thank you.

The post Lennar's Stuart Miller: 'Evolve or Die' appeared first on Office Hours.

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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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            Salt AI Secures $10M to Untangle Healthcare’s Toughest Workflows

            🔦 Spotlight

            Hello Los Angeles,

            Not every startup raise deserves the spotlight, but this week’s news from Salt AI is worth paying attention to. The LA based company just closed a $10 million round led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Struck Capital, Marbruck Investments and CoreWeave. The goal is to expand what it calls “contextual AI,” and if it works, it could quietly change how some of the most complex corners of healthcare get untangled.

            Healthcare is notorious for slow, clunky systems. Even the smallest workflow, like drug trial data, clinical documentation, or compliance reviews, can drag on for weeks because the tools were never built for speed. Salt AI is betting that the fix is not flashy consumer apps or billion parameter models, but something more practical: AI that slots directly into the day to day grind of life sciences. Their platform lets non technical teams visually build and deploy workflows that would normally take months of coding. Drag, drop, done.

            It sounds simple, but the implications are not. Imagine a biopharma team testing a new drug, able to cut through compliance hurdles in days instead of months. Or clinical researchers spinning up experiments and seeing usable results in real time. Salt AI’s pitch is not about replacing scientists, it is about giving them back time in an industry where time can literally mean lives.

            The new capital will help scale engineering, grow its customer footprint, and push further into healthcare and biopharma. But more importantly, it gives Salt AI the chance to prove that “contextual AI” is more than a buzzword. If they succeed, the company will not just chip away at bottlenecks, it could reshape how innovation itself moves through one of the world’s most heavily regulated and mission critical industries.

            🤝 Venture Deals

                LA Companies

                • Bonsai Health raised $7M in a seed round led by Bonfire Ventures and Wonder Ventures. The Santa Monica based company builds an agentic AI platform that automates front office healthcare workflows, things like patient outreach, scheduling and clinical follow-ups, working behind the scenes to keep patients connected to care and reduce administrative burden. It plans to use the funding to accelerate its specialty AI agents, expand into new medical specialties, and scale its commercialization nationwide. - learn more
                • Genstore raised a $10M Seed round led by Weimob, with participation from Lighthouse Founders’ Fund. The Los Angeles based startup is building an AI-native e-commerce platform that lets merchants launch and run online stores using conversational prompts, automating everything from product listings and copywriting to customer service. The funds will go toward accelerating product development, expanding into new markets, and refining features that simplify online commerce for small and midsized sellers. - learn more
                • TransAstra secured a $5M investment to scale its asteroid capture technology in partnership with NASA. The company aims to advance systems that can snag and repurpose small bodies in space, contributing to sustainable space infrastructure and debris mitigation. With this funding, TransAstra will expand development, deepen its relationship with NASA, and accelerate deployment of its capture hardware. - learn more

                LA Venture Funds

                • Fika Ventures led a seed round investing in MaxHome, joining BBG Ventures, Four Acres and 1Sharpe Ventures. MaxHome is building an AI-native platform focused on automating real estate transaction coordination, the messy, manual work that slows deals. Fika backed the team because it sees a huge opportunity in streamlining broker workflows, reducing errors, and improving the experience for agents and homebuyers alike. - learn more
                • MANTIS Ventures joined NEA, Sequoia, NVIDIA, J.P. Morgan and others in leading a $50M Series B for Factory, valuing the AI coding company at $300 million. Factory builds “droids,” AI agents that automate software development tasks across environments, and claims their platform now tops the Terminal Bench benchmark. With this capital, Factory aims to expand enterprise adoption, deepen integrations, and scale its engineering team globally. - learn more
                • SafeHill (formerly Tacticly) announced a $2.6M pre-seed round led by Mucker Capital, with participation from Chingona Ventures, Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, and others. The Chicago-based cybersecurity startup is launching from stealth with SecureIQ, a continuous Threat Exposure Management platform that blends AI-driven testing with human validation to help organizations find and shore up attack paths. The funding will be used to expand engineering, enhance AI-assisted ethical hacking, deepen enterprise partnerships, and broaden compliance and monitoring capabilities. - learn more
                • Prototype Capital was among the investors in Nilo Technologies’ $4M seed round, alongside backers like Supercell, a16z Speedrun, KFund, and Flex Capital. Nilo is building an AI native 3D creation platform that makes game development more accessible, letting creators build interactive worlds in their browser without complex tooling. The funding will help accelerate product development, bring in more users as “Founding Builders,” and expand the platform’s capabilities for real time, multiplayer creation. - learn more
                • Rebel Fund participated in a $7.5M funding round for Indian fintech Gold Firm Gullak backed by Y Combinator. Gullak offers digital gold savings and lending solutions targeted at underbanked consumers in India. Rebel Fund’s investment will help Gullak scale operations, deepen financial inclusion, and expand its product offerings. - learn more
                • B Capital joined Wellington Management, General Catalyst and others in a $400M funding round for Capital Rx, which is rebranding as Judi Health. The company, which operates a pharmacy benefits management platform, will use the capital to expand into full-spectrum health benefits, integrating medical, dental and vision claims processing with its existing PBM capabilities. The move positions Judi Health as a unified tech backbone for benefits administration across employer and plan clients. - learn more
                • Supply Change Capital joined a seed funding round that raised $4.7M for Helios AI, a startup building the first AI co-pilot for food and agriculture supply chains. Helios’ platform combines climate modeling, commodity forecasting, and real-time data to help buyers and suppliers make smarter decisions in volatile markets. The funding will be used to scale the product, expand data coverage globally, and bring its AI tools to more players across the agri-food sector. - learn more

