How LA-Based Super Hi-Fi Hopes to Change Streaming Audio Using AI

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

How LA-Based Super Hi-Fi Hopes to Change Streaming Audio Using AI
  • Super Hi-Fi's AI transports the skills of a trained radio DJ to digital music playlists. Spotify's former head of research Tristan Jehan recently joined as an advisor
  • Founded in 2018 by veterans of the digital music business, the company's customers include iHeartMedia, Sonos, Peloton and Octave Music Group
  • Its leaders envision a new audio listening experience — where everyone has a personalized, curated playlist, with artful, AI-generated sequences and layers of music, voice clips (e.g. news and podcasts), and branded messaging that drives new revenues to the music industry

Before the beat from "Baby Got Back" that underpins Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" fades to silence at the song's end, a sound clip pops up, right on rhythm and with a similar energy, telling the listener what streaming service they're listening to. A new track seamlessly takes the baton from the Minaj song before the brief branded message concludes, and continues the upbeat mood as a music bed for a rapid sequence of audio clips – first a voice imploring listeners to get hyped, then a word from Kanye about his interview with Beyoncé, a snippet from that interview, and another in-the-spirit advert – before blending into the intro of the next song, Kanye's "Stronger": all of it interwoven as if it were a single track produced in a recording studio.


It is the automation of this art, once the preserve of skilled radio DJs, that Super Hi-Fi is bringing to the digital music industry. In doing so, the L.A.-based company thinks it can help music services and artists make more money, and give listeners a new and improved way of experiencing audio.

Super Hi-Fi's customers include iHeartMedia,

Founded in 2018 by a group of digital music business veterans, with customers that include iHeartMedia and Sonos, SHF recently announced that Tristan Jehan – a pioneer of applying AI and machine learning to music, most recently as head of Spotify's research team – has joined the company as an advisor.

Streaming, which has been powered in part by Jehan's work on recommendation algorithms, may have saved the music industry from piracy-fueled devastation, but Super Hi-Fi's founders believe companies like Spotify, Apple and Amazon have missed the mark in some important ways.

"We think digital services forgot that the primary user interface is your eardrums, not your eyeballs," Zack Zalon, Super Hi-Fi's chief executive, told dot.LA.

As a result, a listener cannot readily distinguish one service from another, he said. Visual branding can help, but especially as smart speakers grow more popular, listeners will have an increasingly difficult time knowing whether they are tuned in to Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora or any other service.

Zalon and Brendon Cassidy, another co-founder and Super Hi-Fi's chief technology officer, both built digital radio services for CBS, AOL, Yahoo and Cricket Wireless. They contrast the uniformity of streaming services to broadcast radio stations. Two stations in the same city, focusing on the same type of music, still tend to have their own personality, they say.

"It's not just the music," Zalon said. "It's the space between the songs that the radio stations are filling and (thereby) connecting with listeners in an emotional way."

Beyond differentiating the source of the sound, SHF believes that using the space between songs — as radio stations do — can transform the listening experience. Leaving aside stitching in voice clips and layering in all other kinds of audio, they say that even sequencing songs together is fraught with issues.

The two most common types of transitions that digital services use between songs are crossfading and brief pauses.

Pauses create dead air, which iHeartMedia's chief product officer Chris Williams told dot.LA is the "enemy of radio," because it takes listeners out of their flow and puts them in a position to make a decision: namely, whether to keep listening or not. "I want to minimize that," Williams said.

As for crossfading – which Zalon said tends to be applied uniformly across tracks, such as a six-second blend of the end of one song with the start of the next, irrespective of the songs' particulars – it doesn't always work. Williams said crossfading can be done without jarring the user or disrespecting the songs about 50% of the time, and ever less so as longer song lead-ins give way to snappy intros aimed at grabbing listeners' attention from the first note.

"Crossfades create crashes," he said.

A radio DJ, by contrast, is trained to avoid these issues.

"The techniques of trained radio DJs are pretty complicated," Zalon said. "Super Hi-Fi is AI that has all the skills of a trained radio DJ."

