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From Rocket Motors to Consumer AI

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday,

This week, one company moved deeper into rocket propulsion while another pushed further into consumer AI. Different industries, different stakes, same underlying shift: technology is moving further into the infrastructure of defense and entertainment.

In defense, Mach Industries acquired Exquadrum, a 24-year-old rocket and propulsion company based in Victorville. The deal was worth $50M in cash and equity and brings Exquadrum’s IP, facilities, business lines and 85 employees into Mach’s operation.

Mach, based in Huntington Beach, has raised nearly $200M and is building autonomous aircraft and weapons systems. Exquadrum gives the company deeper control over solid rocket motors, propulsion testing and one of the more constrained parts of the defense supply chain. The company will now operate as Mach Energetics.

For companies building unmanned systems, hypersonics and missile-defense technology, the hard parts are still very physical: propulsion, testing, manufacturing and production capacity. Mach’s deal shows how much of the defense tech race now depends on owning more of that stack.

In entertainment, Paramount brought in former Google executive Barak Turovsky as EVP and Head of Consumer AI. In his LinkedIn post announcing the move, Turovsky said AI is beginning to reshape how consumers discover, engage with and experience content, especially across platforms like Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

The hire comes as Paramount pushes deeper into AI, product and streaming technology under David Ellison. It also reflects a broader shift in Hollywood: studios are no longer just competing on content libraries. They are competing on discovery, personalization, engagement and the consumer experience around that content.

The common thread is infrastructure. In defense, that means propulsion, testing and supply chain control. In entertainment, it means AI, product leadership and smarter consumer platforms. Both stories show how quickly traditional industries are becoming more technical, more integrated and more dependent on teams that can modernize the systems underneath them.

Now onto this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.

🤝 Venture Deals

    LA Companies

    • Clouted raised a $7M seed round led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, Iterative, AppWorks, Peak XV’s Surge and a16z Speedrun. The company is building a “Distribution Intelligence” platform that uses AI agents to help consumer and entertainment brands plan, execute and optimize viral marketing campaigns across UGC, clipping, fan pages, influencer seeding, paid ads and social platforms. Clouted says the new funding will support its AI infrastructure, creator network growth and expansion into gaming and streaming. - learn more
    • El Segundo-based Amca raised a $300M Series B led by Caffeinated Capital, with major participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and continued backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Construct Capital and House Capital, valuing the aerospace and defense manufacturer at more than $1B. The company builds critical aerospace and defense components by combining engineering, qualification testing, technical data and certified manufacturing into one platform, and plans to use the funding to expand its AI-powered RAPID system, acquire and build more factories nationwide and increase production capacity for major defense and aviation customers. - learn more
    • Kin Health raised a $9M seed round led by Maveron, with participation from Town Hall Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Flex Capital, Foundry Square Capital, Pear VC, The Family Fund and several individual investors, including GoodRx co-founders Doug Hirsch and Trevor Bezdek. The company is building a free AI-powered notetaker for healthcare visits that records appointments and turns them into plain-language summaries, next steps and shareable context for patients and caregivers. - learn more