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                    ServiceTitan Ups the AI Stakes

                    🔦 Spotlight

                    Hello Los Angeles,

                    ServiceTitan is making it clear: the trades are getting a tech glow up. At its annual Pantheon conference in Glendale, the home services software giant rolled out a bold AI vision and topped it off with a fresh acquisition that could change the way HVAC contractors do business.

                    First, the AI. ServiceTitan unveiled what it calls the “next evolution” of its platform, and this is not just window dressing. Think automated call summaries so techs spend less time typing, predictive scheduling that knows when your AC is likely to fail before you do, and estimates that generate faster than a homeowner can ask, “So, how much is this going to cost me?” For small and mid sized contractors, these are the kinds of tools that level the playing field against the big chains and maybe even help them get home before dinner. It is AI built not for hype, but for the day to day grind of the trades, where minutes saved can mean jobs won and customers kept.

                    Then came the news that ServiceTitan is acquiring Conduit Tech, a Boston startup best known for its LiDAR powered HVAC design software. Instead of squinting at tape measures and crunching numbers in clunky spreadsheets, contractors can now scan a home, generate a 3D model, and deliver a polished, ACCA certified proposal on the spot. Translation: faster bids, more trust, and fewer “I will get back to you next week” moments.

                    Put together, the AI rollout and Conduit deal are more than product updates. They are a signal of where ServiceTitan wants to take the industry. This is not just software that keeps the books balanced or trucks dispatched. It is an attempt to make technology an advantage in a field where labor is scarce, expectations are high, and every interaction with a customer matters. In short, ServiceTitan is not just keeping the lights on, it is rewiring how the trades get work done.

                    🤝 Venture Deals

                        LA Companies

                        • Modern Animal has hit a $100M annual run rate and closed a new $46M funding round led by Addition, True Ventures and Upfront Ventures with participation from Founders Fund. The company delivers veterinary care both in clinics and virtually, and it is using the funds to expand services such as specialty care, 24/7 virtual access, integrated pharmacy and ecommerce, along with extended urgent care hours. The company also announced a board expansion with new leadership added to support scaling operations and enhancing its technology infrastructure. - learn more
                        • MarqVision raised a $48M Series B round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from investors including Salesforce Ventures, HSG, Coral Capital, and returning backers like Y Combinator and Altos Ventures. Based in Los Angeles, MarqVision offers AI-powered brand protection tools—monitoring marketplaces, removing counterfeit listings, managing trademarks, and protecting brand reputation online. The new funds will go toward expanding its AI and engineering teams, accelerating automation, enabling enterprise-grade features, and growing its global presence in markets like Japan, Korea, China, Europe and beyond. - learn more
                        • Divergent Technologies raised $290M in a Series E round led by Rochefort Asset Management, with $250M in equity and $40M in debt, bringing its valuation to about $2.3 billion. Using its proprietary DAPS (Divergent Adaptive Production System) platform, the Torrance based company builds hardware for aerospace, defense and automotive sectors by combining rapid design, additive manufacturing and automated assembly. The new capital will help Divergent scale its manufacturing capacity, build out its team and develop new capabilities for upcoming product lines. - learn more
                        • Apex raised $200M in a Series D round led by Interlagos, giving the Los Angeles company a valuation above $1 billion. Apex builds configurable “satellite bus” platforms used by commercial and government clients, including for communications, sensing, and national security constellations. The capital will boost production capacity by 50 percent, expand its manufacturing footprint in Los Angeles, and strengthen vertical integration including acquiring propulsion technology and insourcing more subsystems. - learn more

