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🔦 SpotlightHey LA,This week’s most interesting story isn’t a flashy new feature, it’s a quieter flex: Snapchat is getting people to pay for Snapchat, on purpose.Snap just proved “free app” isn’t the only business modelSnap says its direct revenue business is now running at a $1B annualized pace, with 25M+ subscribers paying across a growing menu of products like Snapchat+, Lens+, Snapchat Premium, and Memories Storage Plans. That matters because it’s not just a nice add-on to ads, it’s a different kind of relationship with users. Ads monetize attention. Subscriptions monetize intent.And intent is sticky. If someone pulls out a card for you, they don’t churn the way an algorithm does.Creator Subscriptions are the real tellSnap is also launching Creator Subscriptions, starting with an alpha on February 23 for select U.S. creators, then expanding to Snap Stars in Canada, the U.K., and France in the following weeks. The offer is straightforward: subscriber-only Stories and Snaps, priority replies, and an ad-free experience inside that creator’s Stories.The strategic move is even simpler. Snap wants “paying for closeness” to happen inside Stories and Chat, not on some external membership page. If they get that right, creators stop treating Snapchat as just a top-of-funnel channel and start treating it like a place to actually monetize their audience. Snap, meanwhile, gets a revenue stream that doesn’t care what CPMs are doing this quarter.Meanwhile, IRL: lululemon’s Studio Yet.Lululemon’s Studio Yet. pop-up is running Feb. 18 through March 8 at 8175 Melrose Ave. It’s a ticketed, limited-capacity lineup of workouts and community programming, with proceeds (less fees) supporting BlacklistLA.Keep scrolling for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.🤝 Venture DealsLA CompaniesRadiant announced a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin via Lockheed Martin Ventures, further oversubscribing the company’s current financing round. Radiant is developing its 1 MW Kaleidos portable nuclear microreactor and says it’s targeting a first reactor startup this summer at Idaho National Laboratory, with initial customer deployments planned for 2028. - learn moreMesh Optical Technologies announced it has raised over $50M, led by Thrive Capital, to scale production of its Alpha C1 optical transceiver, which converts electrical signals to light at 1.6 Tbps for AI data centers. The startup says its edge is manufacturing: it builds the optical engine using fast, repeatable flip-chip die bonding to make high-volume, U.S.-based production of optical links possible, backed by a team with experience from SpaceX and Intel.- learn moreLA Venture FundsAlexandria Venture Investments participated as an existing investor in Ten63 Therapeutics’ latest strategic financing, which also included participation from Morpheus Ventures and added new backers such as Chugai Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation, bringing total funding to more than $45M. Ten63 says it will use the capital to scale BEYOND, its AI-driven “Large Quantum Chemistry Model” platform for designing small-molecule drugs against historically “undruggable” targets, including programs in oncology and an HPV-focused effort supported by the Gates Foundation.- learn moreB Capital participated in Code Metal’s $125M Series B, a round led by Salesforce Ventures that valued the company at $1.25B, alongside investors including Accel, J2 Ventures, Shield Capital, Smith Point Capital, and others.Code Metal says it will use the new capital to expand engineering, accelerate product development, grow government and commercial partnerships, and scale go-to-market for its “verifiable” AI code generation and translation platform used in mission-critical environments. - learn moreBonfire Ventures co-led Odynn’s $9.5M seed round alongside 8VC, with participation from Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. Odynn says it’s building personalized AI infrastructure for travel companies, aiming to replace one-size-fits-all booking portals with dynamic experiences that tailor search, recommendations, and conversion flows to each traveler. - learn moreMTech Capital led Qumis’s $4.3M oversubscribed seed round, which also brought in American Family Ventures as a new strategic investor and pushed total funding to $6.75M. The company says it’s building an attorney-trained AI platform for commercial insurance “coverage intelligence,” and will use the funding to expand go-to-market and deepen product capabilities as adoption grows among large brokers and carriers (including NFP). - learn moreWndrCo participated in