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 CASOS PUBLICADOS · ATUALIZADOS REGULARMENTEAceable 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.
Ler o casoAspire'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.
Ler o casoSpace 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.
Ler o casoFourier'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
Ler o casoRivio 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.
Ler o casoKyte'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.
Ler o casoHerdr 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.
Ler o casoNebius: 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.
Ler o casoTiny 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.
Ler o casoEnergy 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.
Ler o casoSary 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.
Ler o casoStickerbox'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.
Ler o casoCoursera 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.
Ler o casoBaselane 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.
Ler o casoGilmour 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.
Ler o casoYuma 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.
Ler o casoOpen 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.
Ler o casoCarrum 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.
Ler o casoAider 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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