    LA Venture Funds
    • Clocktower Technology Ventures participated in Robbin’s $8M seed round, which was co-led by Canary, Atlântico and Caravela, with additional backing from AB Seed, Norte Ventures and Tomorrow Capital. Brazil-based Robbin is building an AI-native B2B payments and credit platform that lets large industrial companies offer co-branded virtual cards and credit products to retailer networks, using Pix rails instead of traditional card networks. The company also structured a separate $100M FIDC credit facility with Augme, an XP Investimentos asset manager, to finance retailer purchases through the platform. - learn more
    • Upfront Ventures led CVRD Health’s $5M seed round, joined by Waterline Ventures and Distributed Ventures. CVRD helps government contractors manage employee benefits, fringe-dollar compliance and audit readiness under Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon requirements, with the funding going toward platform development, compliance and member advocacy teams, and national expansion across federal contractors. - learn more
    • Sum VC participated in Hellbender’s $12.5M seed round, which was co-led by Magarac Venture Partners and Veredas Partners, with additional backing from Mana Ventures, Gaingels and the Active Angels Network. Pittsburgh-based Hellbender builds physical AI infrastructure and edge computer vision systems for autonomous and industrial applications, with the new funding going toward launching its on-edge AI camera line, expanding product and growth teams, and scaling domestic hardware manufacturing. - learn more
    • Rebel Ventures participated in Leadbay’s $4.2M seed round, alongside Y Combinator, Roosh Ventures, Inovexus Ventures, TS Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Bright Ventures, Transpose Platform, Deel Ventures and founders and executives from Deel, Gusto and Pennylane. San Francisco-based Leadbay is building an AI-powered sales intelligence platform that helps sales teams discover and qualify small and mid-sized businesses with little or no digital footprint, especially in data-scarce sectors like construction, hospitality, manufacturing, retail and B2B services. The funding will support its U.S. go-to-market expansion in San Francisco, AI research partnership with Sorbonne University and engineering growth. - learn more
    • Overture Ventures participated in Recheck’s $2M pre-seed round, alongside ReGen Ventures, Jetstream and MCJ. Recheck is a trust and compliance platform for residential solar that verifies sales reps, assigns portable Recheck IDs and has now launched Recheck Certified, a credential that combines ethical sales training, a code of conduct, background checks and ongoing monitoring to help installers and finance companies identify trustworthy sales professionals. Since launching, the company says it has verified more than 50,000 sales reps and 700 installers and dealers. - learn more
    • CIV co-led Calibre’s $3.3M pre-seed round alongside Vicus Ventures, with participation from I2BF Global Ventures, 9Yards Capital, Jigeum and angel investors including Nikesh Arora. London-based Calibre is building AI infrastructure for the testing, inspection and certification industry, helping automate certification workflows that still depend heavily on manual audits and document review across regulated sectors. - learn more

    LA Exits

    • 32 Flavors, the production company founded by Alex Baskin and known for unscripted franchises including Vanderpump Rules, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, The Real Housewives of Orange County and The Valley, was acquired by Sony Pictures Television, which took a majority stake in the company. Baskin will remain CEO, and the deal expands Sony’s premium nonfiction portfolio while keeping 32 Flavors’ existing leadership team in place. - learn more

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      Observable Space Raises $90M to Build Beyond Rockets

      🔦 Spotlight

      Hello Los Angeles,

      Space infrastructure is having a week.

      Los Angeles-based Observable Space closed a $90M Series A and announced a $94M U.S. Space Force contract to scale its optical sensing and laser communications platforms. The round was led by Lux Capital and co-led by Upfront Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Island Green Capital and RTX Ventures, with participation from BRV Capital, Fathom Fund and Venrex.

      Observable Space is building advanced optical systems across three areas: laser communications ground stations, ground-based optical sensing and in-space payloads. In simpler terms, the company is working on the infrastructure that helps satellites and spacecraft see, track, navigate and communicate more effectively.

      Image Source: Observable Space

      The Space Force contract gives Observable Space an early $22M in task orders under a larger $94M award to deploy mobile, off-grid optical sensing stations for space domain awareness. These systems are designed to help track objects in orbit with more resilient, lower-cost and geographically distributed ground infrastructure.

      That matters because space is getting more crowded, more commercial and more strategically important. Satellites are no longer just sitting quietly above us handling GPS, weather and communications. They are becoming part of a much larger network for national security, AI, connectivity and future space-based infrastructure.

      Observable Space’s work sits in the less flashy, but increasingly critical layer of the space economy. Rockets may get the liftoff footage, but the next phase of space competition will also depend on who can track what is in orbit, move data quickly and keep communications reliable from space to ground.

      The company says its platform has already executed 2.6M automated tasks, identified more than 20M targets and completed 84,000 hours of continuous orbital monitoring. It is also expanding manufacturing across Detroit and Los Angeles, with spacecraft, engineering and design labs based in LA.

      For Southern California’s space ecosystem, Observable Space adds another signal that the region’s advantage is not just launch. It is the full stack around space: optics, software, sensing, communications, payloads and the infrastructure needed to make orbit more usable.

      Now onto this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.

