The Streaming Era Just Ate the Studio Era

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles!

In a week where everyone was already arguing about what “the future of entertainment” is supposed to look like, Netflix decided to skip the debate and buy a giant piece of the past and, possibly, the future. Netflix announced a definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s Studios and Streaming business, including Warner Bros. film and television studios plus HBO and HBO Max. This is not just another media merger. It is a power transfer, from the studio era where the gatekeepers were greenlight committees to the platform era where the gatekeepers are subscriber relationships, home screens, and retention math.

Here are the bones of the deal. WBD shareholders would receive $27.75 per share, made up of $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix stock, with the stock portion subject to a symmetrical collar. Netflix puts the transaction at roughly $72 billion in equity value and $82.7 billion in enterprise value, and expects it to close in 12 to 18 months, but only after WBD completes its planned separation of its Global Networks business into Discovery Global, now expected in Q3 2026.

Now zoom in on why this matters in Los Angeles specifically.

LA’s creative engine is about to be run by a single, very efficient distribution machine

Warner Bros. is not just a studio. It is an institutional muscle memory for how to develop, package, and produce at scale, plus a library and franchises that can carry a business through multiple economic cycles. Netflix is not just a distributor. It is the largest direct to consumer entertainment subscription platform on earth, built around global reach, product iteration, and data feedback loops. Put them together and you get a company that can create, market, distribute, and monetize premium entertainment without needing anyone else’s permission.

That will sound exciting to some creators and terrifying to others, often for the same reason. When the same entity owns the audience relationship and the content factory, it can take bigger swings because it has more margin for error. It can also take fewer swings because it does not need to. The incentive shifts from “What is culturally important?” to “What makes people stay?” Those are sometimes the same question. Sometimes they are not.

This deal won’t be decided in a writers’ room. It’ll be decided by regulators.

This is exactly the type of consolidation regulators have been itching to interrogate. A combined Netflix plus HBO Max instantly raises questions about market power, competition, and pricing, plus downstream effects on theaters, independent studios, and negotiating leverage with talent. Even if Netflix vows to maintain current operations and keep the consumer experience strong, the political story is straightforward: fewer giant buyers typically means less bargaining power for everyone who sells into the system.

Also worth noting, Reuters reports a termination fee of $5.8 billion under certain circumstances, which tells you both sides are bracing for a drawn out, high scrutiny process.

The quiet subtext: the bundle is coming back, just wearing a streaming hoodie

Netflix will almost certainly pitch this as more choice and better value. Regulators will hear less competition. Consumers will hear how much is this going to cost me. The most plausible end state is not a single mega app on day one. It is a reimagined bundle: separate brands, packaged pricing, shared sign on, cross promotion, and eventually tighter integration if the politics and churn math allow it.

The real disruption is not whether HBO Max keeps its name. It is whether Netflix becomes the default front door to premium scripted entertainment globally.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Castelion, a Torrance based defense technology startup, raised a $350M Series B round led by Altimeter Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lavrock Ventures, Space VC, Avenir and Interlagos Capital. The money will be used to scale production of its Blackbeard hypersonic weapon, stand up its Project Ranger manufacturing campus in New Mexico, and support multiservice testing and integration with U.S. Army and Navy platforms starting in 2026. - learn more

Antares announced a $96M Series B to accelerate an iterative “build, test, iterate” approach to developing nuclear reactors quickly, with the funding going toward hardware and subsystem testing, fuel fabrication, manufacturing, and the infrastructure to turn on a reactor. The company says it plans a low-power “Mark-0” reactor demonstration in 2026 at Idaho National Laboratory, with a pathway to a full-power electricity-producing reactor as early as 2027 and a commercial prototype microreactor (“Mark-1”) after the Mark-0 milestone. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

With FirstLook Partners participating, Flex raised a $60M Series B led by Portage, bringing its total equity raised to $105M to build an AI native finance platform for middle market business owners. The company says it will use the new funding to accelerate product expansion and scale its AI agent infrastructure across areas like private credit, business finance, personal finance, payments, and ERP. - learn more

