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. ✨
🔮 Stealth Opportunities of the Week
Specter monitors real-time global talent movements to spot investment opportunities before anyone else.
Ron Fisher
New-York-based serial founder and angel. After co-founding Bowtie (AI receptionist for SMBs, sold to Mindbody in 2019) he launched Avina (YC S22), an AI sales-intelligence platform that raised a $3.2m seed round from RRE, Newark Venture Partners & Y Combinator. He also runs Illumination NYC, a light-art festival series, and, per LinkedIn, is now building again in stealth. Currently in stealth. 👻
Adam Szefer
Warsaw- and Bay-Area-based full-stack builder. Co-founded DogDogApp, an AI marketplace linking dog owners with certified behaviourists. Earlier, he served as Co-founder & CTO of talent-matching platform Gyfted, scaling it to enterprise clients and winning a ≈US$2m Polish R&D grant; he still advises the company. Adam is an affiliate at South Park Commons and, as of May 2025, one month into co-founding a stealth venture. Currently in stealth. 👻
Pavan Sondur
Bengaluru deep-tech operator. As co-founder/CEO, scaled Unbxd, an AI-driven product-discovery platform, to a US$100m majority acquisition by Netcore Cloud in Mar 2022. His LinkedIn now lists him “Stealth mode – Co-founder & CEO”. Currently in stealth. 👻
Igor Oliveira
Brazilian growth-marketing founder. Built Hackr Ads/AdSimples, an ad-automation SaaS, which Conta Simples acquired in Aug 2022; founders became partners inside the neobank. Served as Partner at Conta Simples before moving to a new stealth venture this May. Currently in stealth. 👻
Alex Beliaev
Madrid-based community-tech entrepreneur. Won Startup Without Borders Summit with Volee, an AI-powered community-growth platform, scaling it from a networking app into a B2B community-platform (enterprise contracts EU banks and Qonto) before selling his stake in 2024 ; later showcased at Pegasus Tech Ventures’ Startup World Cup. Currently co-founding Community Sprints, tooling for go-to-market teams, in stealth. Currently in stealth. 👻
Existing Specter users: Access the full roster here.
New to Specter? Schedule a demo and activate your complimentary trial today.
🎱 Investor Signals of the Week
Specter analyzes the online and social activity of leading investors and industry insiders to predict upcoming funding rounds and acquisitions.
Cased (🔥 featured 4 × in 90 days)
Cased is building an AI-powered DevOps agent that automates infrastructure workflows so product-engineering teams can deploy faster and fix production issues safely. Founded in 2020 by former GitHub engineering leaders Ted Nyman and Ben Bleikamp, the Berkeley-based startup has raised at least $10.5m - $2.2m seed led by Founders Fund with a $8.3m series a follow-on from Sancus Ventures, Abstraction Capital and others.
Dirac (🔥 featured 5 × in 90 days)
New-York-based Dirac produces BuildOS, software that turns CAD files into interactive, automated work-instructions for complex mechanical assemblies, helping defense and automotive suppliers cut weeks of manual drafting to minutes. Founded in 2022 by Filip Aronshtein (ex-Palantir) and Peter Weiss (ex-Anduril), the company closed a seed round from Asymmetric Capital Partners, Acequia Capital, and others in 2023 and 2024.
Osmosis (fka Gulp) (🔥 featured 5 × in 90 days)
Osmosis (YC W25) gives AI agents the missing ability to learn from real-time reinforcement-feedback in production, boosting accuracy on benchmarks like WebArena while slashing compute costs. Founded in 2024 by Kasey Zhang (repeat founder) and Andy Lyu (youngest tech-lead at TikTok), the San-Francisco trio recently raised an oversubscribed seed (≈ $0.5m disclosed) led by Y Combinator and angels such as Paul Graham.
Turbopuffer (🔥 featured 4 × in 90 days)
Turbopuffer offers a serverless vector-plus-full-text search engine built on object storage, claiming “10× cheaper” retrieval over incumbents while already indexing 150 B+ docs and 6 k q/s in production. Co-founders Simon Hørup Eskildsen and Justin Li (scaled Shopify infra from 1 K→1 M RPS) launched the remote-first Canadian company in 2023 and secured backing from Lachy Groom Fund and infra angels like Erik Bernhardsson and Jessie Frazelle.
Type 1 (🔥 featured 3 × in 90 days)
Type 1 Industries is a stealth-mode venture developing technologies to propel humanity toward a Kardashev “Type 1 Civilization” and restore the biosphere. It was founded in September 2023 by Jesse Peltan—an energy-infrastructure entrepreneur recognised on Forbes 30 Under 30 (2021, Energy) and former CTO of bitcoin-mining firm HODL Ranch and automation start-up Autonomous. The Austin-based company is currently at the bootstrapped stage. No investors or product details have been revealed.
Existing Specter users: Access the full list here.
New to Specter? Schedule a demo and activate your complimentary trial today.
🍒 Company Opportunities of the Week
Specter tracks the performance of millions of companies and identifies the ones who are likely to increase in valuation.
Vapi (🌟 Specter Rank 9)
Vapi’s developer-first voice-AI platform lets engineers spin up custom phone agents through one REST call; enterprises in healthcare and finance are already routing “millions of calls” through it only six months after launch. A $20m Series A led by Bessemer (Dec 12 2024) is doubling the 10-person San Francisco team and hardening the low-latency infrastructure. Co-founders Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta say the goal is to make voice the default interface as Apple Intelligence and Gemini push the channel mainstream.
Delphi (🌟 Specter Rank 52)
Miami-based Delphi is building AI “clones” of creators, preserving knowledge, personality and opinions for asynchronous fan interaction. It raised a $2.7m seed round (Sept 2023) led by Founders Fund with Lux Capital and Xfund on the cap table and a $16.4m series a (Aug 2024) from funds like Covalent Ventures (CV) and Abstract Ventures; early beta users include Tiago Forte and Keith Rabois. The lean team is now expanding product tooling before a wider rollout.
Agentio (🌟 Specter Rank 53)
Agentio runs an invite-only marketplace where YouTubers auction mid-roll ad inventory directly to brands. November 2024’s $18.2m series a led by Benchmark funds expansion to TikTok and Instagram and beefs up the AI that rates creators’ “brand safety.” Today the platform counts 50 brands (DoorDash, Notion, Mint Mobile) and 1,000+ creators. Co-founders Arthur Leopold (ex-Cameo President) and Jonathan Meyers (ex-Spotify) report the average brand spend 2.3×-ing quarter-over-quarter.
Twelve Labs (🌟 Specter Rank 62)
Twelve Labs is shipping GPT-style foundation models for video: Marengo 2.6 embeds long-form footage so developers can “query video like text,” and Pegasus-1 is now in open beta. A $30m (Dec 12, 2024) $50m series a (June 5 2024) co-led by NEA and NVIDIA’s NVentures pushes total funding past $107.1m, letting CEO Jae Lee nearly double head-count and deepen R&D partnerships with NVIDIA H100/L40S GPU stacks.
Blitzy (🌟 Specter Rank 125)
Harvard i-Lab spin-out Blitzy raised $4.4m seed (Sept 2024) from Link Ventures, Bessemer and others. Co-founders Brian Elliott (ex-Nvidia) and Sid Pardeshi are building AI copilots that cut enterprise app-development from months to days and are expanding the Boston engineering team.
Existing Specter users: Access the real-time startup feed here.
New to Specter? Schedule a demo and activate your complimentary trial today.
That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!
Stay tuned for the next updates and feel free to share with your friends.
