Specter Monitor is a data-driven newsletter for investors interested in learning about the latest market trends, signals, and opportunities. Our audience includes some of the most legendary VC investors in the world. We’ll work hard to bring you actionable insights into what’s happening in today’s markets while celebrating data-driven wins and predictions. ✨
🇫🇷 French AI Startups: Powering Europe's Next Wave of Innovation
Drawing on insights from Galion.exe, Chausson Partners, and Revaia (here), we explore the core AI landscapes driving France’s innovation, along with the standout companies leading these advancements.
Specter Team
🏗️ The Corporates Powering the Startup Economy: A Deep Dive into 1 Million+ Startup-Client Relationships
We analyzed data from over 4 million startup websites and identified more than 1.06 million startup-client relationships, shedding light on the corporates that engage the most with startups and the global distribution of these collaborations.
Specter Team
🔮 Talents of the Week
Specter monitors real-time global talent movements to spot investment opportunities before anyone else.
🪄 Predicted: Anton Osika (EU, 2023): Co-Founder at Lovable
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 152 Days
Description: Lovable provides an application development platform designed to build software.
Prev. Experience: Anton Osika is the Co-Founder of Lovable (2023–present), an AI startup developing autonomous code-generation tools to democratize software creation, securing $15M in funding and achieving $17M ARR within months. Previously, he co-founded Depict.ai (2020–2023), a Y Combinator-backed AI recommendation engine for e-commerce that raised $20M and served billions of recommendations globally. As the first employee at Sana Labs (2017–2020), he built AI-driven personalized learning systems, contributing to the company’s $80M+ funding. Earlier, he applied statistical modeling and algorithmic trading strategies at Ampfield Aktiebolag (2015–2017) and interned at CERN in particle physics. A serial entrepreneur and technical leader, Osika holds an MS in Engineering Physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and co-founded the Stockholm AI community. His work on GPT-Engineer, an open-source code-generation tool with 50k+ GitHub stars, underscores his impact on AI-driven software development.
Total Funding: $22.5M / $15m Latest Pre-Series A on 02-2025.
Notable Investors: Emblem, Hummingbird Ventures, Mattias Miksche, Siavash Ghorbani, byFounders, Fredrik Hjelm, Stefan Lindeberg, Bjarke Staun-Olsen, Adam D'Angelo, Charlie Songhurst, Thomas Wolf, Erik Bernhardsson.
👻 Opportunity: Amit Jardosh (US, 2024): Founder at Voicebridge AI
Description: Voicebridge enables businesses and organizations to capture authentic, emotionally nuanced insights through AI-powered voice surveys.
Prev. Experience: Amit J. is the Founder & CEO of Voicebridge AI (2024–present) and Peakspace Labs (2021–present), where he develops AI agents and workflow automation tools for business efficiency. Previously, he co-founded Molecule, a climate-focused startup addressing overproduction in fashion using AI, and Floro Health (2019–2020), a gut-microbiome testing platform. As VP of Product & Growth at Biomarker Labs (2018–2019), he led mobile app development and agile teams to integrate health data analytics. Earlier, he founded One Celsius (2015–2017), a sustainable apparel brand that partnered with Pepsi and pioneered carbon-neutral production.
🎱 Strategic Signals
Specter analyzes the online and social activity of leading investors and industry insiders to predict upcoming funding rounds and acquisitions.
🪄 Predicted: Stephen Haney (US, 2024): Co-Founder and CEO at Paper
Stephen Haney
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 30 Days
Description: Paper is a design and engineering platform to experiment and build more efficiently.
Prev. Experience: Stephen Haney is the Founder of Paper, a next-gen design tool startup he launched in September 2024, securing a $4.2M seed round led by Accel. Prior to Paper, he served as Head of Product Engineering at WorkOS (2022–2024), where he scaled enterprise-ready developer tools and oversaw the acquisition of Modulz, his previous venture. As Co-Founder/CTO of Modulz (2018–2022), Haney created Radix UI (4M+ monthly npm downloads) and Stitches, bridging design and engineering workflows, before its acquisition by WorkOS.
Total Funding: $4.2M / $4.2M Latest Seed on 02-2025.
Notable Investors: Accel, Basecase, Nebular, Tiny VC, Adrián Mato, Alasdair Monk, Ben Lang, Cristina Cordova, David Hoang, Des Traynor, Eden Halperin, Evil Rabbit, Facundo Santana, Guillermo Rauch, Jason Ginsberg, John Pham, Jordan Singer, Jorn van Dijk, Jose Rago, Koen Bok, Matej Hrescak, Mathurah Ravigulan, Ridd, TK Kong.
👻 Opportunity: François Chollet (US, 2024) Co-Founder at Ndea
Description: Ndea is a frontier AI research lab that focuses on blending intuitive pattern recognition and formal reasoning into a unified architecture.
Prev. Experience: François Chollet is the Co-Founder of the ARC Prize Foundation, a nonprofit advancing artificial general intelligence (AGI) through open benchmarks, which he launched in June 2024 after leaving Google. At Google (2015–2024), he served as a Senior Staff Engineer, creating Keras—the most widely used deep-learning framework globally (2M+ users)—and contributing to TensorFlow, which powers systems like Waymo and YouTube recommendations. Earlier, as Machine Learning Architect at Thunder (2013–2015), he built core ML infrastructure for ad fraud detection and programmatic advertising.
🍒 Cherry-Picked Companies
Specter tracks the performance of millions of companies and identifies the ones who are likely to increase in valuation.
🪄 Predicted: Manouk Draisma (EU, 2023) Co-Founder and CTO at LangWatch
6 Months Growth: Web: 238%; Team: -16.6%; Social: 13.9%
Description: LangWatch is an innovative platform designed to optimize and evaluate large language models (LLMs) for AI teams.
Total Funding: $1.1M / $1M Latest Seed on 02-2025.
Notable Investors: Passion Capital, Volta Ventures, Antler.
👻 Opportunity: Jeff Huber (US, 2023) Founder & CEO at Chroma
6 Months Growth: Web: 46.6%; Team: -33.3%; Social: 5.5%
Description: Chroma is an open-source AI application database to simplify the development of AI applications.
Total Funding: $20.3M / $18M Latest Seed on 04-2023.
Notable Investors: Jordan Tigani, James Cham, Naval Ravikant, Angel Collective Opportunity Fund, Jack Altman, Max Altman, Daniel Gross, Quiet Capital, Spencer Kimball, Akshay Kothari, Anthony Goldbloom, Nat Friedman, Guillermo Rauch, Amjad Masad.
That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!
Stay tuned for the next updates and feel free to share with your friends.
