Freepik: bootstrapped Spanish stock-image platform sells majority stake after a decade
Málaga's Freepik grew free stock graphics into €30M revenue with no investors, then sold EQT a majority stake in 2020 at a reported €260M valuation.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDAceable raised $47M to expand online driver's education into new verticals
Aceable used online and mobile driver's ed as a regulated wedge, then raised a $47M Series B to expand its course catalog nationwide.
Read the caseAspire's finance-OS bet: $100M Series C, Q2 2023 profit, US push by 2026
Singapore SME fintech Aspire bet businesses would replace bank-plus-Excel with one finance OS; $100M Series C in 2023, profitable that year, 50k users by 2026.
Read the caseSpace One's Three Failures: Japanese Private Rocket Still Not Orbital
Space One's on-demand small rocket failed three times; first Japanese private orbital launch still unachieved.
Read the caseFourier's Care-bot bet: rehab-robot leader turns GR-3 into a companion
Chinese rehab-robot leader Fourier Intelligence bets companionship sells humanoids: GR-3 Care-bot followed an ¥800M Series E and made its US debut at CES 2026
Read the caseRivio bets on guaranteed hospital revenue, not another software; US$21M at 6 months old
Two Stanford-trained founders guarantee hospitals collect 100% of what health plans owe; US$21M raised and R$500M valuation within a year of founding.
Read the caseKyte's $300M delivered-car-rental bet ended in 2025 with its fleet repossessed
Kyte delivered rental cars to customers' doors; in Aug 2025 its lender repossessed the fleet and the board wound the company down.
Read the caseHerdr bets agent fleets need an open terminal runtime; 25k-star solo project joins YC
Solo founder Can Celik's Herdr — an Apache-2.0 runtime where terminal AI agents keep running — hit 25k GitHub stars in four months, then joined Y Combinator.
Read the caseNebius: from a sanctioned Yandex shell to $46B of AI-cloud contracts
Halted since 2022 and stripped of Russia, Yandex's remnant relaunched as AI cloud Nebius, then signed $17.4B with Microsoft and up to $27B with Meta.
Read the caseTiny Health grew from baby gut tests to clinicians and adults, raising a $33M Series B
Tiny Health began with at-home infant microbiome tests in 2022; adults and a clinician channel grew faster, and B Capital led a $33M Series B.
Read the caseEnergy Vault's gravity bet: first EVx plant, then pivot to AI power
NYSE-listed gravity-storage pioneer commissions the world's first 25MW/100MWh EVx plant in China (2024), then pivots to lithium BESS and AI data-center power.
Read the caseSary bets Saudi corner shops buy wholesale online; $112M and a ShopUp merger later
Saudi B2B marketplace Sary digitized wholesale ordering for small shops, raised $112M, added embedded credit, and merged with ShopUp into SILQ Group in 2025.
Read the caseStickerbox's voice-to-sticker bet: PH #2 of the Day, 13 sellouts, $35–50M exit
Hapiko's $99 kid-safe AI printer turns spoken ideas into physical stickers; PH #2 of the Day (435 upvotes), sold out 13×, then Spin Master's $35–50M buyout.
Read the caseCoursera turned free Stanford-style classes into a global learning platform
Coursera bet elite online courses could attract millions first, then convert that reach into credentials and enterprise learning.
Read the caseBaselane bets DIY landlords will bank where the books do themselves; 9,100% search surge
NYC fintech Baselane bets landlords will bank where the books do themselves; 50K+ investors, $2B+ volume, 9,100% search growth by Aug 2026.
Read the caseGilmour Space's Eris bet: Australia's first orbital rocket flies 14s, crashes
Gilmour Space launched Australia's first homegrown orbital rocket from Bowen in July 2025; it crashed at 14 seconds, and TestFlight 2 is already in build.
Read the caseYuma Energy bets swapping beats charging for India's gig riders; $35M from Magna
Yulu spin-off runs India's battery-swap network for e-two/three-wheelers: 60M+ swaps, ~100k batteries, 18 cities; Magna's $35M Series A funds a doubling.
Read the caseOpen Wearables bets MIT code beats proprietary health APIs; PH #2
Healthtech firm Momentum open-sourced its wearable-data API as Open Wearables: Product Hunt #2 daily on April 29, 2026 with 583 upvotes and 313 comments.
Read the caseCarrum bets ride-hailing supply in India should come from fleets, not driver-owners
A CarDekho-backed fleet operator put 5,100 cars and 18,000 drivers on Uber across six cities — profitable, and now $10M more from Uber at a $168M valuation.
Read the caseAider bets git-native terminals beat chat for AI coding; HN front page, 46k stars
Inktomi co-founder Paul Gauthier's open-source terminal pair programmer made LLMs edit git repos directly and became the standard others benchmarked against.
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