This AI is designed to help customers like iHeart provide listeners with custom playlists that artfully blend one song with the next – no matter which song it is – and incorporate additional sonic elements like branded logos, interview clips, voice segments and more to eliminate dead air while respecting the artistry of the underlying songs, and to potentially drive streaming revenues back up to or beyond the levels that CDs generated in their peak.

How Does It Work?

As Super Hi-Fi's first customer, iHeartMedia helped the company fine tune its AI model and algorithms.

"Their pool of some of the world's best music programmers and on-air DJs became in a way like our QA partners," Zalon said.

By now Super Hi-Fi has "fingerprinted" iHeart's entire music catalog – tens of millions of tracks, Williams said – to identify the songs' underlying characteristics: features like volume, rhythm, mood, vocal texture, tempo and more. Lots more.

"The data we have on the music takes up more file space than the music itself," Zalon said.

Super Hi-Fi's AI has also fingerprinted each of iHeart's 700 styles of sonic logo; there's a country version of the "You are listening to iHeart…", a hip-hop version, a reggae version, and so on.

So, too, with any audio file that any customer may want to include in a playlist.

"The real power of the AI is to understand all the content with enough depth to make pretty much any output decision that any service might want," Zalon said.

Results have been good for iHeart. Williams reported that since they've rolled out Super Hi-Fi across their streaming services, the company has seen listening durations double.

"That increases ad impressions," he said. "There are clear business upside reasons beyond aesthetically creating a better experience...and [achieving] clear differentiation [from competitors]."

The Next Song

After having recently reeled in Sonos and its new streaming service as a customer, Super Hi-Fi has its sights set on bigger streaming fish. Jehan may help them get to Spotify, and they'll also look to Apple Music.

Chief business officer John Bolton told dot.LA that Spotify's expansion into podcasts makes them a prime candidate to benefit from Super Hi-Fi's service. He pointed to their "Your Daily Drive" product – a mix of music they know listeners like and relevant news – and said he could see that sort of playlist growing to include podcast snippets, the weather, and various other forms of audio, all tailored to the listener's preferences and location.

"If we see this happen at scale you'll start to see listening experiences become something very different," said Bolton, who helped found Super Hi-Fi after leaving ByteDance, which acquired his social media-meets-music startup Flipagram.

Streaming platforms may well be working on their own blended-audio AI solutions, but Williams says iHeart has benefited by getting in with Super Hi-Fi early.

"Two years from now everyone should have this solution or some version but we'll have already taken this to the next step, so it gives me the opportunity to get ahead," he said.

Music lawyer Ed Buggé, partner at L.A.-based entertainment law firm Hertz Lichtenstein & Young, thinks Super Hi-Fi "could be an attractive target for digital streaming platforms (DSPs) as they look to differentiate their platform offerings."

Spotify's former chief economist agreed. Will Page said a major audio streamer could look to Super Hi-Fi as a way to stand out in a market of look-alike services competing for the same customers.

"All these services offer the same 60 million tracks for the same $9.99 price point. With so much similarity, the value of distinctiveness goes up," he said. "The end game could see it being acquired by a DSP."

More than Music

Even if Super Hi-Fi doesn't lure the big catches in streaming, it can serve other verticals, including digital fitness. Peloton is already a customer.

"They wanted something different," Zalon said. "They want to make sure there's no loss of energy between songs; there's nothing worse than having music drop off in the middle of a workout. So we've been working with them on the roadmap to use the AI to help create an exercise experience that never loses its energy." In addition to blending songs, this will include voice-over instructions from Peloton's instructors.

Retail music is another area the company's targeting. Octave Music Groups, which operates Apple Music for Business and manages the music that customers hear at Starbucks, along with many other bars, restaurants and stores throughout North America and Europe, is another Super Hi-Fi customer.