Mansa’s seed funding round, which the company says totaled $12M and was led by MaC Venture Capital. Mansa is now launching a vertical “micro-drama” format inside its app, debuting with the 27-episode original series The Heiress, The Baller & The Secret Society and positioning the feature as a mobile-first way to release serialized stories globally. - learn moreAlpha Edison co-led Ownwell’s $50M Series B, with Wonder Ventures participating alongside investors including Mercato Partners, Intuit Ventures, Left Lane Capital, First Round Capital, Long Journey Ventures, and PROOF Fund. The round includes $30M in equity and $20M in debt financing from Western Alliance Bank, and Ownwell says it will use the capital to expand nationally and simplify the property-tax appeal process through a new “National Appeals Packet” product. - learn moreThree Six Zero participated as an existing investor in Hook’s $10M Series A, which was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Point72 Ventures, Imaginary Ventures, and Waverley Capital, bringing Hook’s total funding to $16M. Hook is an artist-first social platform that lets fans legally remix licensed songs using simple AI-powered tools and share them across social platforms, and it says the new capital will fund user growth plus product expansion like an Android app, richer creation formats, and deeper ecosystem integrations. - learn moreOverture Ventures participated as an existing investor in Zero Homes’ $16.8M Series A, which was led by Prelude Ventures alongside SJF Ventures and the Exelon Foundation. Zero Homes says it’s using the funding to expand into new markets, broaden its home-upgrade offerings, and grow its contractor network, powered by a smartphone-based “digital twin” approach that produces upgrade designs and pricing remotely. - learn moreRebel Fund participated in Sphinx’s $7.1M seed round, which was led by Cherry Ventures alongside Y Combinator, Deel Ventures, and Singularity Capital. Sphinx is building browser-native compliance agents that work inside banks’ and fintechs’ existing tools to automate AML, KYC, and KYB work, with the new funding earmarked to scale that “agentic compliance workforce.” - learn moreMatter Venture Partners led ChipAgents’ oversubscribed $50M Series A1, bringing total capital raised to $74M, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, and Ericsson. ChipAgents says it will use the new funding to scale its agentic AI platform for chip design and verification, expand engineering and research, and accelerate global deployment of multi-agent “chip teams,” alongside a new HQ buildout in Santa Clara. - learn moreMemorialCare Innovation Fund participated in SpendRule’s $2M round, which was led by Abundant Venture Partners with additional backing from Zeal Capital Partners. SpendRule is emerging from stealth with an AI-driven platform that helps hospitals validate invoices against complex contract terms before payments go out, aiming to reduce overspending and “contract leakage” across purchased services. The company says early customers include health systems like MemorialCare, Kettering Health, and MUSC Health. - learn moreLA ExitsFred Segal is being acquired by Aritzia, which is buying the brand’s rights/IP (terms not disclosed) and planning a revival under its ownership. Melrose Avenue is central to the deal too, since Aritzia is also taking a lease on Fred Segal’s iconic ivy-covered site at 8100 Melrose as part of the comeback plan. - learn moreThe Expert is being acquired by Havenly in an all-equity deal (terms not disclosed), bringing The Expert’s high-end virtual designer consultations and trade-oriented marketplace into Havenly’s broader home and commerce ecosystem. Lee Anne Blake will join Havenly as chief commercial officer, and while The Expert will remain a standalone website, Havenly plans to plug in its tech to strengthen The Expert’s purchasing and procurement tools for designers. - learn moreDownload the dot.LA App
Happy Friday, LA.
The largest checks in tech are increasingly going toward companies trying to build their way out of America’s biggest physical constraints.
This week, two Los Angeles startups raised a combined $2.37 billion in equity to tackle two particularly urgent ones: how the country manufactures critical hardware and where it will find enough electricity to power the AI era.
Torrance-based Hadrian is building highly automated factories for defense and aerospace. El Segundo’s Valar Atomics wants to manufacture nuclear reactors at scale. Different industries, same underlying bet: the next generation of technology will depend on our ability to produce physical infrastructure much faster than we do today.