      🤝 Venture Deals

        LA Companies

        • Fragrance brand ’Ôrəbella closed a Series A growth equity investment led by Silas Capital, with participation from existing investor Celebrands, which incubated the brand. The funding will support global expansion, product innovation and retail growth as ’Ôrəbella scales beyond its Ulta Beauty base into international markets including Douglas, Selfridges and Ulta Beauty Middle East. The company also named Anish Agarwal, formerly CEO of T3 Micro, as CEO. - learn more
        • Ember LifeSciences added new strategic investments from Amgen Ventures and TDF Ventures, bringing its total Series A funding to $27M. The company makes reusable, temperature-controlled cold chain technology for transporting medicines and vaccines, and recently announced full commercial availability of its Ember Cube 2, which provides real-time monitoring and cloud-based tracking for healthcare logistics. Financial terms of the new investments were not disclosed. - learn more
        • Iconic raised $6M to build its AI-enabled M&A advisory platform for small business owners. The company combines AI software with human advisors to help owners sell businesses that are often too small for traditional investment banks to support, especially those valued under $20M. Iconic is aiming to modernize the small-business sale process as millions of baby boomer-owned businesses prepare to change hands. - learn more

        LA Venture Funds
        • Capital Group participated in Anthropic’s $65B Series H, which was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $965B post-money. Anthropic said the new funding will support continued AI safety research, expanded compute capacity and broader product development as demand for Claude grows across enterprise customers and developers. - learn more
        • WndrCo participated in Reactor’s $59M seed and Series A funding, which was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with backing from Amplify Partners, Sky9 Capital, FPV Ventures and others. San Francisco-based Reactor is building a developer platform for real-time generative video and “world models,” giving developers SDK and API access to create interactive AI applications across media and entertainment, physical AI and robotics. The company was co-founded by former Apple Vision Pro technical leads Alberto Taiuti and Bryce Schmidtchen, and WndrCo founding partner Jeffrey Katzenberg will join as a board observer. - learn more
        • Upfront Ventures led Kubera Health’s $6.5M seed round, with participation from Company Ventures, Dria Ventures and SemperVirens. Kubera is building a contract-to-payment system of record for healthcare, helping providers translate complex payer contracts into auditable payment logic so they can better identify underpayments, reimbursement gaps and administrative inefficiencies. The funding will support product development and growth as the company works to modernize healthcare’s payment infrastructure. - learn more
        • Sound Ventures participated in Polsia’s $30M round, alongside True Ventures, Offline Ventures, Adjacent, Tekton Ventures, Drysdale Ventures, VaynerFund and angel investors. Polsia is building an AI operations platform designed to run company workflows across coding, research, sales, customer support, ads and investor diligence, with founder Ben Cera saying the company is approaching $10M in annual run rate with one founder and no employees. The round valued Polsia at $250M. - learn more
        • Blue Bear Capital participated in Lastwall’s $16M Series A extension, which was led by BDC Capital’s StrongNorth Fund, with additional backing from New Brunswick Innovation Foundation, Frostbite Capital, BlueWing Ventures and 18West. Fredericton-based Lastwall builds identity-first, quantum-resilient cybersecurity software for defense, government and critical infrastructure environments, with the funding going toward expanded deployment across North American municipal utilities, defense infrastructure and public sector cloud portals. - learn more
        • Upfront Ventures participated in Itera’s $12M seed round, alongside Costanoa Ventures and Colle Capital, as the deep tech company emerged from stealth with its real-time electronics prototyping platform. Itera has developed a fluid circuit board that uses glass and liquid metal to let engineers rewire and test real electronic designs in under a minute, aiming to cut traditional PCB prototyping cycles from weeks to days. The funding will support the launch and commercialization of its first product. - learn more
        • Rebel Fund participated in Didit’s $7.5M seed financing, alongside Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Orange Collective, Founders Future, Phosphor Capital, SaaSholic and angel investors including Tomer London and Taro Fukuyama. San Francisco-based Didit is building AI-native identity and fraud infrastructure for verifying people, businesses, wallets, transactions and AI agents, with the new funding going toward global go-to-market growth, product expansion and hiring across sales and customer success. - learn more
        • Fifth Wall participated in NavigateAI’s $25M seed round, which was led by Elad Gil and backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, Lennar, Tishman Speyer and Helix Electric. Founded by Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu, NavigateAI is building an AI coach for construction workers that helps answer job-site questions, troubleshoot issues and improve field productivity across construction teams. - learn more
        • Strong Ventures participated in K-Zone’s 6.3B won Series B, alongside TimeWorks Investment, BonAngels Venture Partners and Singapore-based Guardian Fund. K-Zone is building a global reverse logistics platform for returned, overstocked and obsolete inventory, using its REMEX platform and AI agents to automate buyer matching, deal proposals, sales workflows and market analysis as it expands further into the U.S. market. - learn more

        LA Exits

        • Comscore Movies, the box office data business used by studios and exhibitors to track theatrical performance, was acquired by Advaya Capital in a $70M cash deal. The business will be renamed Rentrak, reviving the brand Comscore acquired in 2016, and former Paramount domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson will join the board. - learn more

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          This El Segundo Startup Wants to Manufacture Medicine in Space

          Varda

          🔦 Spotlight

          Happy Friday, Los Angeles.