Just as a radio station manager works with a DJ to set ground rules for branding the station through its sonic choices – running a branded message every 15 minutes, a news break every 30, and keeping segues tight but breezy, for example – each customer works with Super Hi-Fi to customize the AI to fit its desired style.

In exchange for this AI-plus-support service, Super Hi-Fi receives a licensing fee. The company would not disclose its prices or finances, though Bolton said Super Hi-Fi has not raised any outside funding.

He thinks using AI to bring a new level of real-time curation, presentation and personalization can attract more advertising and subscription revenues to the music industry. That's all the more important in an era when live performance has evaporated.

    "We have a big, bold vision and tech that can transform playlists into listening experiences that we think will eventually make the industry much more money and provide a much better product for consumers," he said.

    ---

    Sam Blake primarily writes about media and entertainment for dot.LA. Find him on Twitter at @hisamblake and email him at samblake@dot.LA

    https://twitter.com/hisamblake
    samblake@dot.la
    LA Startup Powering Immigrant Workforce Secures $7.5M

    🔦 Spotlight

    Happy Friday, Los Angeles,

    It’s Labor Day weekend, which means most of us are thinking about a little time off. But one LA startup is laser focused on work, specifically on the millions of immigrant workers who keep the U.S. economy running.

    This week, Welcome Tech raised $7.5 million to expand its AI powered platform that connects immigrant communities with U.S. employers. If you’re not familiar, Welcome Tech has quietly become one of the most important bridges between immigrant workers and the American labor market. The company offers a suite of services, from job matching and financial tools to healthcare and education, built specifically for immigrant families navigating systems that weren’t designed with them in mind.

    The scale is staggering. Welcome Tech already supports more than 4.5 million registered members, and its enterprise partnerships have tripled in the last year. Revenue is up more than 200 percent year over year. With this new funding, the company plans to double down on AI, personalizing onboarding, automating job matching, and expanding multilingual support so workers can find opportunities faster and employers can access a motivated workforce with fewer barriers.

    Welcome Tech’s growth also underscores something very LA: this city runs on immigrant talent, and the systems that support them often lag behind. By building infrastructure tailored to this workforce, Welcome Tech isn’t just scaling a business, it’s tackling a gap that traditional employers and institutions have ignored for decades.

    As Labor Day weekend rolls in, it’s a reminder that the real labor story isn’t just about time off, it’s about how companies like Welcome Tech are reshaping access to opportunity in one of the country’s most essential workforces.

    And with that, let’s get into this week’s venture deals across LA.

    🤝 Venture Deals

    LA Companies

    • Payment Labs, a Los Angeles based fintech specializing in seamless payment workflows for industries like sports, esports, and the creator economy, has closed an oversubscribed $3.25M seed funding round led by Aperture Venture Capital. The company’s API powered SaaS platform, already trusted by Microsoft, SEGA, X Games, and more, simplifies complex global pay ins and payouts across 150+ currencies and 180+ countries while integrating tax compliance, royalty distributions, and reporting. This new capital will accelerate expansion of tailored payment solutions and bolster operations to support high growth verticals. - learn more