Led by MTech Capital, Curvestone AI raised a $4M seed round with participation from Boost Capital Partners, D2 Fund, and Portfolio Ventures to scale its AI automation platform for regulated industries like financial services, legal, and insurance. The company says it’s tackling the “compound error” problem that makes multi step AI workflows unreliable, and will use the funding to accelerate product development and go to market expansion. - learn more

Co-led by CIV, Unlimited Industries raised a $12M seed round (alongside Andreessen Horowitz) to scale its “AI-native construction” approach to designing and building major infrastructure projects. The company says its platform can generate and evaluate massive numbers of design configurations to optimize for cost, safety, and performance, cutting pre-construction engineering timelines from months to weeks, and it is initially focusing on projects that rapidly expand U.S. power capacity for things like data centers, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing. - learn more

With Hyperion Capital participating (alongside Amplify Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Tamarack Global and others), Antithesis raised a $105M Series A led by Jane Street, which is both an investor and an existing customer. The company says it will use the capital to accelerate its deterministic simulation testing platform and scale go to market efforts across North America, Europe, and Asia, positioning the product as “critical infrastructure” for teams running complex distributed systems. - learn more

With XO Ventures participating, Orq.ai raised an oversubscribed €5M seed round led by seed + speed Ventures and Galion.exe to help enterprises build, deploy, and manage production grade AI agents with stronger control over data, behavior, and compliance. The company says the funding will accelerate expansion of its platform, including its newly launched Agent Studio and managed runtime, as it pushes to close the “AI production gap” for companies moving beyond demos into real deployment. - learn more

Untapped Ventures participated in Lemurian Labs’ oversubscribed $28M Series A, co-led by Pebblebed Ventures and Hexagon, as the company builds a software-first platform designed to run AI workloads efficiently across any hardware and across edge, cloud, and on-prem environments. Lemurian says the funding will help it expand engineering, accelerate product development, and deepen ecosystem collaborations aimed at reducing vendor lock in and infrastructure costs. - learn more

Fifth Wall and Park Rangers Capital participated in Ridley’s $6.4M seed round, which Fifth Wall led, backing the company’s push to rebuild the real estate process around consumers with fewer commission-heavy frictions. Ridley says the capital will help launch an AI-powered buy-side experience that surfaces private, for-sale, and “soon-to-be-listed” homes using predictive analytics, while also expanding its commission-free seller tools and “Preferred Agents” network for on-demand support. - learn more

Anthos Capital participated in Kalshi’s $1B Series E at an $11B valuation, a round led by Paradigm with other backers including Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Meritech, IVP, ARK Invest, CapitalG, and Y Combinator. Kalshi says its trading volume now exceeds $1B per week across 3,500+ markets, and it will use the new capital to accelerate consumer adoption, integrate more brokerages, strike news partnerships, and expand product offerings. - learn more

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💘Zeitview’s New Valentine : Catching Methane Leaks

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles, happy Friday and happy Valentine’s Day weekend.

While the rest of us are debating flowers vs. gifts vs. reservations, LA’s infrastructure nerds are out here celebrating a different kind of romance: finding leaks before they ghost your entire operation.

Zeitview just made methane a first-class feature

Zeitview has acquired Insight M, folding high-frequency aerial methane detection into its broader “see it, measure it, fix it” play for critical infrastructure. The combined offering pairs methane monitoring with Zeitview’s predictive asset-health and inspection workflows, so operators can spot emissions faster, prioritize repairs, and tie results back to ROI instead of vibes.

What Zeitview actually does, beyond the buzzwords

If you haven’t been tracking them, Zeitview is essentially the operating layer for inspecting big, physical assets using drones, aircraft, and computer vision. They can analyze imagery you already have or capture fresh data, then turn it into inspection reports and analytics through their Asset Insights platform.

Zeitview was previously known as DroneBase and rebranded after raising an expansion round, signaling a broader push beyond “drones” into enterprise-grade infrastructure intelligence across energy and other asset-heavy industries.

Why Insight M fits, and why this isn’t just “climate tech”

Methane is the rare climate problem that also hits the P&L, because a leak is both emissions and lost product. Insight M has built credibility around methane monitoring that’s meant to be operational, not just observational, and that plugs neatly into Zeitview’s inspection footprint.

