podcasting

Spotify Unveils Snapchat-like Feature, Podcasts with Obama and Springsteen, More

Sam Blake

Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

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Spotify is now matching your music taste to podcasts. The new predictive algorithm is one of a host of new products the Swedish company announced Monday.

It also unveiled a new premium service called HiFi with improved sound and a Snapchat-like feature for artists to share video clips.

The moves are part of Spotify's ongoing effort to expand beyond music and become the primary platform for all audio creators and consumers.

The company has been on an acquisition spree over the past several years, which has included podcast content studios The Ringer, Parcast and Gimlet and podcast creation services like Anchor and Megaphone.

And it's about to release more original podcasts as it expands partnerships, including "Batman Unburied," created with Warner Bros. and DC; a new project from Ava Duvernay and a program featuring Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.

"The creative economy is exploding," said chief executive officer Daniel Ek. "So far, that explosion has been largely taking shape across video, with companies of all sizes focused there, and new ones entering the market all the time…(But) rather than focusing where everyone else is, we decided to go all-in on audio."

Monday raised the stakes on that bet. Here's a rundown of some of the more notable announcements:

New Products

Stream On: The power of HiFi - Billie Eilish & Finneas

New Subscription Tier: Spotify HiFi will provide subscribers a more refined, "high-end" audio experience. The new tier will roll out in select markets later this year, and will ostensibly compete with other premium streaming services like Tidal and Amazon Music HD.

Spotify Clips: Building on the company's incremental incorporation of video onto its platform, Spotify announced the launch of "Clips," a new feature for artists to share short videos. Described by Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff as a way to "give many of our most popular artists a new way to connect with their fans," Spotify Clips looks similar to the Stories feature that Snap pioneered and which subsequently became a staple of Instagram.

New Artist Marketing Tools: Over 1 million artists use Spotify's suite of artist marketing and data analytics tools each month, said Head of Marketplace Charlie Hellman. "Spotify for Artists" will be made available in 25 additional languages. Among those tools is Canvas, which allows artists to upload visual material to complement their music. Described by music star Halsey as the modern form of album art, Canvas will now be available to all artists following a limited run. Marquee, another artist tool that allows musicians and their teams to sponsor music recommendations, will also be expanding later this year.

More Personalized Playlists: Spotify's chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström underscored the abundance of content on the platform by noting that if someone wanted to listen to the over-50,000 hours of music and podcasts uploaded to Spotify every single day, it would take them over five years. To help users navigate this ocean and discover new music, the company has invested into algorithms that use a combination of machine learning and human curation to build playlists. More of these are coming, with Söderström highlighting that soon the platform's "Daily Mix" franchise, which offers playlists tied to topics like specific genres and decades, will be updated daily.

Podcasting Plans

Renegades: Born in the USA | A Spotify Original Podcast | From Higher Ground

WordPress Partnership: Podcast creators using Spotify's Anchor platform will now be able to "quickly and easily turn written content directly into podcasts," said Sara Lerner, Spotify's head of strategy for podcast formats. "We think this is going to empower a whole new group of creators, people who have historically been more focused on the written word."

Interactive Podcasts: Podcasters will be able to incorporate polls and Q&As in real time to interact with their listeners.

New Podcast Content: Spotify announced a variety of new podcast series, including "Renegades: Born in the USA" hosted by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, "Batman Unburied" in partnership with Warner Bros. and DC, and a new project from Ava Duvernay.

Podcast Discovery: Spotify will soon be unleashing its recommendation algorithms to power podcast discovery. This will include using predictive algorithms to recommend podcasts based on users' musical tastes and allowing users to search for podcasts by theme and topic, based on a machine-learning analysis of episode content.

Growing Podcast Monetization: Spotify's big bet on podcasts comes with an expectation that the still small podcasting market will grow. Ostroff pointed out that although the terrestrial and satellite radio market is about $30 billion, it remains plagued by limited data for advertisers to target listeners with precision. That murky data has carried over into podcasts but, she said, Spotify has been able to change the game here by switching the mode of podcast access from downloads to streaming. To build on that and help marketers reach podcast listeners with targeted ads, Spotify will be launching Spotify Audience Network, a new marketplace for advertisers to buy ads on podcasts. The company also announced that Ad Studio, another channel for marketers, will begin being beta-tested for podcasts. Finally, the company is going to begin testing letting podcasters charge for paid subscriptions.