      LA Venture Funds

      • Clocktower Technology Ventures, participated in Momento Seguros’ $10.25M Series A round. The Mexico City based digital auto insurer is leveraging the capital to expand its full-stack platform, offering flexible, mobile-first coverage tailored to underserved drivers. By modernizing payments, underwriting, and claims processing, Momento aims to disrupt a traditionally rigid insurance market with transparent, user-centric solutions. - learn more
      • Dangerous Ventures participated in Copper’s $28M funding round aimed at scaling the world’s first battery equipped induction range. The Berkeley based company builds plug and play induction stoves with built in batteries that run on standard 120 volt outlets, simplifying electrification of cooking while offering backup power during outages. Copper plans to use the new funds to expand production, develop new appliances, and leverage its grid friendly design, already under contract to deliver 10,000 units to public housing, to drive broader adoption of clean, efficient cooking solutions. - learn more
      • Alexandria Venture Investments participated in Leal Therapeutics’ $30M Series A round, joining a syndicate that includes SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund, OrbiMed, Newpath Partners, Chugai Venture Fund, Euclidean Capital, and PhiFund. Leal is advancing its neuro metabolic pipeline with lead programs LTX 001 moving into clinical trials for schizophrenia and LTX 002 progressing toward initial clinical data in ALS. This funding will also support the advancement of additional pipeline candidates and technologies aimed at delivering transformative treatments for CNS disorders. - learn more
      • Impatient Ventures and Riot Ventures participated in Blue Water Autonomy’s $50M Series A funding round to accelerate development of autonomous, long range ships designed for the U.S. Navy. The capital will be used to build and deploy the firm's first full sized autonomous ship by next year and support rapid scaling, as the team has already quadrupled since its seed round while completing engineering tests and securing materials from over 50 suppliers. This funding brings the company’s total raised to $64 million and underscores growing momentum around U.S. maritime innovation. - learn more
      • TenOneTen Ventures joined a $3.5M seed round in Loman AI, supporting the Austin based startup’s efforts to transform restaurant operations using voice AI. Loman’s AI phone agent handles call volume by taking orders, booking reservations, answering FAQs, and integrating smoothly with POS systems, helping restaurants boost revenue by up to 22% while cutting labor costs by as much as 17%. This new funding will accelerate product development and team expansion as demand for Loman’s platform grows nationwide. - learn more
      • CIV participated in AiGent’s $6M seed round, backing the AI driven startup’s mission to transform idle backup generators into a powerful decentralized grid resource. AiGent’s platform aggregates and orchestrates distributed generation assets including those at commercial, industrial, and mission critical facilities like AI data centers, turning them into rapidly dispatchable “distributed power plants.” This innovative approach not only enhances grid reliability and reduces costs but also opens up new revenue streams for asset owners without the time, cost, or disruption of building additional infrastructure. - learn more
      • Blue Bear Capital led a $12.4M SAFE funding round in Splight, supporting the San Francisco-based grid technology company’s mission to dramatically expand transmission capacity using machine-learning. The new capital will fuel deployment of Splight’s flagship Dynamic Congestion Management™ across U.S. and European grids—helping alleviate long interconnection delays and renewables curtailment by intelligently leveraging existing infrastructure. This round also secures Splight’s ability to scale both its commercial and technical teams amid surging demand from AI data centers and utilities. - learn more
      • Amboy Street Ventures participated in Nest Health’s $12.5M Series A round to support the expansion of its whole family, in home care model for Medicaid populations. Nest Health leverages AI powered clinical services, from medical to behavioral and social support, to deliver care at home while cutting churn and improving outcomes, including reduced ER visits and higher vaccination rates. The company will use the funding to scale its AI enabled care offerings into new regions and enhance partnerships with payors. - learn more
      • VamosVentures participated in Kira’s $6.7M seed funding round, supporting the AI driven fintech infrastructure platform as it emerges from stealth. The capital will enable Kira to expand across Latin America, especially South America, scale its technical team, and accelerate development of new embedded financial products powered by stablecoins, AI agents, and enterprise grade APIs. Kira aims to streamline financial services in markets with large underbanked populations and has already generated $3 million in revenue in its first year. - learn more

                  Download the dot.LA App

                  Forget Rockets, This Long Beach Startup Spins Satellites Into Orbit

                  🔦 Spotlight

                  Hello Los Angeles!

                  It may be scorching this weekend, but the real heat is coming out of Long Beach, where SpinLaunch just raised $30 million to accelerate its Meridian Space satellite constellation. If you’ve heard of SpinLaunch before, it’s probably because of its wild approach: instead of burning tons of rocket fuel, the company literally spins payloads in a giant centrifuge before releasing them into the sky. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s one of the boldest bets on making access to orbit cheaper, faster, and more sustainable.