                          LA Venture Funds

                          • Mantis Venture Capital joined Benchmark, Uncork, Y Combinator and Mayfield in backing Numeral’s $35M Series B, part of a $57M total funding haul. Numeral is an AI powered platform that automates everything around sales tax for e-commerce and SaaS brands including filing, remittance, exemption certificates, state registrations, nexus detection and more. The money will go to speeding up product innovation, building out its global compliance footprint, and adding smarter automation so finance teams can stop wrestling with tax rules and start scaling. - learn more
                          • Magnify Ventures participated in Series A for Seven Starling, contributing to an $8M funding round led by Rethink Impact. Seven Starling is a virtual women’s mental health company focused on maternal mental health, offering group therapy, medication management, patient advocates, and digital tools. The new capital will fuel its expansion into more U.S. states (aiming for over 30 by the end of 2026), deepen partnerships with healthcare providers, and scale its model to help more mothers. - learn more
                          • Calibrate Ventures led Vibranium Labs’ $4.6M seed round, joined by Mirae Asset and investors including a16z and Franklin Templeton. Vibranium Labs’ flagship product, “Vibe AI,” acts as a full-time AI incident engineer, monitoring, triaging, and resolving IT incidents automatically. The funds will be used to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development, and deepen integrations so Vibe AI can be embedded into more incident response systems across industries. - learn more
                          • B Capital led a $20M financing round in Extend, with additional participation by March Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, and Commerce Ventures. Extend, a spend-and-expense management platform, allows businesses to use virtual cards with their existing bank or card programs while offering workflow tools like receipt capture, approvals, and automated reconciliation. The new capital will help Extend scale issuer partnerships, launch new expense management services, accelerate its path to profitability, and the company also added Francois Horikawa as CFO to help guide the financial strategy forward. - learn more
                          • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Versant Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners USA in a $65M Series A for Dualitas Therapeutics, a South San Francisco company developing bispecific antibodies through its DualScreen discovery engine. Dualitas is advancing two lead programs, DTX-103 for allergic disease and DTX-102 for autoimmune conditions, both showing strong preclinical results. The funding will support these programs and expand the company’s platform to discover new bispecific candidates in immunology, inflammation and beyond. - learn more
                          • Oversubscribed Ventures joined a syndicate that invested in Noble Mobile’s $10 million seed round. Noble Mobile, founded by Andrew Yang, is a telecom startup offering unlimited data plans while giving customers cash back when they use less data. The funds will be used to launch operations, roll out its mobile virtual network service, and build features that encourage better digital wellness. - learn more
                          • Mantis Venture Capital participated in Doctronic’s $20M Series A round, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also backed by Union Square Ventures, Tusk Ventures, Seven Stars, and others. Doctronic is a healthcare AI startup building a platform for fast, personalized medical advice and virtual visits with licensed physicians, aiming to reduce wait times and costs. The new funds will help the company scale its operations across the U.S., expand partnerships with insurers and health systems, and extend its reach to more patients. - learn more
                          • Strong Ventures led a Series A round investing about ₩1 billion in Ares3, with Seoul National University Technology Holdings also participating. Ares3 runs florist subscription service “Honest Flower” for consumers and “FlowerGo,” a B2B platform for floral suppliers, with steady growth thanks to brand partnerships and solid demand. The new capital will help Ares3 extend its reach via offline experience locations and campaigns to shift public perception of flowers from luxury to everyday goods. - learn more
                          • Gold House Ventures participated in MedSetGo’s oversubscribed $2.4M seed round led by TurboStart. MedSetGo is an AI-driven healthcare company based in San Francisco that is working to streamline patient care transitions by helping people find and schedule the right care after discharge. The funding will go toward accelerating product development and hiring, especially expanding the engineering, data science, and commercialization teams. - learn more
                          • March Capital was among the investors in Lila Sciences’ $235M Series A round, which was co-led by Braidwell and Collective Global. Lila builds an autonomous science platform combining AI, robotics and software to automate the scientific method - generating hypotheses, designing experiments, running them, learning from results. The funds will be used to scale Lila’s “AI Science Factories,” expand globally in cities like Boston, San Francisco and London, and accelerate its ability to explore materials, chemistry, life sciences and diagnostics more quickly. - learn more

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