LayerZero
Blockchains were pitched as borderless systems. In reality, they splintered into separate economies. Ethereum here. Solana there. Liquidity fenced in by protocol walls. LayerZero Labs entered that...
SpotlightTop News
Read more
In-depth spotlights on the most innovative startups and tech companies. Deep dives into what makes them stand out.
Blockchains were pitched as borderless systems. In reality, they splintered into separate economies. Ethereum here. Solana there. Liquidity fenced in by protocol walls. LayerZero Labs entered that...
Dragonfly does not breathe fire. It studies it. Founded in 2018 with a $100M inaugural fund, Dragonfly was built to bridge East and West in crypto, pairing Alexander Pack and Bo Feng’s early...
In 2018, while most security teams were still obsessing over endpoints and perimeter defenses, Brendan O’Connor and Brian Soby were focused on a blind spot hiding in plain sight: SaaS. The enterprise...
Polychain Capital does not knock. It materializes. Founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee, Coinbase’s first employee and former Head of Risk, the firm emerged before institutional crypto was...
Multicoin Capital does not chase noise. Multicoin Capital hunts signal. Founded in 2017 by Tushar Jain and Kyle Samani, the firm stepped into crypto before consensus formed, before allocators felt...
Apryse does not whisper. It renders. It signs. It seals. And right now it is sizing up a market that runs on documents the way Wall Street runs on caffeine. Founded in 1998 in Vancouver as PDFTron...
Anchorage Digital does not chase headlines. It builds vaults. And inside today’s startup ecosystem, vaults are infrastructure. Founded in 2017 by Nathan McCauley and Diogo Mónica, the company emerged...
In 2013, when most institutions treated Bitcoin like a sideshow, Dan Morehead treated it like a macro position with structural asymmetry. Pantera Capital was founded in 2003, but the 2013 pivot into...
Applitools was founded in 2013 with a conviction that software quality could no longer rely on brittle scripts and pixel-by-pixel guesswork. Adam Carmi and Moshe Milman built the company around a...
Los Angeles builds dreams on soundstages. Bonfire Ventures builds them in server rooms. Founded in 2017 by Jim Andelman and Mark Mullen, Bonfire is a seed-stage fund with a narrow mandate and a long...
In 2006, in Yorkshire, England, Michael Gould, Guy Haddleton, and Sue Haddleton studied the enterprise and saw something fragile. Finance lived in one spreadsheet. Sales in another. Supply chain...
In 2022, when crypto felt like a heavyweight fight in the late rounds, Kathryn “Katie” Haun stepped forward with $1.5B and a thesis that did not blink. $500M for early stage. $1B for acceleration. 2...
Immigration is paperwork until it is personal. Then it is oxygen. In October 2023, Alma Immigration entered the market with a thesis forged in lived experience. Aizada Marat, Harvard-educated lawyer...
There are venture firms that follow momentum, and then there are venture firms that engineer it. Costanoa Ventures belongs to the second category. Founded in 2012 by Greg Sands, the firm was built...
Adverum Biotechnologies is not a lab experiment chasing headlines. It is a clinical-stage gene therapy company that has spent years tightening its thesis around a single, high-stakes conviction: 1...
In 2004, Jean-François Clavier planted a flag in Silicon Valley with a clear premise: the earliest checks, written with conviction, create asymmetric outcomes. He called the firm SoftTech VC. By...
Copenhagen does not posture. It produces. In 2017, inside the labs of Rigshospitalet and the University of Copenhagen, Niels Behrendt, Lars Henning Engelholm, and Christoffer Nielsen were deep in...
ARCH Venture Partners does not chase noise. ARCH Venture Partners chases signal, the kind buried in peer-reviewed journals and debated in research corridors long before Wall Street can price it. The...
ADC Therapeutics does not operate in theory. It operates in consequence. Born in 2011 and shaped in 2012 under the financial architecture of Auven Therapeutics, this Lausanne and London built...
Foresite Capital does not chase noise. Foresite Capital studies signal. In a market crowded with capital tourists, this firm moves like a specialist surgeon, precise, clinical, and focused on long...
