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🔦 SpotlightHello Los Angeles, happy Friday and happy Valentine’s Day weekend. While the rest of us are debating flowers vs. gifts vs. reservations, LA’s infrastructure nerds are out here celebrating a different kind of romance: finding leaks before they ghost your entire operation.Zeitview just made methane a first-class featureZeitview has acquired Insight M, folding high-frequency aerial methane detection into its broader “see it, measure it, fix it” play for critical infrastructure. The combined offering pairs methane monitoring with Zeitview’s predictive asset-health and inspection workflows, so operators can spot emissions faster, prioritize repairs, and tie results back to ROI instead of vibes.What Zeitview actually does, beyond the buzzwordsIf you haven’t been tracking them, Zeitview is essentially the operating layer for inspecting big, physical assets using drones, aircraft, and computer vision. They can analyze imagery you already have or capture fresh data, then turn it into inspection reports and analytics through their Asset Insights platform.Zeitview was previously known as DroneBase and rebranded after raising an expansion round, signaling a broader push beyond “drones” into enterprise-grade infrastructure intelligence across energy and other asset-heavy industries.Why Insight M fits, and why this isn’t just “climate tech”Methane is the rare climate problem that also hits the P&L, because a leak is both emissions and lost product. Insight M has built credibility around methane monitoring that’s meant to be operational, not just observational, and that plugs neatly into Zeitview’s inspection footprint.Put together, this looks less like a single acquisition and more like a workflow upgrade: one system that finds a problem, quantifies it, routes it to the right team, and proves it was fixed. The least romantic Valentine’s message of all, maybe, but also the most adult: “I noticed something small, and I handled it before it became expensive.”Keep scrolling for the latest LA venture rounds, fund news and acquisitions.🤝 Venture DealsLA CompaniesHAWKs (Hiking Adventures With Kids), a nature-based children’s enrichment brand founded in Los Angeles, secured a strategic investment from Post Investment Group to accelerate its nationwide franchise expansion. The company plans to scale its mobile, outdoor-program model (after-school adventures, camps, and weekend sessions) by opening franchise territories across the U.S. while using Post’s franchising platform to build the operational infrastructure and support system for new operators. - learn moreLA Venture FundsAllomer Capital Group participated in TRUCE Software’s newly closed Series B, a round led by Yttrium with additional backing from New Amsterdam Growth Capital. The company did not disclose the amount, but says it will use the funding to scale go-to-market for two mobile-first product suites: an AI video telematics platform for commercial fleets that runs on standard smartphones, and TRUCE Family, a software approach to limiting student phone distractions in K–12 schools. - learn moreWonder Ventures participated in The Biological Computing Company’s $25M seed round, which was led by Primary Venture Partners alongside Builders VC, Refactor Capital, E1 Ventures, Proximity, and Tusk Ventures. The startup is commercializing “biological compute,” connecting living neurons to modern AI systems to make certain tasks dramatically more energy-efficient, and says its first product shows a 23x retained improvement in video model efficiency while also helping discover new AI architectures. - learn moreBonfire Ventures co-led Santé’s $7.6M seed round, with backing from Operator Collective, Y Combinator, and Veridical Ventures. Santé is building an AI- and fintech-driven operating system for wine and liquor retailers that brings POS, inventory, e-commerce, delivery orders, and invoice workflows into one platform to replace a lot of manual, fragmented processes. - learn moreB Capital co-led Apptronik’s initial 2025 Series A and participated again in the company’s new $520M Series A extension, bringing the total Series A to $935M+ (nearly $1B raised overall). The company says it will use the fresh capital to ramp production and deployments of its Apollo humanoid robots and invest in facilities for robot training and data collection, with the extension also bringing in new backers like AT&T Ventures, John Deere, and Qatar Investment Authority alongside repeat investors including Google and Mercedes-Benz. - learn moreWndrCo participated in Inertia Enterprises’s new $450M Series A, a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with additional investors including GV, Modern Capital, and Threshold Ventures. The company says it will use the milestone-based financing to commercialize laser-based fusion built on physics proven at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, including building its “Thunderwall” high-power laser system and scaling a production line to mass-manufacture fusion fuel targets. - learn moreRiot Ventures participated as a returning investor in Integrate’s $17M Series A, which was led by FPV Ventures with participation from Fuse VC and Rsquared VC. Integrate is pitching an ultra-secure project management platform built for classified, multi-organization programs, and says it has become a requirement for certain U.S. Space Force launch efforts. The company plans to use the new funding to ship additional capabilities for government customers and scale go-to-market across the defense tech sector. - learn moreMANTIS Ventures participated in Project Omega’s $12M oversubscribed seed round, which was led by Starship Ventures alongside Buckley Ventures, Decisive Point, Slow Ventures, and others. Project Omega is emerging from stealth to build an end-to-end nuclear fuel recycling capability in the U.S., aiming to turn spent nuclear fuel into long-duration power sources and critical materials, with early lab demonstrations underway and an ARPA-E partnership to validate a commercially viable recycling pathway. - learn morePlus Capital participated in Garner Health’s $118M round, which was led by Khosla Ventures with additional backing from Founders Fund and existing investors including Maverick Ventures and Thrive Capital, valuing the company at $1.35B. Garner says it helps employers steer members to high-quality doctors using its “Smart Match” provider recommendations and a reimbursement-style incentive called “Garner Rewards,” and it will use the funding to expand its offerings, grow its care team, and scale partnerships with payers and health systems. - learn moreEmerging Ventures co-led Taiv’s $13M Series A+ alongside IDC Ventures, with continued support from investors including Y Combinator and Garage Capital. Taiv says it will use the funding to scale its “Business TV” platform, which uses AI to detect and swap TV commercials in venues like bars and restaurants with more relevant ads and on-screen content, as it expands across major North American markets. - learn moreLA ExitsMattel163 is being acquired by Mattel, which is buying out NetEase’s remaining 50% stake and valuing the mobile games studio at $318M. The deal gives Mattel full ownership and control of the team behind its IP driven mobile titles, strengthening its in-house publishing and user acquisition capabilities as it expands its digital games business. - learn moreDJ Mex Corp. is set to be acquired in part by Marwynn Holdings, which signed a non-binding letter of intent to purchase a 51% stake in the U.S.-based e-waste sourcing and logistics company. The deal would bring DJ Mex into Marwynn’s EcoLoopX platform to expand its asset-light “reverse supply chain” services for recyclable materials, though it’s still subject to due diligence and final agreements. - learn 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 | Snap’s New Growth Engine Isn’t Ads | 0 | 7.3 | 20-02-2026 |
| 2 | Match Goes Niche With $100M Move | 0 | 8.55 | 01-05-2026 |
| 3 | Heaviside Raises $28M for Autonomous Precision Munitions | 0 | 9.6 | 15-05-2026 |
| 4 | Montgomery Summit Is Back at the Fairmont Miramar | 0 | 8.98 | 06-03-2026 |
| 5 | Hermeus Moves In. Uber Lines Up. LA Wins. | 0 | 11.48 | 10-04-2026 |
| 6 | A $26M Push Into Power in LA | 0 | 9.98 | 18-04-2026 |
| 7 | Revel’s Afterburner Round: $150M for Hard Tech Infrastructure | 0 | 16.58 | 27-02-2026 |
| 8 | Arc’s $50M Push Into Commercial Maritime | 0 | 8.82 | 20-03-2026 |
| 9 | Netflix Doubles Down on LA | 0 | 7.3 | 24-04-2026 |