Expansion Plans

Eighty-five new markets, 36 new languages: Already available in 93 markets, where it reaches 345 million users and hosts content from over 8 million creators, Spotify will be expanding over the next few days into new markets across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. This, Ek said, will make Spotify accessible to over 1 billion new potential customers. The company will also nearly double the number of languages in which it's available, to over 60.

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JetZero Just Raised $175M to Rewrite How We Fly

Grace Lee
JetZero Just Raised $175M to Rewrite How We Fly

🔦 Spotlight

Happy Friday, Los Angeles ✈️

While everyone in tech is still busy arguing about the next AI model, one startup based out of Long Beach just raised a whole lot of money to change the shape of the airplane itself.

Image Source: JetZero

JetZero closed a $175 million Series B to build its blended wing body “all-wing” airliner, with B Capital leading the round alongside United Airlines Ventures, Northrop Grumman, 3M Ventures, Trucks VC and RTX Ventures. The company is working toward a full-scale Demonstrator aircraft that targets at least 30% better fuel efficiency than today’s tube-and-wing jets, with a first flight planned for 2027 and a commercial Z4 airliner to follow in the early 2030s.

This is not a small bet. JetZero’s pitch is that airlines and regulators need a way to hit climate targets without waiting on sci-fi batteries or hydrogen infrastructure, and that a radically more efficient airframe is the most realistic path. It is also very much an LA story: deep aerospace talent, strategic money at the table, and a product that looks like a mashup of climate tech, defense tech and old-school manufacturing rather than another SaaS dashboard.

There is still a long way to go. The next few years are about turning simulations and wind-tunnel charts into flight data, working with regulators and proving that a manta-ray-shaped jet can slot into a world built for Boeings and Airbuses. But if JetZero gets anywhere close, it will mean that one of the most ambitious hardware bets in commercial aviation is being engineered out of Long Beach.

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

🤝 Venture Deals

      LA Companies


      • No Agent List secured $10M in private investment to launch its AI powered real estate platform ahead of a planned Spring 2026 debut. The Los Angeles based company aims to put “agent level” tools directly in the hands of buyers, sellers and vendors, offering direct access to off market properties, FSBOs, distressed assets, foreclosures, tax liens and auctions that have traditionally been gated by agents and insiders. The funding will support product development and rollout of the platform, which promises more control over transactions while using AI to surface opportunities and streamline the deal process. - learn more
      • Hadrian, the Los Angeles based advanced manufacturing startup, announced new capital led by accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates to accelerate its push to “reindustrialize” American manufacturing. The financing, which also includes Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, StepStone Group, 1789 Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, a16z, Construct Capital and others, values the company at $1.6B and will be used to expand its high-throughput factories, grow its workforce and deploy more AI, software and automation across its “factories-as-a-service” platform for aerospace, defense and critical infrastructure customers.- learn more

