Nearthlab's drone-autonomy bet lists on Kosdaq at top of range, then falls 30% on debut
South Korea's Nearthlab turned wind-turbine drone inspections into a defense pivot and a top-priced Kosdaq IPO, then closed day one 30% below issue
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDLymeAlert bets a $50 home kit can test your tick for Lyme in 30 minutes
Three MIT Sloan MBAs — one a 15-year clinician — launched the first at-home test that tells you whether the tick that bit you carries the Lyme bacterium.
Read the caseGoTo outspent rivals to win Indonesia's super-app race, then cut 12% of staff
Freshly merged from Gojek and Tokopedia, GoTo outspent rivals on hiring to lock up Indonesia's super-app market before profit mattered.
Read the caseSuperblocks bets enterprises buy governed vibe coding; AWS embeds it in private clouds
Superblocks bets vibe coding needs IT governance; its 2026-08 AWS deal puts AI-built apps inside private clouds, after $60M raised and 50 employees.
Read the caseAgnes AI bets a Singapore-built AI app can win the long tail; 3M users, $10M Series A
Singapore AI workspace Agnes launched July 2025, hit 3M users and 200K DAU by December, then a $10M Series A at a $100M+ valuation.
Read the caseImmunai raised a fast $60M Series A to race ahead on mapping the immune system
Immunai closed a $60M Series A nine months after its seed, betting speed would build the largest proprietary immune-cell data set before rivals caught up.
Read the caseYulu's gig-worker EV fleet bet: EBITDA-positive, $93M Series C, IPO next
Yulu pivots from shared commuter e-bikes to subscription EVs for delivery riders, hits EBITDA-positive in 2025, then raises a $93M Series C.
Read the caseWasoko's B2B bet: $125M round, MaxAB merger, then a pivot to merchant fintech
Wasoko raised $125M at $625M to digitize Africa's informal retail; after retrenchment it merged with MaxAB and now bets merchant fintech pays.
Read the caseGossip Harbor bet: Microfun's story-led merge game tops $100M a month
Chinese studio Microfun bet Western women would pay for soap-opera merge games; Gossip Harbor became the genre's #1 with $650M in 2025 revenue.
Read the caseKahoot turned classroom quizzes into a $1.7B learning-game platform
Kahoot bet teachers would use live game mechanics in class; 50M MAU followed, then a $1.7B take-private offer.
Read the caseOPay bet agent payments replace Nigeria's cash; SoftBank's first Africa deal
Opera-founded OPay scaled 140K agents then a $400M SoftBank-led round at $2B; ride-hail died in 2020, payments now target a $4B US IPO
Read the caseSatellogic bets $1.3M satellites make planetary monitoring a subscription
The Argentine-founded Earth-observation pioneer cut costs a quarter, sold satellites to governments, and turned its first positive operating income in Q2 2026.
Read the case42dot: lidar-free mobility startup becomes Hyundai's software-defined vehicle core
Ex-Naver Labs chief founded lidar-free mobility startup 42dot in 2019; after an $88.5M Series A, Hyundai took control and made it its software center.
Read the caseNeko Health: Preventive Checkups as a Business
Swedish startup offers full-body scans for £299; raised $700M in 2026, valued at $1.8B.
Read the caseChariot acquired by Ford Smart Mobility after betting crowdsourced commuter shuttles
SF shuttle startup Chariot bet crowdsourced, transit-priced routes could beat car commutes; Ford Smart Mobility made it its first acquisition in 2016.
Read the caseLightsprint bets non-engineers ship code: FB Messenger builder, BitGo CTO, YC S26
YC P26 'software factory': PMs and designers ship to production with cloud agents; founders built FB Messenger, led BitGo; TechCrunch standout
Read the caseAindo bets the EU's Data Act and EHDS make synthetic data the safe way to share
Trieste's Aindo, a SISSA spinout, raises €6M and EIC backing betting EU data-sharing rules make synthetic data the privacy-safe way to move data.
Read the caseFoghorn ended its up-to-$1.6B Lilly alliance and cut 40% of staff after weak Phase 1 data
Foghorn's SMARCA2 drug hit its target safely but not hard enough on tumours; the 2021 Lilly deal ended, headcount fell to about 65 and cash runway reached 2029.
Read the caseDeep Fission bets a mile-deep borehole can replace a nuclear containment building
Founded by the Deep Isolation duo, it lowers standard 15 MW reactors into mile-deep boreholes — and went public twice before building a single unit.
Read the caseOfBusiness's SME commerce-plus-credit bet: FY26 PAT ₹724 crore, IPO-bound
OfBusiness bets India's SMEs need raw materials and credit as one product: FY26 revenue ₹20,645 crore, PAT ₹724 crore, now preparing its IPO.
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