Put together, this looks less like a single acquisition and more like a workflow upgrade: one system that finds a problem, quantifies it, routes it to the right team, and proves it was fixed. The least romantic Valentine’s message of all, maybe, but also the most adult: “I noticed something small, and I handled it before it became expensive.”

Keep scrolling for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

HAWKs (Hiking Adventures With Kids), a nature-based children’s enrichment brand founded in Los Angeles, secured a strategic investment from Post Investment Group to accelerate its nationwide franchise expansion. The company plans to scale its mobile, outdoor-program model (after-school adventures, camps, and weekend sessions) by opening franchise territories across the U.S. while using Post’s franchising platform to build the operational infrastructure and support system for new operators. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

Allomer Capital Group participated in TRUCE Software’s newly closed Series B, a round led by Yttrium with additional backing from New Amsterdam Growth Capital. The company did not disclose the amount, but says it will use the funding to scale go-to-market for two mobile-first product suites: an AI video telematics platform for commercial fleets that runs on standard smartphones, and TRUCE Family, a software approach to limiting student phone distractions in K–12 schools. - learn more

Wonder Ventures participated in The Biological Computing Company’s $25M seed round, which was led by Primary Venture Partners alongside Builders VC, Refactor Capital, E1 Ventures, Proximity, and Tusk Ventures. The startup is commercializing “biological compute,” connecting living neurons to modern AI systems to make certain tasks dramatically more energy-efficient, and says its first product shows a 23x retained improvement in video model efficiency while also helping discover new AI architectures. - learn more

Bonfire Ventures co-led Santé’s $7.6M seed round, with backing from Operator Collective, Y Combinator, and Veridical Ventures. Santé is building an AI- and fintech-driven operating system for wine and liquor retailers that brings POS, inventory, e-commerce, delivery orders, and invoice workflows into one platform to replace a lot of manual, fragmented processes. - learn more

B Capital co-led Apptronik’s initial 2025 Series A and participated again in the company’s new $520M Series A extension, bringing the total Series A to $935M+ (nearly $1B raised overall). The company says it will use the fresh capital to ramp production and deployments of its Apollo humanoid robots and invest in facilities for robot training and data collection, with the extension also bringing in new backers like AT&T Ventures, John Deere, and Qatar Investment Authority alongside repeat investors including Google and Mercedes-Benz. - learn more

WndrCo participated in Inertia Enterprises’s new $450M Series A, a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with additional investors including GV, Modern Capital, and Threshold Ventures. The company says it will use the milestone-based financing to commercialize laser-based fusion built on physics proven at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including building its “Thunderwall” high-power laser system and scaling a production line to mass-manufacture fusion fuel targets. - learn more

Riot Ventures participated as a returning investor in Integrate’s $17M Series A, which was led by FPV Ventures with participation from Fuse VC and Rsquared VC. Integrate is pitching an ultra-secure project management platform built for classified, multi-organization programs, and says it has become a requirement for certain U.S. Space Force launch efforts. The company plans to use the new funding to ship additional capabilities for government customers and scale go-to-market across the defense tech sector. - learn more

MANTIS Ventures participated in Project Omega’s $12M oversubscribed seed round, which was led by Starship Ventures alongside Buckley Ventures, Decisive Point, Slow Ventures, and others. Project Omega is emerging from stealth to build an end-to-end nuclear fuel recycling capability in the U.S., aiming to turn spent nuclear fuel into long-duration power sources and critical materials, with early lab demonstrations underway and an ARPA-E partnership to validate a commercially viable recycling pathway. - learn more

Plus Capital participated in Garner Health’s $118M round, which was led by Khosla Ventures with additional backing from Founders Fund and existing investors including Maverick Ventures and Thrive Capital, valuing the company at $1.35B. Garner says it helps employers steer members to high-quality doctors using its “Smart Match” provider recommendations and a reimbursement-style incentive called “Garner Rewards,” and it will use the funding to expand its offerings, grow its care team, and scale partnerships with payers and health systems. - learn more