            LA Venture Funds

            • Blue Bear Capital joined Hydrosat’s $60M Series B, backing the thermal infrared satellite data company alongside lead investors Hartree Partners, Subutai Capital Partners and Space 4 Earth. The funding will help Hydrosat expand its constellation beyond its two current satellites, ramp global coverage and deepen its AI-powered “thermal intelligence” products for water resource management, agriculture, civil government and defense customers worldwide. - learn more
            • Elysian Park Ventures led a $12M growth round for Diamond Kinetics, backing the Pittsburgh-based baseball tech company as it doubles down on youth development. The new capital will help Diamond Kinetics scale sidelineHD, its AI-powered youth baseball and softball live streaming and highlights platform, and expand its broader suite of training tools as MLB’s Trusted Youth Development Platform. - learn more
            • MANTIS Ventures participated in Depthfirst’s $40M Series A round, backing the San Francisco based applied AI lab alongside lead investor Accel, Alt Capital, BoxGroup, Liquid 2 Ventures and SV Angel. Depthfirst is building an AI-native “General Security Intelligence” platform that uses autonomous agents to detect, triage and remediate software vulnerabilities across code and infrastructure, aiming to outpace a new wave of AI-powered cyberattacks. The fresh capital will fund R&D, go-to-market efforts and hiring as the company scales its security platform for enterprise customers. - learn more
            • Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures participated in Vista AI’s $29.5M Series B, joining a slate of leading health systems backing the company’s automated MRI scanning software. The Palo Alto-based startup will use the funding to expand its FDA-cleared cardiac MRI platform to additional anatomies like brain, prostate and spine, and to roll out remote scanning services that let hospitals without in-house MRI expertise offer advanced imaging while easing backlogs and technologist shortages - learn more
            • Fourward Ventures is leading a new strategic growth investment in Mermaid Gin, backing the Isle of Wight–based premium spirits brand as it accelerates expansion in the U.S. market. The round brings Fourward’s founder Will Ward onto the board as lead investor and is paired with a national distribution partnership with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, plus the appointment of longtime Moët Hennessy veteran Jim Clerkin as CEO for the U.S. push. The capital and partnership are aimed at scaling Mermaid Gin in the fast-growing U.S. super-premium gin segment while preserving its sustainability-focused, Isle of Wight roots. - learn more
            • Hyperion Capital joined Haiqu’s $11M seed round, backing the quantum software startup alongside Primary Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund, Alumni Ventures, Qudit Ventures, Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Harlow Capital, Toyota Ventures and MaC Venture Capital. Haiqu is building a hardware-aware quantum operating system and middleware layer that boosts the performance of today’s noisy quantum hardware, with the new funding going toward productizing its platform and enabling near-term commercial use cases in areas like finance, cybersecurity and scientific computing. - learn more
            • Sound Ventures led WitnessAI’s $58M strategic funding round, backing the Mountain View based AI security and governance platform alongside investors including Fin Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Forgepoint Capital Partners. The company will use the capital to accelerate global go-to-market efforts and expand its platform, which secures AI agents and models by monitoring agent activity, linking human and agent actions, and blocking prompt injection and other attacks in real time. WitnessAI also unveiled new agentic AI governance tools that give enterprises deeper observability and policy control as they scale AI agents across their operations. - learn more
            • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Proxima’s oversubscribed $80M seed financing, backing the newly rebranded AI-native biotech (formerly VantAI) alongside lead investor DCVC, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Braidwell, Roivant and others. Proxima is building a generative AI driven platform for “proximity-based medicines” that modulate protein protein interactions, including molecular glues and PROTACs, to go after historically undruggable targets in oncology, immunology and beyond. The new capital will accelerate its NeoLink structural proteomics and Neo AI model stack, and advance a pipeline of first-in-class proximity-modulating therapeutics toward the clinic. - learn more
            • Clocktower Technology Ventures participated in WeatherPromise’s oversubscribed $12.8M Series A, backing the weather-guarantee startup alongside lead investor Maveron, 1Sharpe, Lerer Hippeau, Commerce Ventures, MS Transverse, Start Ventures, 1Flourish and others. WeatherPromise partners with major travel brands like Marriott, Expedia and JetBlue to offer “weather guarantees” that automatically refund trips when conditions are worse than promised, driving demand for travel, events and outdoor experiences. The new capital will accelerate product development, expand strategic partnerships and scale the platform across more consumer categories. - learn more
            • MANTIS Ventures participated in Sandstone’s $10M seed round, backing the AI-native legal tech startup alongside lead investor Sequoia Capital and others. Sandstone is building an operating system for in-house legal teams that uses AI agents to route requests, draft and review contracts, and surface answers directly inside tools like email, Slack and Salesforce, turning institutional legal knowledge into reusable workflows. The new capital will help the Brooklyn-based company scale its product and grow its customer base of corporate legal departments. - learn more
            • Strong Ventures participated in Hupo’s $10M Series A round, backing the Singapore-based AI sales coaching startup alongside lead investor DST Global Partners, Collaborative Fund, January Capital and Goodwater Capital. Hupo’s platform uses AI to coach frontline banking, insurance and financial services sales teams in real time, helping them ramp faster and close more deals across highly regulated markets in APAC and Europe. The new funding will support product development, expansion of its coaching features and scaling enterprise deployments as the company eyes broader international growth. - learn more
            • Freeflow Ventures joined Vivere Oncotherapies’ more than $10M funding round, backing the UC Berkeley spinout alongside YK Bioventures, Pillar, Berkeley Frontier Fund and the National Cancer Institute. Vivere is developing targeted immunotherapies for “cold” solid tumors like colorectal and ovarian cancers, aiming to activate the immune system against tumors that typically evade detection and resist existing treatments. The new capital will support advancement of its proprietary bioengineering platform and pipeline of therapies for patients with few effective options today. - learn more
            • Alexandria Venture Investments joined Precede Biosciences’ $63.5M Series B equity round, part of an $83.5M total financing package that also includes a $20M strategic, non-dilutive credit facility. The Boston based precision diagnostics and data company is scaling its blood-based platform, which measures target expression and pathway activity to support next-generation cancer therapies like drug, radio and immune conjugates. The new capital will help Precede meet growing demand from biopharma partners developing these precision medicines and accelerate commercialization and health system adoption. - learn more
            • Alexandria Venture Investments participated in Recludix Pharma’s new equity financing round alongside Access Biotechnology, NEA and Westlake BioPartners, with additional strategic investment from Eli Lilly. The San Diego based, clinical-stage biotech will use the $123M in total equity raised to advance clinical development of its novel SH2 domain inhibitor pipeline for inflammatory diseases and to tap Lilly’s TuneLab AI/ML platform to accelerate discovery across its broader SH2 domain program. - learn more
            • BOLD Capital Partners participated in MagicCube’s $10M funding round, backing the Cupertino-based software security company alongside strategic investor Verifone and other existing backers. MagicCube plans to use the capital to expand beyond its core tap-to-phone payments offering into biometrics, identity verification and AI-driven device security, while scaling its Software Defined Trust platform that delivers hardware-grade protection through software on standard mobile and IoT devices.- learn more