                  Image Source: SpinLaunch

                  The new funding will go toward advancing Meridian Space, a low Earth orbit broadband network that aims to deliver flexible, affordable global connectivity. With its first customer links expected in 2026, the project has the potential to do more than beam internet. It could reshape how enterprises, defense networks, and communities around the world connect. For Los Angeles, it’s a reminder that our region isn’t just about building the next social app or entertainment platform. We’re also home to the companies trying to redefine the very infrastructure of the digital age.

                  And while space tech often feels far away, SpinLaunch keeps its roots planted firmly here. Its headquarters and orbital accelerator facility sit right in Long Beach, reinforcing Southern California’s reputation as a launchpad for both aerospace and climate conscious innovation. After all, swapping fuel heavy rockets for a ground based launch system isn’t just cost effective, it’s far greener.

                  So while you’re cranking the A/C this weekend, remember SpinLaunch is busy cranking satellites into orbit, proving once again that in Los Angeles we don’t just chase the stars, we spin new ways to reach them.

                  🤝 Venture Deals

                  LA Companies

                    • Wellth, a Los Angeles–based digital health company focused on daily care motivation and behavior change strategies, has closed an oversubscribed $36M Series C round led by Mercato Partners. The funds will be used to expand access to its platform across Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, D SNP, and other high-need populations, while also accelerating product innovation including introducing generative AI capabilities to personalize engagement, backed by strong performance metrics like 90 percent care plan adherence, a 51 percent drop in inpatient admissions, and a 16 percent boost in medication adherence. - learn more