Emerging Ventures co-led Taiv’s $13M Series A+ alongside IDC Ventures, with continued support from investors including Y Combinator and Garage Capital. Taiv says it will use the funding to scale its “Business TV” platform, which uses AI to detect and swap TV commercials in venues like bars and restaurants with more relevant ads and on-screen content, as it expands across major North American markets. - learn more

LA Exits

Mattel163 is being acquired by Mattel, which is buying out NetEase’s remaining 50% stake and valuing the mobile games studio at $318M. The deal gives Mattel full ownership and control of the team behind its IP driven mobile titles, strengthening its in-house publishing and user acquisition capabilities as it expands its digital games business. - learn more

DJ Mex Corp. is set to be acquired in part by Marwynn Holdings, which signed a non-binding letter of intent to purchase a 51% stake in the U.S.-based e-waste sourcing and logistics company. The deal would bring DJ Mex into Marwynn’s EcoLoopX platform to expand its asset-light “reverse supply chain” services for recyclable materials, though it’s still subject to due diligence and final agreements. - learn more

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Skyryse Raised $300M+ to Do What Most Startups Can’t

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles

LA just minted another aviation unicorn, and it is not because someone built a prettier helicopter demo. It's because Skyryse is trying to do the rarest thing in tech: turn software into something regulators will sign their name to, and that pilots will trust when conditions are at their worst.

El Segundo’s newest unicorn is simplifying the cockpit

Skyryse raised $300M+ in a Series C at a $1.15B valuation. The round was led by Autopilot Ventures and returning investor Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from Qatar Investment Authority, ArrowMark Partners, Atreides, BAM Elevate, Baron Capital Group, Durable Capital Partners, Positive Sum, Rokos (RCM Private Markets Fund), and Woodline Partners, among others.

Image Source: Skyryse

The pitch is bold and deceptively simple. Skyryse is building a “universal operating system for flight,” SkyOS, designed to replace the cockpit’s maze of mechanical controls with a computer-driven system that makes routine flight easier and emergency situations more manageable. The bigger claim is standardization: if you can make the interface and controls feel consistent across aircraft, you reduce training friction, lower pilot workload, and create fewer opportunities for human error when the stakes spike.

The real work starts after the press release

Skyryse says the funding will be used to accelerate FAA certification and scale SkyOS across additional aircraft platforms, including the Black Hawk. That is the hard part, and also the part most startups never reach. Aviation is where software has to prove itself in edge cases, repeatedly, with zero tolerance for surprises, because “mostly works” is another way of saying “eventually fails.”

The bet hiding inside the headlines

If Skyryse clears certification and can port SkyOS across aircraft types the way software ports across devices, it could unlock a new category of safety automation for fleets that cannot afford downtime, confusion, or long training cycles. Emergency response, defense modernization, and industrial aviation are all markets where reliability is the product, and simplicity is the differentiator. In a world obsessed with shipping faster, Skyryse is playing a different game: getting permission to ship at all.

Keep scrolling for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Accrual announced it has raised $75M in new funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from Go Global Ventures, Pruven Capital, Edward Jones Ventures, and a group of founders and industry executives. The company says the raise supports its official launch and continued buildout, alongside early partner firms, investors, and advisors. - learn more

Morpheus Space secured a $15M strategic investment led by Alpine Space Ventures and the European Investment Fund, with continued support from existing investors, to fuel its next phase of growth. The company says it will use the capital to expand mass-production capacity and its team at its Dresden “Reloaded” facility, helping industrialize its GO-2 electric propulsion systems and meet rising demand from large satellite constellations. - learn more

Machina Labs raised a $124M Series C to build its first large-scale “Intelligent Factory,” a U.S.-based production site aimed at rapidly manufacturing complex metal structures for defense, aerospace, and advanced mobility. The company says the funding, backed by investors including Woven Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures, and Strategic Development Fund, will help it scale its AI-and-robotics “software-defined” manufacturing approach from breakthrough tech into high-throughput production infrastructure. - learn more

