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🔦 SpotlightHello Los Angeles,Snap has spent years trying to make augmented reality feel less like a demo and more like a daily habit. This week, it introduced its latest attempt.At Augmented World Expo, Santa Monica-based Snap unveiled SPECS, its new standalone augmented reality glasses. The device is designed to bring AI assistance, work tools, entertainment and shared experiences into the physical world without requiring a phone, puck or tether.The pitch is not simply “screens on your face.” Snap is trying to position SPECS as a different kind of computer: one that can understand what you are looking at, respond to your surroundings and make AI useful in the moment. That could mean directions placed where you need them, a virtual workspace that travels with you or AI assistance that sees the same context you do.The developer piece may be just as important as the hardware. Snap says developers have already built hundreds of Lenses for SPECS, and the company is rolling out new tools inside Lens Studio, including agentic development support through Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, a new Native Development Kit and a spatial benchmark for AR experiences.That matters because AR has always had a chicken-and-egg problem: impressive demos, but not enough everyday reasons to wear the device. Snap is trying to solve that by building not only the glasses, but the software, developer tools, operating system, computer vision stack and creative ecosystem around them. Specs SPECS are available for pre-order at $2,195, with a $200 refundable deposit, and are expected to ship this fall in the U.S., U.K. and France.For Snap, the bigger question is whether augmented reality can finally move from developer demos and futuristic keynote moments into something people actually want to use. SPECS are its latest answer, but the real test will be whether developers can build experiences useful enough to make the glasses feel less like a gadget and more like a habit.More from this week’s LA startup and venture scene below.🤝 Venture DealsLA CompaniesCritical Energy raised $19M in seed funding co-led by Upfront Ventures and Susa Ventures, and also secured $3M in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank, bringing its total early capital to $22M. Founded by SpaceX alum Spencer Jackson, the company is adapting rocket-engine-style turbomachinery for modular geothermal power plants and plans to use the funding to build its first 2.5 MW project. - learn moreLA Venture FundsGroup 11 co-led Dream’s $260M funding round alongside Bicycle Capital, with participation from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners and other investors. Dream builds sovereign AI and cyber defense technology for governments and critical infrastructure operators, with the new funding valuing the company at $3B and bringing total funding to $412M. The company plans to use the capital to expand its national cyber defense and AI platforms across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. - learn moreUndeterred Ventures participated in Portal Biotechnologies’ oversubscribed $9M financing round, which was led by NFX with backing from existing investors including IA Ventures, Pear VC, IKJ Capital and TechU Ventures. Watertown-based Portal is building cell engineering infrastructure for drug discovery, AI data generation and cell therapy manufacturing, using its mechanoporation platform to deliver RNA, gene editors and other molecules into hard-to-transfect cells. The company also expanded its DARPA work through an Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative contract tied to point-of-care cell therapy manufacturing and says its platform has been adopted by more than 100 customer sites. - learn moreClocktower Ventures participated in Trace Finance’s $32M Series A, which was led by CoinFund with backing from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Crypto, Valor Capital, Paxos, HOF Capital and others. Trace Finance is building regulated banking and stablecoin infrastructure for cross-border payments across Brazil, the U.S. and emerging markets, combining local payment rails, FX, compliance operations and stablecoin settlement. The company has processed more than $10B in institutional cross-border volume and will use the funding to expand product capabilities and grow across LatAm, APAC and other priority markets. - learn moreAlexandria Venture Investments participated in Vedana Therapeutics’ $46M Series A, which was co-led by Westlake BioPartners and Canaan Partners, with additional participation from Dawn Biopharma. Seattle-based Vedana is developing next-generation preventive migraine therapies, including antibody-based treatments targeting PACAP and CGRP pathways, with the funding going toward advancing its internally discovered portfolio of subcutaneously delivered antibodies. - learn moreFulcrum Capital participated in HighGround’s $6.5M seed round, which was led by Next Frontier Capital with additional backing from Tandem Ventures and Context Ventures. HighGround is building an intelligence platform for defense and aerospace capital markets, helping investors, operators and advisors analyze government spending, procurement signals, deal risks and market demand. The funding will support expanded data coverage and deeper analytical models for defense-focused investment and business development workflows. - learn moreBonfire Ventures participated in Vali Health’s $6M funding round, alongside Supernode, Comma Capital and healthcare industry veteran Jacquelyn Kung. San Francisco-based Vali Health is building responsible AI infrastructure for healthcare, helping providers and health systems evaluate, monitor and safely deploy AI tools across clinical and administrative workflows. - learn moreClocktower Ventures participated in Karta’s $15M Series A, which was led by Galaxy Ventures, with additional backing from Canary and Illuminate Financial. Miami-based Karta is building a WhatsApp-first premium U.S. credit card for non-U.S. clients, helping global travelers with U.S. bank or brokerage accounts access dollar-denominated spending power without needing a traditional