S32 is what happens when Bill Maris decides curiosity is not a hobby but infrastructure. In 2017, after building Google Ventures into a capital engine inside Alphabet, Bill Maris founded Section 32...
Fourteen years is a long time to stay sharp in an industry that confuses volume with virtue. Kraken did not arrive loud. It arrived correct. Born in 2011 in the shadow of Mt. Gox, Jesse Powell, Thanh...
DCVC does not chase trends. DCVC hunts gravity. Founded in 2011 in Palo Alto by Matthew Ocko and Zachary Zack Bogue, the firm was built on a thesis that still feels underpriced: advanced computation...
Figment does not make noise. It makes rails. Quiet ones. The kind institutions step onto when the stakes are real, the checks have commas, and uptime is not a marketing claim but a fiduciary...
Lerer Hippeau does not chase noise. Lerer Hippeau listens for signal. Founded in 2010 in New York City, the firm was built by Kenneth Lerer, Benjamin Lerer, and Eric Hippeau, operators turned...
Consensys has always moved like the quiet architect on a loud block, the kind of company that ignores the noise and pours concrete while everyone else argues about paint colors. In a market addicted...
Founder Collective does not posture. It does not chase noise. It writes the first check when conviction outweighs consensus, and that discipline has made it one of the most influential seed investors...
There are companies that tiptoe into the public markets, and then there is Aktis Oncology walking in like it knows exactly why it is there. January 2026 opens with Aktis becoming the first biotech...
Pear VC does not chase noise. It studies formation. In a market that rewards later-stage certainty, Pear VC built its reputation inside the startup ecosystem, where risk is still raw and conviction...
Cambridge has a habit of producing companies that sound academic right up until the money starts moving, the science starts landing, and patients start showing up in the data. Agios Pharmaceuticals...
In 2018, while much of venture capital was still mistaking pattern recognition for prophecy, Arjun Sethi, Jonathan Hsu, and Ted Maidenberg built Tribe Capital in San Francisco around a sharper...
In gene therapy, most companies obsess over the message. The code. The payload. Affinia Therapeutics was built around a harder truth that cuts through the noise in today’s startup news cycle. The...
Alchemy has always sounded like magic, but this story is pure engineering discipline with a sense of humor sharp enough to cut glass. In San Francisco, long before Web3 was a conference circuit and a...
Animoca Brands never sounded like a startup to me. It sounded like a holding company with a point of view and the patience to prove it. Hong Kong roots, global posture, and a thesis that keeps...
The RNA wave has moved past theory and into consequence. Capital is flowing, clinical data is maturing, and the market is sorting out who is building science versus who is selling hope. In San Diego,...
Abivax is the kind of company that makes markets nervous because it refuses to behave like a story stock. It was born in December 2013 out of three French biotechs stitched together by Truffle...
In 2012, Satyen Sangani, Aaron Kalb, Venky Ganti, and Feng Niu walked into the enterprise data mess with one deceptively clean question: how do you connect people with questions to people with...
November 2025 did not mark an ending for Aisera. It marked a verdict. Eight years after its founding in 2017, the company that bet early on agentic AI did not sell because it had to. It sold because...
ABC Fitness does not need an origin myth. It has a balance sheet, a backbone, and a billing engine that has been quietly keeping the fitness industry upright since Reagan was in office, a reality...
December 2, 2025 felt quiet on the surface, but it landed squarely on the radar of startup news watchers paying attention to infrastructure. No confetti. No victory lap. Just a platform going live...
The American housing crisis does not start with lumber prices or mortgage rates. It starts in a fluorescent-lit office where a permit application waits, untouched, while months burn and costs...
FurtherAI did not start with a manifesto or a pitch deck. It started with a five day wait for D&O insurance and an uncomfortable truth. Insurance was not slow. Insurance was manual. So Aman Gour...
VitroBOT exists because gravity does not negotiate. Every year 200+ people die cleaning building facades, clipped to ropes, trusting gear that has barely evolved since the last century. A $40B...
Moddule is a freight visibility platform built by former forwarders to unify shipments, inventory, and performance without replacing existing systems.