Midi Health raised a $100M Series D led by Goodwater Capital, with new investors Foresite Capital and Serena Ventures joining and existing backers including GV, Emerson Collective, and others returning, valuing the company at over $1B. The women’s telehealth provider says it will use the funding to scale beyond menopause care into a broader, AI-enabled women’s health platform, expanding access and using AI to personalize care and streamline clinical operations. - learn more

Mitra EV raised $27M in financing, combining equity led by Ultra Capital with a credit facility from S2G Investments, to expand its “no upfront capital” fleet electrification model. The Los Angeles-based company says it will use the money to grow its shared charging network, roll out additional fleet solutions, and expand into new markets, positioning itself as a fully managed package that bundles EV leasing, overnight charging, and access to shared fast-charging hubs. - learn more

Plug raised a $20M Series A to scale its EV-first marketplace, following $60M in used EV sales since launching in 2024. The round was led by Lightspeed with participation from Galvanize and existing investors including Autotech Ventures, Leap Forward Ventures, and Renn Global, as Plug positions itself as infrastructure for the coming wave of off-lease EV inventory with EV-native pricing, battery health insights, and faster dealer transactions. - learn more

Breezy, a Los Angeles-based AI operating system for residential real estate professionals, raised an oversubscribed $10M pre-seed round led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Fifth Wall, DST Global, Liquid 2 Ventures, O.G. Venture Partners, and others. The company says it will use the funding to strengthen its product and data platform, grow engineering and design, invest in security, and prepare for broader U.S. and international rollout. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

Upfront Ventures participated in Daytona’s $24M Series A, a round led by FirstMark Capital with participation from Pace Capital and existing investors E2VC and Darkmode, plus strategic checks from Datadog and Figma Ventures. Daytona is building “composable computers” for AI agents, essentially programmatic, stateful sandboxes that can be spun up, paused, and snapshotted on demand so agents can safely run code and explore many paths in parallel at scale. - learn more

Second Sight Ventures participated in Willie’s Remedy+’s $15M Series A, a round led by Left Lane Capital to fuel national retail expansion and continued product development for its hemp-derived THC beverages positioned as an alcohol alternative. The company says it has already sold 400,000+ bottles in under a year and claims the top spot for online THC beverage sales as it gears up for broader distribution in 2026. - learn more

Navitas Capital led Cadastral’s $9.5M funding round, with participation from JLL Spark Global Ventures, AvalonBay, Equity Residential, and 1Sharpe. Cadastral says it will use the capital to accelerate product development and expand go-to-market for its vertical AI platform, positioning the product as an “AI analyst in a box” that automates core commercial real estate workflows like underwriting and due diligence. - learn more

B Capital participated in Lunar Energy’s $232M raise, which the company disclosed as two rounds: a $102M Series D led by B Capital and Prelude Ventures, and a previously unannounced $130M Series C led by Activate Capital. The startup says it will use the capital to rapidly scale home-battery manufacturing and deployments, turning those distributed systems into a grid-supporting virtual power plant as electricity demand surges. - learn more

B Capital participated in Goodfire’s $150M Series B at a $1.25B valuation, a round that also included investors like Juniper Ventures, DFJ Growth, Salesforce Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, South Park Commons, Wing, and Eric Schmidt. Goodfire says it will use the funding to scale its interpretability-driven “model design environment,” aimed at helping teams understand, debug, and deliberately shape how AI models behave in high-stakes settings. - learn more

Helena participated in Positron AI’s oversubscribed $230M Series B at a post-money valuation above $1B, alongside strategic investors including Qatar Investment Authority and Arm. The round was co-led by ARENA Private Wealth, Jump Trading, and Unless, and the company says it will use the capital to scale energy-efficient AI inference now and accelerate its next-generation “Asimov” silicon roadmap. - learn more

Smash Capital participated in ElevenLabs’ $500M Series D, which values the company at $11B as it scales its voice and conversational AI products for enterprise use. The round was led by Sequoia Capital with support from existing backers like Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ Capital, plus additional participation including Lightspeed Venture Partners. - learn more