                  LA Exits

                  • Webalo is being acquired by Prometheus Group, which is folding the Los Angeles based “no-code for the frontline” platform into its enterprise asset management software suite. The deal will combine Webalo’s mobile, real-time workflows for frontline workers with Prometheus Group’s planning and scheduling tools, aiming to create a closed-loop digital execution platform that connects shopfloor actions directly back into systems of record like SAP and Oracle. - learn more

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                                      Inside Tinder’s 380-Matches-Per-Second Sunday

                                      Grace Lee
                                      Inside Tinder’s 380-Matches-Per-Second Sunday

                                      🔦 Spotlight

                                      Happy New Year, Los Angeles. 💘

                                      If you want a clear read on how people actually behave when the calendar flips, you do not need a survey. You need Tinder’s Dating Sunday data. The numbers below are from January 2025, compared with 2024, and they show a pattern the app sees every year when millions of people log in and take their love life off pause.

                                      🔥 Tinder’s Annual Traffic Spike, By The Numbers

                                      On Dating Sunday, the first Sunday of the year, Tinder hit its biggest activity spike on the calendar. Compared with the app’s typical daily averages for that year, and trends versus the prior year:

                                      📈 Swipes were nearly 13% higher

                                      💬 Messages were nearly 10% higher

                                      ❤️ Likes were over 10% higher

                                      🗣️ Users had almost 7% more conversations

                                      🤝 Matches climbed to about 380 matches per second, roughly a 10% lift compared to the rest of the year

                                      Across Peak Season, from January 1 through February 14, Tinder saw on the order of 10 million more messages per day and roughly 40 million additional likes than its non peak baseline.

                                      The figures are from last January, but the shape of this curve is remarkably consistent year after year, which is why they are a solid proxy for what is happening again at the start of 2026.

                                      ⚡ Not Just More Use, Different Use

                                      What makes the Dating Sunday data more interesting than a simple “usage went up” story is how behavior shifted compared with the same day the year before.

                                      Users replied about 2 hours and 25 minutes faster on average while also sending more messages, more likes and starting more conversations. That looks less like background swiping and more like a concentrated intent spike, people coming back to the app with a clear goal and actually engaging.

                                      From a product and infrastructure perspective, that turns this one Sunday into a full stack exercise. Ranking, recommendations, notifications, trust and safety and core scale all get hammered at once, with high signal data flooding the system over a short window. Most apps only see that kind of behavior during a one off viral moment or a big launch. Tinder sees it every January.

                                      📊 What The Surge Actually Signals

                                      There is plenty of talk about people being tired of apps. The behavior here tells a more nuanced story.

                                      When the calendar flipped last year, people reopened Tinder, used it more, started more conversations and replied faster than they had the year before. That does not look like a category that has lost its grip on users. It looks like a mature consumer network that can still generate predictable, measurable spikes of attention and intent on cue.

                                      If those patterns hold, the first few weeks of 2026 once again look less like a slow reset and more like a live load test for an LA built product at global scale.

                                      Now keep scrolling for this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.