                      LA Venture Funds

                        • Presight Capital participated in General Fusion’s oversubscribed $22M financing round, helping the Canadian fusion energy company push forward with its LM26 demonstration program. The fresh capital will drive progress toward key scientific milestones in Magnetized Target Fusion technology such as high temperature plasma generation and renew momentum on the path to commercializing clean fusion energy. The round also brings new board members onboard to fortify leadership as General Fusion advances toward a zero carbon energy future. - learn more
                        • B Capital led a new Series C strategic growth investment in CompanyCam. The construction tech platform, known for its AI-powered job site documentation and workflow tools, will use the funding to expand globally, deepen AI integration, and enhance product features. WndrCo also participated in the round, backing CompanyCam’s push to transform contractor productivity. - learn more
                        • Clocktower Ventures participated in Relcu’s latest funding round. Relcu provides an AI powered “system of action” for financial services that helps institutions streamline workflows, improve customer engagement, and drive growth. The company will use the new capital to extend its CRM and AI Agent Co Pilot beyond mortgage into deposits, lending, and other areas by enhancing AI integration, expanding APIs, and embedding intelligent automation to boost conversion, retention, and cross sell. - learn more
                        • UP Partners participated in Loft Dynamics’ latest $24M Series B funding round. The Swiss based VR flight training company will use the investment to expand its revolutionary pilot training solutions, built on FAA and EASA qualified VR simulators, into commercial aviation, launching full motion Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 systems alongside cloud connected, AI enhanced tools and immersive at home training kits. - learn more
                        • Upfront Ventures led the $5.6M Series A funding for Agenda Hero. The San Francisco based AI platform helps users eliminate manual calendar work by transforming text, images, and PDFs into fully structured, shareable events and schedules. The new capital will accelerate AI features, expand calendar integrations, and scale adoption across individuals, teams, and organizations. - learn more
                        • Thiel Capital participated in Stark’s latest $62M funding round, which was led by Sequoia Capital and brings the German startup's valuation to around $500 million. Stark, founded in 2024, specializes in AI powered loitering munitions and command and control systems for battlefield drones, and plans to use the fresh capital to enhance its autonomous navigation, swarming capabilities, and expand production into new markets like the UK. Doepfner Capital also joined the round, backing Stark’s push to scale its defense technology. - learn more
                        • Crosscut Ventures and Vamos Ventures joined Aalo Atomics’ $100M Series B funding round, supporting the Austin‑based company’s mission to deploy modular nuclear reactors tailored for AI data centers. Aalo plans to build its first full-scale reactor, dubbed Aalo‑X, by next summer, co‑locating it with an experimental data center to showcase how factory‑produced nuclear plants can deliver clean, reliable power rapidly. This latest capital infusion accelerates Aalo’s deployment timeline and reinforces its strategy of mass manufacturing scalable nuclear infrastructure for the AI era. - learn more
                        • Overture VC co-led a $7M seed round in ChemFinity Technologies to boost its deployment of modular, sorbent-based systems that recover over 20 critical minerals from waste streams at low cost. The funds will help the company pilot and scale its high-performance technology, enabling domestic recovery of valuable metals like rare earth elements and platinum, while reducing reliance on imports and lowering environmental impact. - learn more
                        • Muse Capital led a high profile strategic investment in Ohai.ai, the AI powered household assistant founded by Care.com veteran Sheila Lirio Marcelo, joining a star studded lineup of backers including Olivia Munn, Mindy Kaling, and Abby Wambach. The new funding will accelerate Ohai.ai’s mission to relieve parental mental load, launching a back to school feature that lets families automatically sync school calendars by ZIP code or flyer, making household planning significantly smoother. - learn more
                        • Navitas Capital, alongside other investors, participated in EliseAI’s $250M Series E funding round. The New York-based AI company automating complex systems in healthcare and housing, will use the new capital to rapidly scale its team, enhance product innovation, and accelerate deployment of its AI-powered automation platform across front-desk operations, resident services, and beyond. The company has already doubled its workforce since its Series D, surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and aims to expand its impact across multiple stressful sectors. - learn more
                        • Bedrock participated in TensorZero’s $7.3M seed round to advance its open source infrastructure for building industrial grade LLM applications. TensorZero offers an integrated stack covering LLM gateways, observability, optimization, evaluation, and experimentation, all designed to create a data driven “learning flywheel” that turns feedback into smarter, faster model performance and is rapidly gaining traction with developers and enterprises alike. - learn more
                        • Calibrate Ventures co-led a $6M seed round in Grid Aero, backing the aerospace startup’s debut of its Lifter Lite drone, an autonomous heavy lift aircraft designed to deliver thousands of pounds over long distances in challenging environments. The seed funding will drive testing and scaling efforts as Grid Aero readies for ground trials and positions the “pickup truck of the skies” as a low cost, modular logistics solution for military and future commercial use. - learn more
                        • Chapter One participated in Hyperbeat’s oversubscribed $5.2M seed round. Hyperbeat will use the new capital to expand its suite of on-chain tools such as staking tokens, high yield vaults, credit layers, and portfolio tracking aimed at simplifying and enhancing DeFi yield generation for traders, protocols, and institutions. The round underscores growing institutional confidence in Hyperliquid’s expanding ecosystem, which recently surpassed $2.1 billion in total value locked. - learn more
                            LA Exits
                            • SpectrumAi has been acquired by CentralReach, a leading provider of autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities care software, alongside fellow acquisition AI.Measures. The deals expand CentralReach’s Care360 platform with advanced tools including predictive analytics, real time decision support, and individualized assessment capabilities that help providers deliver outcomes based care. Leadership from both acquired companies will join CentralReach, further strengthening its ability to empower providers, payors, and families with intelligent, results driven therapy solutions. - learn more

                                      Download the dot.LA App

                                      The Legal System Just Got Its AI Upgrade

                                      🔦 Spotlight

                                      Hello Los Angeles!

                                      We talk a lot about AI in L.A., usually in the context of streaming platforms that “recommend” a movie you regret watching or apps that let you swap your face onto a Marvel poster. But the most interesting AI stories here aren’t gimmicks; they’re rewiring the hidden machinery of massive, slow moving industries. And this week, that spotlight falls on…lawyers.

                                      LawPro.ai, a Los Angeles based legal tech startup, just closed a priced seed round led by Scopus Ventures to bring AI deeper into the world of injury claims. Their new “Case Assistant” isn’t about flashy automation, it’s about instantly surfacing case insights, cutting down endless hours of drafting, and helping law firms run with the precision of a Formula 1 pit crew.