MTech Capital participated in Pasito’s $21M Series A, a round led by Insight Partners with additional participation from Y Combinator. Pasito says it’s building an AI-native workspace for group health, life, and retirement benefits that turns messy, unstructured plan and census data into a unified layer so carriers and brokers can automate workflows end-to-end, from quoting and enrollment to support and claims. - learn more

Rebel Fund participated in Ruvo’s $4.6M seed round, led by 1confirmation with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others, as the Y Combinator-backed fintech expands its cross-border payments infrastructure between Brazil and the U.S. Ruvo says it operates like a U.S. dollar account for Brazilians, combining Pix, stablecoins, ACH/wire transfers, and a Visa card in one app to speed up remittances by reducing intermediaries. - learn more

Rainfall Ventures participated in a seed funding round for Deft Robotics alongside Spring Camp, backing the company’s push to build AI-driven automation tools for manufacturers. The round amount wasn’t disclosed in the announcement, but the funding is positioned to help Deft scale product development and customer deployments in industrial settings. - learn more

Trousdale Ventures participated in CesiumAstro’s Series C by leading the $270M equity portion of a $470M total growth-capital raise, alongside investors including Woven Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, and Airbus Ventures. CesiumAstro says the broader financing also includes $200M from Export-Import Bank of the United States and J.P. Morgan, and will fund a major U.S. scale-up including a new 270,000-square-foot HQ and expanded manufacturing to accelerate deployment of its software-defined, AI-enabled space communications platforms. - learn more

Mucker Capital participated in Linq’s $20M Series A, which was led by TQ Ventures to help the company become infrastructure for AI assistants that run directly inside messaging apps. Linq’s platform lets developers and businesses deploy assistants through channels like iMessage, RCS, and SMS, and the company says the funding will go toward expanding the team, building a go-to-market motion, and continuing to develop the product. - learn more

Sound Ventures participated in Day AI’s $20M Series A, which was led by Sequoia Capital with additional participation from Greenoaks, Conviction, and Permanent Capital. Day AI says the funding will help scale its AI-native CRM platform and support its move into general availability, positioning “CRMx” as a faster, context-driven alternative to legacy systems that turn simple questions into slow projects. - learn more

Chaac Ventures participated in Arbor’s $6.3M seed round, which was led by 645 Ventures with additional backing from Next Play Ventures, Comma Capital, and angel investors. Arbor is building an AI interview and research platform that captures frontline employee and customer conversations and turns that qualitative “ground truth” into structured operational intelligence leaders can act on quickly, without slow surveys or pricey consultants. - learn more

B Capital participated in When’s $10.2M Series A, a round co-led by ManchesterStory and 7wire, with new investor Mairs & Power Venture Capital and returning backers Enfield Capital Partners, TTV Capital, and Alumni Ventures. When says it helps employers and departing or transitioning employees navigate health coverage changes by steering people to more affordable alternatives to COBRA through an AI-powered marketplace and targeted reimbursements, with the new capital going toward team growth and expanding into more transition scenarios like Medicare eligibility and early retirements. - learn more

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$100M and a Space Force Deal: Northwood’s One-Two Punch

Grace Lee

🔦 Spotlight

Hello Los Angeles

The most underrated part of the space boom isn’t what gets launched, it’s what happens after. A satellite can be flawless in orbit and still be functionally useless if you can’t talk to it fast, often, and reliably, especially when something breaks.

Torrance is proving the next space race is won on the ground

Northwood Space, operating out of a 35,000-square-foot facility in Torrance, just landed a rare one-two punch: a $100M Series B and a roughly $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract tied to upgrades for the Satellite Control Network, the system that supports launches, early operations, tracking and control, and emergency support when satellites go sideways. The Series B was led by Washington Harbour Partners, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, and included participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Founders Fund, StepStone, Balerion, Fulcrum, Pax, 137 Ventures, and others.

Image Source: Northwood Space

What’s intriguing here isn’t just the dollars, it’s the thesis. Northwood is arguing that the next wave of space companies won’t be constrained by rockets, but by operations and connectivity, meaning the ground layer becomes the strategic choke point. Their approach combines vertically integrated ground infrastructure with phased-array systems (“Portal”) that can steer multiple beams electronically and support missions across LEO, MEO, and GEO, aiming to make ground access feel less like bespoke aerospace procurement and more like scalable infrastructure.

