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. ✨
🤙 S/O Feature: Onstage
If you're raising Pre-Seed/Seed/Series A in the next 6 months, apply to Onstage (prev. Focal) and pitch to thousands of VCs and angels in one go. Alumni have raised over £500m from investors such as Sequoia, Creandum, Episode 1, and LocalGlobe. The deadline is Tuesday, 29th April. Apply here.
🔮 Talents of the Week
Specter monitors real-time global talent movements to spot investment opportunities before anyone else.
🪄 Predicted: Ankur Singla (US, 2023): Founder & CEO at Exaforce
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: over 18 months
Description: Exaforce enhances cloud security teams' productivity with semantic data and autonomous bots.
Actionable Summary: Exaforce is a cybersecurity startup aiming to transform Security Operations Centres (SOCs) through its Agentic SOC Platform. By employing a multi-model AI engine that combines large language models with semantic and behavioural analytics, Exaforce seeks to reduce false positives and streamline incident responses, thereby increasing SOC efficiency tenfold. On April 17, 2025, Exaforce announced a $75 million Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, and Thomvest Ventures. The capital will support the development and scaling of their AI-driven platform. The company’s leadership includes veterans from Google, F5, and Palo Alto Networks, and it has already partnered with over ten enterprises across various sectors to refine its solutions.
Total Funding: $80M / $75M Latest Series A in April - 2025.
Notable Investors: Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Thomvest, Touring Capital
👻 Opportunity: Jan Hoekman (EU, 2025): Founder & CEO at Stealth AI Startup (Serial Founder, 1x Exit)
Actionable Summary: Jan Hoekman is a serial entrepreneur with a background in data science and trading. He co-founded Byte Trading, an algorithmic market maker specialising in digital assets, which was acquired by Hex Trust in February 2025. Following this exit, he has embarked on a new venture in the AI sector, currently operating in stealth mode.
🎱 Strategic Signals
Specter analyzes the online and social activity of leading investors and industry insiders to predict upcoming funding rounds and acquisitions.
🪄 Predicted: Alex Arjun Dhillon (US, 2023): Founder and CEO at Outtake (ex-Palantir)
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: over 80 days
sam Altman,CEO, OPEnAI
Description: Outtake agentic AI secures modern attack surfaces with advanced search, real-time threat classification, and automated response.
Actionable Summary: Outtake is an AI-driven cybersecurity startup founded in October 2023 by former Palantir engineer Alex Arjun Dhillon, headquartered in New York. The company specialises in proactive protection against digital impersonation threats such as phishing, deepfakes, and email spoofing by using AI agents that operate beyond traditional firewalls. Its customers include prominent organisations like OpenAI, Pershing Square Capital Management, and Scicomm Media. Recently, Outtake raised $16.5 million in a Series A funding round led by CRV, alongside investors like Mantis VC and Night Ventures, bringing its total funding to $20 million at a valuation exceeding $100 million. The company, currently employing 12 people, distinguishes itself by automating the detection and removal of malicious content, offering faster and more effective responses than human-led methods.
Total Funding: $20M / $16.5M Amount Latest Series A in April - 2025.
Notable Investors: CRV, Bill Ackman, Nikesh Arora, Mantis VC, Night Ventures
👻 Opportunity: Fred Ehrsam (US, 2025): Co-Founder and CEO at Nudge (ex-Paradigm and Coinbase)
Description: Helping the brain work better with focused ultrasound. Treating neurological disorders today and enhancing human experience tomorrow.
Actionable Summary: The Nudge team includes engineers who have led the development of the surgical robot at Neuralink, built augmented-reality hardware at Apple, and designed parts on SpaceX Starlink satellites. On April 7, Fred shared details about what Nudge is working on, which generated immense interest from venture capital investors and the tech community.
🍒 Cherry-Picked Companies
Specter tracks the performance of millions of companies and identifies the ones who are likely to increase in valuation.
🪄 Predicted: Russ d'Sa (US, 2021): Co-Founder and CEO at LiveKit (ex-Medium and Twitter, 1x Exit)
6 Months Growth: Web: 189%; Team: 41%; Social: 100%
Description: The all-in-one platform for building voice AI agents. Instantly transport audio and video between LLMs and your users.
Actionable Summary: Founded in 2021 by Russ d’Sa and David Zhao, the company has evolved from a WebRTC media server into a robust infrastructure powering multimodal AI experiences. Notably, LiveKit underpins OpenAI’s ChatGPT Voice Mode, facilitating real-time voice interactions for millions of users daily. LiveKit’s Agents 1.0 framework enables developers to create sophisticated voice AI agents with features like multi-agent orchestration, multilingual semantic turn detection, and SIP telephony integration. The platform is utilised across various industries, including healthcare, finance, and customer service, by organisations such as Hello Patient, Spotify, ElevenLabs, and Tinder.
Total Funding: $119M / $83M Latest Series B in April - 2025.
Notable Investors: Redpoint, Elad Gil, Hanabi Capital, Altimeter Capital, Patrick Chase, Guillermo Rauch
👻 Opportunity: Christopher Pedregal (EU, 2023): Co-Founder and CEO at Granola (ex-Google, 1x Exit)
6 Months Growth: Web: 650%; Team: 69%; Social: 500%
Description: Granola is an AI-powered notepad that enhances meeting notes and transcriptions.
Actionable Summary: Granola is a London-based AI-powered meeting notepad designed to enhance, rather than replace, human note-taking. Launched in May 2024 by co-founders Chris Pedregal (formerly of Socratic, acquired by Google) and Sam Stephenson, Granola enables users to jot down key points during meetings while the audio is transcribed in the background. Post-meeting, the AI enriches these notes, creating structured, shareable summaries without the need for intrusive meeting bots. In October 2024, Granola secured a $20 million Series A funding round led by Spark Capital, with participation from investors including AI Grant, Lightspeed, Betaworks, and Firstminute Capital. The app has gained traction among tech leaders and venture capitalists, with over half of its users holding leadership roles at companies such as Vercel, Ramp, and Roblox.
Total Funding: $24.5M / $20M Latest Series A in October - 2024.
Notable Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Spark Capital, Firstminute Capital, Daniel Gross, Hunter Walk
That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!
Stay tuned for the next updates and feel free to share with your friends.