                                      🤝 Venture Deals

                                          LA Companies

                                          • Cambium, an El Segundo based advanced materials startup, raised a $100M Series B led by 8VC. The company uses AI, chemical informatics and high-performance computing to design new polymers and composites for defense, aerospace and other high-performance sectors, and will use the funding to accelerate its product pipeline and scale manufacturing capacity across the U.S. and Europe following its acquisition of SHD. - learn more

                                                LA Venture Funds

                                                • Plus Capital joined Pomelo Care’s $92M Series C, backing the New York based virtual care company at a $1.7B valuation alongside lead investor Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, Atomico, BoxGroup and SV Angel. Pomelo, which already covers about 25 million lives and nearly 7% of U.S. births, will use the funding to take its proven, outcomes-driven maternity model and expand it across women’s and children’s health more broadly, from reproductive care and pediatrics through hormonal health, perimenopause and menopause. - learn more
                                                • Kittyhawk Frontier is leading a $2M seed round in Denver based encoord, joining new and existing investors to back the company’s grid-planning software platform. encoord’s flagship product, SAInt, is designed to give utilities, developers, data centers and grid operators an integrated financial and operational view of the power system, helping cut interconnection timelines by up to five years and optimize capital planning. The new capital will go toward expanding the team, advancing the platform and scaling into key markets as demand for smarter, electrification-ready grid planning tools accelerates. - learn more
                                                • Alexandria Real Estate Equities participated in Mediar Therapeutics’ oversubscribed $76M Series B, joining new investors like Longwood Fund and Asahi Kasei Pharma Ventures in a round co-led by Amplitude Ventures and ICG. The Boston-based biotech will use the funding to advance its first-in-class fibrosis portfolio, including MTX-474, now in a global Phase 2a trial for systemic sclerosis, and MTX-439, which is moving into Phase 1 studies for fibrosis associated with chronic kidney disease, alongside its partnered MTX-463 program with Eli Lilly. - learn more
                                                • GordonMD Global Investments joined Soley Therapeutics’ $200M Series C, backing the South San Francisco based biotech as it advances its AI-enabled cell stress sensing platform and oncology pipeline. The round, led by Surveyor Capital with participation from new and existing investors, will fund IND-enabling work and early clinical trials for Soley’s lead acute myeloid leukemia (AML) program and a second solid-tumor asset, while also expanding non-oncology programs in neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases and scaling the platform. - learn more

                                                    LA Exits

                                                    • CareRev is being acquired by IntelyCare, which is combining its post-acute healthcare staffing platform with CareRev’s on-demand workforce marketplace for acute care. The deal creates one of the more comprehensive clinical labor platforms in the market, spanning clinician-facing job boards, internal resource pool tools, contingent labor and recruiter solutions to help health systems manage permanent and flexible staff in one place. Both brands will continue operating under their existing names while integrating offerings for hospitals, health systems and clinicians. - learn more

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                                                                        LA Is Betting on Nukes, Netflix and Next-Gen Attention

                                                                        Grace Lee
                                                                        LA Is Betting on Nukes, Netflix and Next-Gen Attention

                                                                        🔦 Spotlight

                                                                        Hey Los Angeles.

                                                                        If you were looking for a quiet week, this was not it. LA is backing a portable nuclear reactor, Netflix just took a big step closer to owning Warner Bros. Discovery’s future, and Snapchat is basically handing the city a mirror and saying, “Here is what you did with your attention all year.”

                                                                        Let’s dive in.

                                                                        Radiant’s microreactors and LA’s new nuclear moment

                                                                        Radiant Nuclear raised more than $300M in a Series D round to build Kaleidos, a one megawatt portable nuclear microreactor that is designed to roll off a factory line, ship in a standard container and replace diesel generators at remote sites, military bases and disaster zones. The new capital will fund a full scale test at Idaho National Lab and the build out of Radiant’s R 50 factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which aims to produce up to 50 reactors a year starting later this decade.

                                                                        For LA’s climate and infrastructure ecosystem, this is a big tell. The city that got rich on pipelines of content is now funding pipelines of electrons, betting that small, modular nuclear can be part of the grid story that powers everything from data centers to defense. It is a very different flavor of LA tech, but the pattern is familiar: take a frontier technology, wrap it in product thinking and try to make it feel as boring and reliable as a utility bill.

                                                                        Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery: one step closer

                                                                        On the media front, Netflix just received an official recommendation from Warner Bros. Discovery’s board to proceed with the planned acquisition of WBD’s studios and streaming business. The board reaffirmed that the Netflix deal, which would fold Warner Bros. film and TV, HBO and HBO Max into Netflix, is in the best interest of shareholders, even as competing ideas swirl around what to do with the company.