Why this matters right now

In a market where “space” headlines often center on what’s above the atmosphere, this week’s signal is that the decisive advantage may live down here. If Northwood can make satellite communications more frequent, more flexible, and easier to scale, it doesn’t just help one mission, it changes the economics of operating entire fleets.

Scroll on for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

LA Companies

Origin, a pelvic floor physical therapy and women’s musculoskeletal care provider, raised a Series B led by SJF Ventures with participation from Blue Venture Fund and Gratitude Railroad, plus financing from California’s IBank and several angel investors. The company says it will use the funding to expand access to its hybrid model of in-person clinics and nationwide virtual care, and to invest in AI-enabled clinical tools, clinician training through Origin University, and additional clinical research. - learn more

OpenDrives announced new funding led by IAG Capital Partners to support growth of its software platform for video data management used by media, sports, and enterprise teams. Alongside the investment, the company named longtime COO Trevor Morgan as CEO as it continues shifting from a hardware-first business to a software-focused platform. - learn more

LA Venture Funds

MANTIS Venture Capital participated in Rogo’s $75M Series C, a round led by Sequoia that values the AI “agent” platform at about $750M. The company says it will use the new funding to scale its AI system for investment-banking workflows and accelerate its European expansion, including opening its first international office in London. - learn more

B Capital led PaleBlueDot AI’s $150M Series B, pushing the AI compute platform’s valuation to over $1B. The company says it will use the funding to deepen its core tech and platform engineering, expand go-to-market, and scale across North America and Asia to meet rising enterprise demand for cost-efficient AI infrastructure. - learn more

Rebel Fund participated in Modelence’s seed round, which raised $3M and was led by Y Combinator alongside other investors. Modelence is building an all-in-one TypeScript toolkit that bundles essentials like auth, databases, hosting, and LLM observability to reduce the “stitching things together” headaches that come with vibe-coding and modern app infrastructure. - learn more

Alexandria Venture Investments participated in TRexBio’s oversubscribed $50M financing alongside several new investors and existing backers. The company says it will use the funds to advance TRB-061, its TNFR2 agonist designed to selectively activate regulatory T cells, in an ongoing Phase 1a/b study for atopic dermatitis, and to move preclinical programs TRB-071 and TRB-081 toward the clinic. - learn more

Bonfire Ventures led Risotto’s $10M seed round to help the startup bring AI into help desk workflows and make ticketing systems easier to use. Risotto aims to autonomously resolve support tickets by sitting between tools like Jira and a company’s internal systems, using an AI layer designed to keep model outputs reliable and controlled. - learn more

Calibrate Ventures participated as a returning investor in Grid Aero’s $20M Series A, which was co-led by Bison Ventures and Geodesic Capital. The aerospace and defense startup says it will use the funding to move its Lifter Lite autonomous aircraft from testing into operational deployments, supporting major exercises and early customer use cases as it scales long-range, low-cost autonomous airlift for contested environments. - learn more

LA Exits

Bridg is being acquired by PAR Technology (from Cardlytics) in a deal valued at $27.5M in PAR stock, with the price potentially adjusting up to $30M, and it’s expected to close in Q1 2026. PAR plans to integrate Bridg’s identity-resolution capabilities so restaurants and retailers can unify loyalty and non-loyalty purchase data, recognize previously anonymous customers, and run and measure marketing more effectively. - learn more

Assembly, an employee recognition and rewards platform founded in 2018 and used by 500+ organizations, is being acquired by talent-management provider Quantum Workplace. The deal adds built-in rewards to Quantum Workplace’s suite and is intended to connect recognition data with engagement, performance, development, and retention insights so leaders can better spot impact, reinforce values, and invest in keeping top talent. - learn more

🔦 Spotlight

🤝 Venture Deals

🔦 Spotlight

🤝 Venture Deals

🔦 Spotlight

🤝 Venture Deals

🔦 Spotlight

🤝 Venture Deals

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