Hadrian raised $1.37 billion in Series D funding, bringing its valuation to $7.87 billion. The company plans to use the capital to open new factories, expand research and development, and increase its capacity to produce critical defense, aerospace and industrial systems.
Hadrian’s pitch is straightforward, if wildly ambitious: America needs to relearn how to build things and build them quickly.
Its factories combine skilled workers with AI, robotics and proprietary software to manufacture precision components and, increasingly, complete mission-critical systems. Its customers include defense giants such as Lockheed Martin and RTX, along with newer players like Anduril.
The company has come a long way from simply making aerospace parts. Hadrian is positioning itself as a piece of America’s industrial infrastructure, offering manufacturers a way to rapidly scale domestic production at a time when wars abroad, strained supply chains and growing defense demands have made the country’s manufacturing gaps increasingly difficult to ignore.
Investors are clearly buying the argument. The new round comes just over a year after Hadrian raised $260 million, suggesting that “reindustrialization” has officially graduated from venture capital buzzword to billion-dollar investment thesis.
Meanwhile, roughly 15 miles away in El Segundo, Valar Atomics is moving even faster than its enormous ambitions suggested.
When we last wrote about Valar, the company was reportedly raising $450 million at a $2 billion valuation and racing to prove that nuclear energy could move on AI’s timetable. Now, it has closed a $1 billion Series B led by Sequoia Capital, secured an additional $200 million credit facility and reportedly reached a $6 billion valuation.
Valar is developing standardized, factory-built nuclear power plants designed to avoid the enormous costs and decades-long construction timelines associated with traditional nuclear projects. Its goal is not merely to build a working reactor, but to eventually manufacture fleets of them.
That ambition also sounds considerably less theoretical than it did when we first covered the company. In June, Valar’s Ward 250 reactor achieved a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Just one week later, the company demonstrated the reactor generating electricity to power an Nvidia Blackwell system. Valar now says the new funding will help it move from proving its technology works to producing reactors at scale.
The timing is no coincidence. AI’s enormous appetite for electricity is forcing the tech industry to confront a basic reality: the cloud still has to plug into something. Training models and operating massive data centers will require far more reliable power, and nuclear energy is rapidly becoming one of Silicon Valley’s favorite answers.
Hadrian and Valar may be solving different problems, but their unusually large rounds point to the same shift. AI can design, predict and automate, but it cannot manufacture a missile component or generate a megawatt of electricity on its own. That requires factories, energy systems, supply chains and a great deal of capital.
For years, venture-backed companies competed to build the software layer. Now, some of the biggest bets are being placed on the infrastructure underneath it.
The future may run on AI. But first, someone has to build what keeps it running.
More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.
🤝 Venture DealsLA Venture Funds
LA Exits
| # | Наименование новости | Тональность | Информативность | Дата публикации |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montgomery Summit Is Back at the Fairmont Miramar | 0 | 8.98 | 06-03-2026 |
| 2 | Match Goes Niche With $100M Move | 0 | 8.55 | 01-05-2026 |
| 3 | Netflix Doubles Down on LA | 0 | 7.3 | 24-04-2026 |
| 4 | A $26M Push Into Power in LA | 0 | 9.98 | 18-04-2026 |
| 5 | 💘Zeitview’s New Valentine : Catching Methane Leaks | 0 | 9.59 | 13-02-2026 |
| 6 | Revel’s Afterburner Round: $150M for Hard Tech Infrastructure | 0 | 16.58 | 27-02-2026 |
| 7 | From Rocket Motors to Consumer AI | 0 | 6.79 | 22-05-2026 |
| 8 | Heaviside Raises $28M for Autonomous Precision Munitions | 0 | 9.6 | 15-05-2026 |
| 9 | Arc’s $50M Push Into Commercial Maritime | 0 | 8.82 | 20-03-2026 |
| 10 | Snap May Have Finally Found AR’s Moment | 0 | 8.8 | 19-06-2026 |