U.S. credit history. The company also secured a $125M credit facility from Community Investment Management, bringing its total new financing to $140M. - learn moreAlexandria Venture Investments participated in Triveni Bio’s $65M Series C, which was co-led by Ascenta Capital and Janus Henderson Investors, with significant participation from Deep Track Capital. Watertown-based Triveni is developing antibody treatments for immunological and inflammatory disorders, with the funding going toward expanding clinical development of TRIV-573, its bispecific antibody targeting atopic dermatitis, including a larger Phase 2 proof-of-concept study expected to begin later this year. - learn moreWndrCo participated in XDOF’s $70M funding round, alongside investors including Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, a16z and Lux Capital. XDOF is building robotics data infrastructure for AI labs, handling the unglamorous but critical work of collecting, labeling and organizing real-world robot training data. The company says it already works with about 20 customers, including several frontier AI labs. - learn moreFika Ventures participated in SubBase’s $7M Series A, which was led by FINTOP and brings the company’s total funding to more than $15M. Ft. Lauderdale-based SubBase is a construction materials procurement platform that helps specialty trade contractors and self-performing general contractors manage pricing requests, orders, supplier communication, delivery tracking and invoice reconciliation in one system. The company plans to use the funding to expand product and engineering, deepen supplier integrations and build more AI-driven workflow and intelligence features. - learn moreUpfront Ventures participated in Bland’s $50M Series C, which was led by Dell Technologies Capital with additional participation from HubSpot Ventures, Archerman Capital and Tribeca Venture Partners. San Francisco-based Bland builds voice AI agents for complex phone, SMS and chat conversations, with a focus on longer, high-stakes workflows in regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. The round brings Bland’s total funding to more than $100M. - learn moreImpatient Ventures participated in Traysar’s $25M seed round, which was led by Silent Ventures and included backing from Lux Capital, Ora Global, NeverLift VC, Mana, New Vista, Entree Capital and angel investors. Traysar emerged from stealth at the 2026 Reindustrialize Summit as a subterranean defense tech company building autonomous “subterra” platforms designed to detect, penetrate and secure underground environments. The company says its technology is aimed at addressing underground military facilities and other hard-to-reach subsurface domains. - learn moreMaC Venture Capital participated in Swsh’s $4M seed round, which was led by Game Changers Ventures with additional backing from Stellation Capital, SignalFire and angel investors including Scooter Braun and Guy Oseary. Swsh is building an AI-powered fan engagement platform for live events, helping artists, teams and brands organize fan-captured photos and videos while turning that content into audience insights and first-party engagement data. - learn moreB Capital led SolarSquare Energy’s $53M Series C, backing the Mumbai-based residential rooftop solar company as investor interest grows in India’s home solar market. The round valued SolarSquare at roughly $450M–$500M and included participation from existing investors including Lightspeed, Lowercarbon Capital, Rainmatter by Zerodha and Good Capital. SolarSquare plans to use the funding to expand into new cities, strengthen its technology platform and scale operations. - learn moreLA ExitsMavida Health, a digital mental health company focused on women and families, was acquired by WPS Health Solutions. The deal expands WPS’ digital health capabilities with Mavida’s virtual therapy, medication management and specialized mental health support across fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, loss, parenting and menopause. Financial terms were not disclosed. - learn moreVica, an AI video startup focused on helping small businesses create cinematic-quality marketing content, was acquired by Addi. The acquisition brings Vica’s AI video capabilities into Addi’s growth platform for Main Street businesses, which combines financial intelligence with marketing tools to help small businesses attract and retain customers. - learn moreGateMaker, a female-founded influencer marketing agency, was added to Residence, the Los Angeles-based global network of independent creative companies. The deal brings GateMaker’s creator economy expertise across paid, earned and owned influencer relationships into Residence’s broader creative network, which also includes companies like BUCK, OK COOL, Giant Ant, Part & Sum and Wild. - learn moreGavel, an AI-native legal tech company used by legal professionals to draft, review and automate legal work in Microsoft Word and on the web, was acquired by Relativity. The deal will bring Gavel’s drafting, redlining and document automation tools into Relativity’s legal data intelligence platform, allowing work product created in RelativityOne and Relativity aiR to be edited in Microsoft Word while syncing back to the underlying matter data. Financial terms were not disclosed. - 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 | Snap unveils its $2,195 augmented reality glasses as rivalry with Meta heats up | 0 | 10.34 | 16-06-2026 |
| 3 | LA’s New Defense Startup Comes Out Swinging | 0 | 8.42 | 17-07-2026 |
| 4 | Match Goes Niche With $100M Move | 0 | 8.55 | 01-05-2026 |
| 5 | Two LA Startups Raised $2.37B to Build What AI Needs | 0 | 9.18 | 07-08-2026 |
| 6 | Snap's new smart glasses received mixed reactions — mainly on aesthetics | -2 | 6 | 19-06-2026 |
| 7 | The LA Startup Taking on One of Parenting’s Most Frustrating Problems | 0 | 9.78 | 08-05-2026 |
| 8 | Arm stock tumbles on chip designer's muted profit forecast | -2 | 7 | 31-07-2025 |
| 9 | Разработчик «умных» очков Even Realities бывшего сотрудника Apple привлёк $150 млн при оценке в $1 млрд | 0 | 7 | 06-07-2026 |
| 10 | Arm stock tumbles on chip designer's muted profit forecast | -2 | 6 | 31-07-2025 |