                                                                        Practically, this does not mean the deal is done. It means the process has moved from “big idea in a press release” into the slower, more serious phase of shareholder approvals and regulatory review. For Los Angeles, every incremental step like this reinforces the likely end state: a world where a handful of global platforms control not just distribution but also the studios and libraries that defined Hollywood’s last century.

                                                                        Snapchat’s 2025 Recap and the attention economy in our backyard

                                                                        Then there is Snapchat, which used its 2025 Recap to show off what its mostly Gen Z and Gen Alpha users actually did on the app this year. The company is leaning into personalized “year in review” stories that highlight top chats, memories, maps moments and creator content, while quietly reminding brands and investors that Snap still owns a very specific slice of youth attention that is hard to find anywhere else.

                                                                        For LA, Snapchat’s recap is more than a cute end of year product. It is a reminder that some of the most important social infrastructure for the next generation is being built and iterated a short drive from Santa Monica Boulevard. While the grown ups argue about nuclear reactors and studio mergers, Snap is training the next wave of consumers how to communicate, create and remember their lives on a platform that barely existed fifteen years ago.

                                                                        Taken together, this week says a lot about what “LA tech” means in 2025. On one end, you have Radiant trying to change how we power the physical world. On the other, Netflix and Snapchat are fighting over how we package and monetize the stories that live in our heads. Somewhere in the middle are the founders, investors and operators here who see all of this as raw material.Now keep scrolling for this week’s LA venture deals, fund announcements and acquisitions.

                                                                        🤝 Venture Deals

                                                                            LA Companies

                                                                            • Fixated secured a $50M strategic investment from Eldridge Industries to fuel what it calls the “next era of creator-led empires.” The company says the capital will help it expand its capabilities and partnerships that support creators in building and scaling their own brands and businesses beyond traditional sponsorship deals. - learn more
                                                                            • Vital Lyfe raised $24M in financing, including more than $18M in seed funding, in a round led by Interlagos and General Catalyst with participation from Generational Partners, Cantos, Space.VC and Also Capital. The Hawthorne based startup, founded by former SpaceX engineers, will use the capital to ramp manufacturing of its portable, autonomous “water making” systems, expand early deployments with partners like maritime operators and NGOs, and prepare for its first consumer ready products in 2026. - learn more
                                                                            • Molly Sims’ YSE Beauty closed a $15M Series A growth equity round led by Silas Capital, with participation from L Catterton and existing backers Willow Growth Partners and Halogen Ventures. The clinically tested skincare brand, which targets women 35+ and recently rolled out nationally at Sephora, will use the funding to fuel product development, expand across Sephora doors in the U.S., and grow its direct-to-consumer e-commerce business. - learn more
                                                                            • Ember LifeSciences raised a $16.5M Series A led by Sea Court Capital, with participation from Cardinal Health, Carrier Ventures and other strategic investors including former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Los Angeles based cold chain tech company will use the funding to launch its next generation Ember Cube 2 shipping system and expand globally, helping pharma and healthcare customers cut temperature related losses and waste in medicine distribution. - learn more
                                                                            • Strada, a Los Angeles–based media collaboration startup, received a strategic investment from Other World Computing (OWC) to accelerate its product roadmap. The company’s peer-to-peer platform lets video pros access, share and review large files directly from local drives anywhere in the world, without uploading to the cloud. The partnership will also include co-marketing efforts, joint NAB 2026 presence, and bundled offerings that pair Strada’s software with OWC’s storage and workflow hardware. - learn more

