Verkada's cloud-security bet: $5.8B valuation and an Nvidia investment
Verkada bet physical security would follow IT to the cloud; by 2026 the bet stood at 2.4M devices, $1B+ bookings and a $5.8B valuation.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDPoppins Clinical becomes France's first reimbursed therapeutic app under PECAN
Bmotion Technologies' dyslexia app Poppins Clinical won France's first PECAN early-reimbursement order for a therapeutic digital medical device in July 2026.
Read the caseVay's teledriving bet: remote drivers beat full autonomy; Grab commits up to $410M
Berlin's Vay used remote human teledrivers instead of full self-driving; after Vegas and Belgium launches, Grab committed up to $410M in Nov 2025.
Read the caseHopin's $7.75B virtual-events bet ends in a 2024 liquidation, 5 years after launch
Pandemic-era events unicorn Hopin raised $1B+ at a $7.75B valuation, then liquidated its UK parent in Feb 2024.
Read the caseTwelve Labs bets video is AI's foundation; $100M Series B with Amazon and Nvidia
Korean-founded Twelve Labs bets native video foundation models — Marengo and Pegasus — will let AI watch, remember and reason like humans; $207M+ raised.
Read the caseAleph Farms clears Singapore for cultivated beef, first approval outside Israel
Aleph Farms' whole-cut steak bet passed its second regulator in August 2026, leaving it the only company cleared to sell cultivated beef anywhere.
Read the caseTibber bets EU dynamic-tariff rules make real-time power the default; 1M users by 2023
App-first digital utility selling power at real-time market prices; EU 2024 market reform made dynamic price contracts a consumer right.
Read the caseBack Market bets EU Right to Repair makes refurb mainstream: €3.5B GMV, profitable
Paris marketplace bets the EU's 2024 Right to Repair directive makes refurbished electronics mainstream; 2025 GMV €3.5B+, first global profit.
Read the caseSweepSouth's Africa-expansion bet: Naspers-backed, then Nigeria and Kenya exits
SweepSouth bet its South African cleaning marketplace would scale across Africa; five months after entering Nigeria it exited Nigeria and Kenya.
Read the caseByju’s bets on online learning, surges to $11B valuation during pandemic
Byju’s grew from a test‑prep tutor to India’s edtech startup by betting mobile‑first video lessons could beat rote learning, then scaled fast during COVID‑19.
Read the caseBVNK bets MiCA licenses stablecoin rails; Mastercard buys it for up to $1.8B
London startup bets MiCA makes compliant stablecoin rails enterprise-grade; MFSA CASP licence, $30B annualized, then Mastercard acquires it for up to $1.8B.
Read the caseReflect Orbital bets sunlight can be sold from orbit; FCC licenses Earendil-1
A California startup pre-sold 30,000 spots of sunlight, went viral in 2024, and won a July 2026 FCC license for its first 18-meter orbital mirror.
Read the caseEmbodied's Moxie bet: cloud-dependent kid robot bricked with no refunds
Embodied sold a $799 AI companion robot for kids, then shut down in Dec 2024 after a funding round collapsed — most Moxies were bricked without refunds.
Read the caseDoctolib's primary-care platform bet: 12 loss-making years, then profit and UK expansion
Doctolib bet doctors would rent booking SaaS and patients adopt the free app; after 12 loss-making years it turned profitable in 2025, then bought UK's Medicus.
Read the caseMatternet's FAA type-certificate moat pays off: goes public with $33M
The only FAA type-certified drone delivery platform went public via $33M reverse merger after 60,000+ commercial flights, betting certification beats waivers.
Read the caseStrix bets open-source AI agents that prove exploits beat scanners
Open-source pentest agent hits #1 GitHub Trending with 47k+ stars; XBEN benchmark shows 100/104 exploits at ~$3.37 each.
Read the caseMicroagi bets real factory data, not new hardware, will make robots work; $55M seed
Munich's Microagi raised Germany's largest-ever seed ($55M) to sell Atlas, a model-agnostic layer that fine-tunes existing robots on real factory data.
Read the caseStrainX Bioworks bets India's fermentation know-how feeds the bioeconomy; $13M round
StrainX leaves stealth with a 10,000-litre fermentation platform and $13M from Prime Venture and Leo Capital to make biology India's manufacturing layer.
Read the case80 Acres Farms' vertical-farming bet: $350M raised, then Chapter 7 in 2026
80 Acres bet hyper-local indoor farms could sell everyday produce; eleven years and $350M later, a failed acquisition ended it in Chapter 7.
Read the caseAruna's $35M bet on digital fisheries hits a $60M round collapse and 40% layoffs
Indonesia's Aruna bet aggregating small fishermen could fix a fragmented seafood chain; after a $60M round fell through, it cut 40% of staff in early 2025.
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