                                      Here’s why this matters: the legal industry has been one of the last holdouts when it comes to adopting tech that actually speeds things up. Now, with AI making its way from the red carpet to the courtroom, we’re watching the early stages of a shift that could change how justice is delivered in real time. In L.A., we’ve already seen AI startups shaking up entertainment, aerospace, and healthcare. Legal might be next.

                                      And if LawPro.ai pulls it off, you might not just get a faster verdict, you might see the ripple effect across an industry that has spent decades charging by the hour. In other words, the billable clock might finally start running in our favor.


                                      🤝 Venture Deals

                                      LA Companies

                                        • Equatic, a company using a patented seawater electrolysis process to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide while producing green hydrogen, has raised $11.6M in a Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Temasek Trust’s Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health (C3H) and Singapore-based Kibo Invest, and the capital will support the engineering, commercialization, and construction of its first 100‑kilotonne carbon removal facility, as well as broader manufacturing and technological development. - learn more
                                        • SetPoint Medical has secured $140M in private financing, comprising a $25M second tranche of its Series C round and a $115M Series D round co-led by Elevage Medical Technologies and Ally Bridge Group. The funds will be used to launch and scale commercialization of the FDA approved SetPoint System, a pioneering neuroimmune modulation implant that targets the vagus nerve to treat moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, as well as to advance development of therapies for other autoimmune conditions. - learn more

                                        LA Venture Funds

                                          • Bonfire Ventures participated in Topline Pro’s $27M Series B funding round to help the company scale its AI driven platform for local home service businesses. Topline Pro provides tools for plumbers, landscapers, painters, and other service providers to manage websites, marketing, CRM, payments, and more, enabling them to operate as scalable, autonomous enterprises. The new funding will be used to enhance its AI agent suite and expand onboarding, customer success, and product development capabilities to deliver greater ROI for small businesses. - learn more
                                          • B Capital participated in Isaac Health’s $10.5M Series A funding round, backing the company’s mission to expand access to brain health and dementia care. Isaac Health provides virtual and in-home services nationwide and will use the funds to enhance its AI-driven screening tools, strengthen its technology platform, and grow partnerships with health systems and payers. - learn more
                                          • Bold Capital Partners joined a $44M Series C financing round for Gameto, a clinical stage biotech company developing stem cell derived reproductive therapies. The new funding, which brings Gameto’s total capital raised to approximately $127M, will support completion of its pivotal Phase 3 trial of Fertilo, an iPSC derived egg maturation therapy, and the company’s global regulatory filings and commercialization efforts. - learn more
                                          • M13 led a seed round that raised $8.5M for Mako, a New York based AI startup focused on automating GPU code optimization. Mako’s platform lets developers write in familiar high level languages while its AI intelligently generates and continuously tunes low level GPU kernels, yielding faster performance, cost savings, and compatibility across hardware like NVIDIA, AMD, and Tenstorrent. The fresh funding will be used to expand the engineering team, deepen hardware support, and bring Mako’s performance tools to a broader audience in AI, graphics, simulation, and scientific computing. - learn more
                                          • Rebel Fund participated in a $9M Series A round for Chowdeck, a profitable Nigerian food delivery startup aiming to build Africa’s next super app for food, groceries, and essentials. With this capital, Chowdeck plans to roll out its quick commerce strategy, powered by a network of dark stores and hyper local logistics, to speed up delivery across Nigeria and Ghana. - learn more
                                            LA Exits
                                            • Mayweather Boxing + Fitness has been acquired by Giant Ideas, LLC, alongside KickHouse, and will be combined with the company’s flagship brand Legends Boxing to form the largest skill based boutique fitness network with more than 70 studios worldwide. Rather than focusing solely on rapid expansion, the unified brands will prioritize operational excellence, franchisee success, and community driven skill development. - learn more

                                                      Download the dot.LA App

                                                      RELATEDEDITOR'S PICKS
                                                      Trending