          The next major pharmaceutical factory may not be built in Boston, New Jersey or Switzerland.

          It may be orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth.

          El Segundo-based Varda Space Industries raised a $251M Series D this week to advance an ambitious idea: manufacturing medicines in microgravity and returning them to patients on Earth.

          The round was led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, 8090 Industries, Giant Step and Also Capital. It brings Varda’s total funding to $598M and reportedly values the company at $1.6B.

          That is a considerable amount of capital for a company whose factories periodically fall out of the sky.

          Then again, that is the point.

          Varda builds compact spacecraft that serve as laboratories and manufacturing facilities in orbit. Its W-Series capsules carry pharmaceutical materials into microgravity, process them in space and return the results to Earth through the atmosphere at roughly 25 times the speed of sound.

          Why travel that far to make medicine?

          Without gravity pulling molecules downward, certain active pharmaceutical ingredients can crystallize in structures that are difficult or impossible to reproduce on Earth. Those differences could eventually enable drug formulations with improved stability, effectiveness or delivery methods.

          The science is not entirely new. Researchers have studied pharmaceutical crystallization aboard the International Space Station for decades. Varda’s challenge is turning that research into something considerably less glamorous but far more valuable: a dependable commercial process.

          In other words, the company does not merely want to prove that medicine can be made in space. It wants pharmaceutical companies to treat orbit as another step in the development and manufacturing pipeline.

          That requires solving the less cinematic half of the space economy.

          Rockets have made it increasingly routine to send cargo into orbit. Bringing commercially useful materials safely and repeatedly back to Earth remains much harder. Varda is building both sides of that equation, pairing microgravity processing with capsules capable of surviving hypersonic reentry.

          Varda

          Since launching its first mission in 2023, Varda says it has completed six successful reentry missions and has more than a dozen additional launches and returns planned through 2028. This week, the company also launched two W-Series spacecraft aboard the same rocket for the first time, marking another step toward operating multiple orbital factories at once.

          The new funding will help Varda increase that flight cadence, expand its pharmaceutical partnerships and move closer to delivering what it hopes will become the first medicine manufactured in space for use by patients on Earth.

          There is also a second business descending through the atmosphere.

          Because Varda’s capsules encounter extreme hypersonic conditions during reentry, they double as research platforms for government customers testing heat shields, navigation systems and other defense technologies. That gives the company a near-term source of demand while its longer-term pharmaceutical market develops.

          The combination is distinctly Southern Californian: part aerospace company, part biotechnology startup and part defense contractor, all operating from a city where building hardware for space has become almost commonplace.

          But Varda’s larger opportunity depends on making the extraordinary feel routine.

          A single successful space experiment is scientifically interesting. A repeatable network of orbital factories could become an industry.

          With $598M raised, six reentries completed and a growing mission schedule, Varda has moved beyond asking whether manufacturing in space is technically possible. The more important question now is whether it can become economical, reliable and useful enough for pharmaceutical companies to adopt at scale.

          For decades, Los Angeles helped build the machines that carried people and satellites into space.

          Varda is betting the region’s next aerospace industry will be built around what those machines bring home.

          More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.

          🤝 Venture Deals

            LA Companies

            • Charter Space raised an oversubscribed $5M seed round led by Crystal Venture Partners, with participation from QED, Blank Ventures, Gaingels and Hustle Fund, bringing its total funding to $8M. The startup will use the capital to expand its sales team and develop insurance products for emerging space activities, including lunar missions, space-based nuclear power and in-orbit spacecraft servicing. - learn more