                                                                                LA Venture Funds

                                                                                • Calibrate Ventures participated in Manifold’s Series B round, backing the company as it scales its AI technology platform. Manifold plans to use the new capital to accelerate product development, deepen its capabilities for enterprise customers, and grow its team to support broader commercial rollout. - learn more
                                                                                • SmartGateVC participated in NeuraWorx’s oversubscribed seed round, which was led by Nexus NeuroTech to back the company’s neurotechnology based therapies for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. NeuraWorx plans to use the capital to advance its R&D and early clinical work, build out its technology and product pipeline, and expand its team as it moves toward bringing new CNS treatments to market. - learn more
                                                                                • Kinship Ventures participated in Lovable’s $330M Series B, which values the Stockholm based “vibe coding” platform at $6.6B in a round co-led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures’ Anthology fund. The company lets non developers build full stack software from natural language prompts, and says it will use the new capital to scale its AI native platform globally, deepen enterprise features and integrations, and support a fast growing base of business users building production apps on Lovable. - learn more
                                                                                • B Capital participated in MoEngage’s $180M Series F follow-on, which brings the customer engagement platform’s total Series F raise to $280M. The round was led by ChrysCapital and Dragon Funds, with Schroders Capital and TR Capital also joining, and will be used to accelerate MoEngage’s Merlin AI product roadmap, expand go-to-market teams across North America and EMEA, and pursue strategic acquisitions while also funding an employee and early-investor liquidity program. - learn more
                                                                                • O'Neil Strategic Capital led HEN Technologies’ $22M financing, which combines a $20M oversubscribed Series A with $2M in venture debt, to build what the company calls the industry’s first operating system for fire defense. The Hayward based startup will use the capital to scale its IoT enabled hardware and Fluid IQ predictive AI platform, capture a comprehensive operational fire dataset, and expand global deployments with distributors and agencies as it aims to make fire suppression faster, more efficient and data driven. - learn more
                                                                                • Core Innovation Capital participated in Transparency Analytics’ second funding round, backing the company alongside lead investor Deciens Capital, Allianz Life Ventures, Mouro Capital, FJ Labs and SUM Ventures. Transparency Analytics, which provides quantitative, tech enabled credit ratings and benchmarking for private credit, will use the funding to scale its platform, refine go to market strategy and build out products like its private credit index as the asset class grows. - learn more
                                                                                • Upfront Ventures participated in Nanit’s $50M growth round, which was led by Springcoast Partners with support from JVP. The company will use the funding to expand its AI powered Parenting Intelligence System and related tools that give parents real time, personalized insight into a baby’s sleep, health and development between pediatric visits. - learn more
                                                                                • Integrity Growth Partners fully funded Fluency’s $40M Series A, coming in as the company’s first major institutional investor. Fluency, a “digital advertising operating system,” centralizes and automates paid media across Google, Meta, TikTok, programmatic and more, already powering nearly $3B in annual ad spend and over 250,000 monthly campaigns. The company plans to use the capital to enhance its automation and agentic AI capabilities, expand integrations with publishers and tech partners, and grow its team. - learn more
                                                                                • JAM Fund joined Last Energy’s oversubscribed $100M+ Series C, backing the advanced nuclear startup as it pushes to commercialize its factory built microreactors. The round was led by Astera Institute with investors including Gigafund, The Haskell Company, AE Ventures, Ultranative, Galaxy Interactive and Woori Technology. Last Energy plans to use the capital to complete its PWR-5 pilot reactor under the U.S. DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program, ramp manufacturing in Texas, and advance its larger PWR-20 units toward commercial deployment in the U.S. and U.K. - learn more

                                                                                  LA Exits

                                                                                  • NextWave is being acquired by Pattern, bringing the TikTok-focused commerce agency under Pattern’s umbrella to strengthen its TikTok Shop and creator-led commerce capabilities. The deal folds NextWave’s expertise in TikTok Shop strategy, operations and creator partnerships into Pattern’s broader ecommerce platform, giving brands a single partner to manage marketplace, DTC and social shopping channels. - learn more
                                                                                  • Ubiquitous is being acquired by Humanz as part of Humanz’s broader push to build a next-gen, data driven creator economy platform alongside its recently announced $15M funding round. The deal folds Ubiquitous’ creator marketing and TikTok/native social expertise into Humanz’s influencer analytics and campaign tooling, giving brands a more end-to-end partner for strategy, creator management and performance measurement across major social channels. - learn more
                                                                                  • Silver Tribe Media is being acquired by TPG-backed Initial Group, which is folding the company into its broader sports and entertainment platform. The deal brings Silver Tribe’s storytelling, production and athlete brand work under Initial Group’s umbrella, giving it more capital and distribution while expanding Initial’s in-house content capabilities around teams, athletes and sponsors. - learn more
                                                                                  • Duffl, the YC-backed campus delivery startup, is being acquired by Rev Delivery, bringing its “10M campus delivery pioneer” operation under Rev’s umbrella. The acquisition folds Duffl’s college-focused, ultra-fast delivery network and playbook into Rev’s hyper-growth delivery operators, with the goal of scaling on-demand service across more campuses and strengthening Rev’s position in student-centered last-mile logistics. - learn more

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