            LA Venture Funds
            • Emerging Ventures participated in OSCP’s undisclosed Series A, led by New Science Ventures and joined by 2050 Capital. The Montréal company will use the funding to scale production, expand its engineering and sales teams and launch next-generation photonic navigation sensors designed to operate when satellite signals are jammed, spoofed or unavailable. - learn more
            • Slauson & Co. participated in Satlyt’s $8M seed round, led by Non Sibi Ventures and joined by TLCOM, Antler, Launch Africa Ventures, Enza Capital and other investors. The Sunnyvale- and Nairobi-based startup will use the funding to expand its teams and develop software that runs AI directly aboard satellites, reducing costly data transmissions and eventually connecting multiple spacecraft into a shared orbital computing network. - learn more
            • StoryHouse Ventures participated in Parakeet Health’s oversubscribed $10M Series A, led by Canvas Ventures and joined by Blank Space Ventures and HMC INQ. The healthcare AI company will use the funding to expand its platform, which automates patient communications and scheduling, while growing across additional medical specialties and enterprise health organizations. - learn more
            • Parker89 participated in Homeward’s $120M Series D, led by Saluda Grade and joined by Citi Ventures, Norwest, LiveOak Ventures and other investors; the Austin proptech company also secured $330M in asset-backed debt. Homeward will use the financing to expand its cash-offer and bridge-lending products, improve its AI-powered underwriting platform and make its home-buying and selling services available nationwide. - learn more
            • BAM Ventures participated in OuterSignal’s $22M Series A, co-led by Long Journey Ventures and Abstract Ventures and joined by Top Shelf Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and other investors. OuterSignal will use the funding primarily to expand its team and advance its customer-intelligence platform, which helps consumer brands personalize marketing using detailed profiles built from their existing commerce and CRM data. - learn more
            • Navitas Capital participated in EliseAI’s $350M funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners and joined by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Sapphire Ventures, valuing the company at $4B. EliseAI will use the capital to expand its AI platform for housing and other essential-service industries, building tools that automate leasing, resident support and property operations across more than 6.5M housing units. - learn more
            • Bonfire Ventures co-led Destro AI’s $8M seed round alongside Base10 Partners, with participation from CoFound Partners. The Brooklyn startup will use the funding to expand deployments of its AI platform, which coordinates robots from different manufacturers across warehouse operations, while growing its engineering and research teams. - learn more
            • TenOneTen Ventures and Wedbush Ventures participated in Meadow AI’s $7M seed round, led by Ulu Ventures and joined by York IE, Flying Fish and Leadout Capital. The Seattle startup will use the funding to expand its AI-powered “digital secret shopper,” which monitors retail and restaurant operations in real time, while growing its engineering, product and sales teams. - learn more
            • Fika Ventures participated in Outmarket’s $34.5M Series B, led by SignalFire and joined by Permanent Capital Ventures, TTV Capital and Dash Fund. Raised just four months after its Series A, the funding will help Outmarket accelerate development of its AI platform, which automates insurance brokerage tasks such as policy reviews, coverage analysis, proposals and certificates. - learn more

            LA Exits

            • HMBradley, now operating as MBI, has been acquired by personal finance platform Monarch as the buyer surpasses $100M in annual recurring revenue and 1M members. HMBradley co-founder Zach Bruhnke will lead the newly formed Monarch Labs, where his team will develop additional financial products and services designed to help Monarch expand beyond tracking money into helping consumers manage it. - learn more
            • Vision Films has been acquired by Legacy Distribution, combining the Los Angeles companies’ film, television, documentary and specialty-content libraries into a single global distribution business. The combined company will retain the Vision Films name, with Legacy CEO Dana Webber taking the helm and Vision Films founder Lise Romanoff transitioning into a consulting role. - learn more
            • Creative agency Zambezi received a majority investment from health and wellness-focused private equity firm Manna Tree, with financial terms undisclosed. Zambezi will continue operating independently under its existing leadership while providing branding, media and production services to Manna Tree’s portfolio companies and pursuing new business across the broader consumer market. - learn more
            • Santa Monica-based Advertise Purple was acquired by AI-powered marketing company ONAR for up to $27.8M, marking the buyer’s largest acquisition to date. The affiliate marketing agency, which generated $17.1M in 2025 revenue, will retain its leadership team while adding its Bloom analytics platform and more than 111M performance records to ONAR’s technology portfolio. - learn more
            • EasyLlama was acquired through a majority recapitalization by private investment firm Inverness Graham, with financial terms undisclosed. The compliance software company, which serves more than 5,500 small and midsize businesses, plans to expand its platform, partner network and training content while pursuing growth through strategic acquisitions. - learn more

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