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. ✨
🤖 State of AI Report 2025
The State of AI Report is running an AI usage survey that will be open sourced with the report on 9 October 2025. Over 1,000 people from a range of professions and expertise have taken it and we'd love to have your voice included. It'll shape the most widely read report on AI progress.
Nathan Benaich and Air Street Capital
⚛️ Quantum Computing Landscape 2025
Building on the foundation laid by APEX Ventures, one of the earliest and most active backers of Europe’s quantum revolution, we have built a Quantum Computing Market Map using Specter’s proprietary data platform, mapping 490+ companies across the global quantum ecosystem.
Specter Team
💸 Revenue Signals of the Week
Specter tracks private-company revenue and profitability as it’s reported across social posts, news, podcasts, and public filings.
Stackt hit $3.72m ARR
Stackt achieved over $3.72, in annual recurring revenue (ARR) after 3x growth in six months.
Samplead hit $2m ARR
Samplead reached $2m in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2025, doubling from $1m ARR in the prior six months.
Gamma hit $50m ARR
Gamma achieved over $50m in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2025, reflecting strong growth and a large user base.
Floot hit $46k MRR
Floot achieved $46k in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) within its first 30 days, indicating strong early traction in the generative AI sector.
Get in touch to learn more.
🔮 Stealth Opportunities of the Week
Specter monitors real-time global talent movements to spot investment opportunities before anyone else.
Colm McLoughlin
Colm is a Dublin-based fintech operator and repeat founder. He co-founded Dimply, an “experience engine” for banks and insurers, and led product/commercial until announcing his exit in May 2025. Dimply positions its platform for personalised, embedded financial experiences in regulated institutions. The team demoed at FinovateFall 2024, signalling enterprise-grade traction with a U.S. audience. Colm is now in stealth—“building and testing in India”—and experimenting with human-focused systems aimed at improving clarity and resilience in day-to-day financial decision-making. Currently in stealth 👻
Fred Potter
Fred is a Paris-based deep-tech builder best known for founding Netatmo, the French smart-home company acquired by Legrand in November 2018. Following the deal, he became CTO of Legrand’s Eliot program, helping define connected-home product strategy across the group. He subsequently joined Apple hardware in 2021 (Distinguished Engineer), before returning to stealth work on new products. Earlier in his career, Fred co-founded multiple connected-device ventures and holds advanced academic credentials in computer science/engineering. Currently in stealth 👻
Yariv Fishman
Yariv is an Israel-based product leader in cybersecurity. He served as Chief Product Officer at Deep Instinct, where he wrote and spoke on “preemptive data security” and led product strategy. Deep Instinct announced his leadership appointment and regularly features his perspectives on AI-driven threats. Before that, he held senior product roles at Microsoft and Check Point, building cloud security and partner programs. He now lists “Stealth Startup” on LinkedIn while remaining active in thought leadership around AI-powered malware analysis and prevention. Currently in stealth 👻
Andrew Roper
Andrew is a U.S.-based software engineer now building in stealth. Prior senior engineering roles, including Principal SDE at Yahoo and early work across fintech and streaming platforms. He has also been associated with Proto venture technology as a co-founder/app builder, focusing on venture-backed product builds for startups. Current focus to be full-stack product development while incubating a new venture. Currently in stealth 👻
Joe Kemsley
Joe is a London-based product leader in transaction banking and cross-border payments. He served as Head of Product Strategy at Ebury, where he publicly discussed platform design and API integrations for multinational clients. During 2024, Ebury announced a partnership with dLocal to strengthen pay-ins/payouts in African markets; Joe provided on-record commentary about reliability and transparency in EM corridors. Currently building in stealth and remains active in product discourse around embedded data and treasury flows. Currently in stealth 👻
Existing Specter users: Access the full roster here.
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🎱 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.
Mixpanel (🔥 featured 3x in 90 days)
Mixpanel provides a self‑serve digital analytics platform spanning product analytics with new capabilities like Metric Trees and built‑in Session Replay, bringing both quantitative and qualitative insights into one workflow. In September 2025, Mixpanel appointed Jen Taylor as CEO, succeeding Amir Movafaghi, and highlighted continued double‑digit growth and profitability, plus customers such as LG, Rakuten Viber and Experian. Pricing is tiered with a free plan (1M monthly events) and pay‑as‑you‑go event volume beyond that. Based in San Francisco.
VibeCode (🔥 featured 4x in 90 days)
VibeCode is a mobile app that lets users describe an idea and iteratively generate, test and refine working mobile apps on‑device via AI prompts. In August 2025 the company disclosed a $9.4m seed led by Seven Seven Six with Long Journey, Neo, First Harmonic and Afore participating, and said over 40,000 apps had been created; subscriptions range from roughly $20–$200/month. The Android listing shows an update on August 29, 2025 and points to Not A Number Labs as the developer entity. Co‑founders publicly include Ansh Nanda (CEO), Riley Brown and Kehan Zhang. Based in San Francisco, California, United States, United States.
Dedalus Labs (🔥 featured 5x in 90 days)
Dedalus Labs is building a drop‑in MCP gateway that connects any LLM to any MCP server—letting teams host MCP servers on Dedalus’ cloud, autoscale, and route models via one API and SDK. Usage‑based fees for MCP tool calls (e.g., $0.005 on Free tier; $0.0025 on Pro) and a marketplace rake for paid tools. Documentation lists supported model providers spanning OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI, Groq and others. Based in San Francisco, California, United States.
Bitrig (🔥 featured 3x in 90 days)
Bitrig lets users describe features and automatically generate fully native iOS apps in Swift/SwiftUI, aiming for minutes-to-deploy app creation and App Store launch. The site positions Bitrig as a no-code-to-native pipeline with automation across build and deploy steps. Early product updates and short demos are posted on X, showing iteration cadence and feature progress. Funding: total $500k; last round $500k; investor: Y Combinator. Founders and pricing model are not confirmed from first-party links. Based in San Francisco, California, United States.
Kernel (🔥 featured 5x in 90 days)
Kernel provides browsers‑as‑a‑service for web agents, offering fast spin‑up of isolated browser VMs, live views and replays, and an API/SDK for agent automation. Pricing combines free and paid plans with usage‑based metering for compute and sessions. The company publicly states it’s in Y Combinator’s S25 batch; co‑founders Catherine Jue and Rafael Garcia have announced the launch and GA on LinkedIn. Based in San Francisco, California, United States.
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.
Fal (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 17)
Fal.ai is a generative media platform for developers offering fast inference for AI models. Fal’s developer platform spans image, video and audio generation APIs; the company closed a $125m Series C on July 31, 2025 at a $1.5bn valuation to scale dedicated GPU clusters and enterprise features. Founders Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven both have Fortune 500 Experience, Unicorn Experience, Prior VC-Backed Experience, from Top Universities, and VC-Backed Founders. Last Funding : $125m (Series C, July 31, 2025) Total Funding $197m. Notable backers: 500 Emerging Europe, Andreessen Horowitz, Aravind Srinivas, Balaji Srinivasan, Bessemer Venture Partners, Coinbase Ventures, Cortical Ventures, Dan Romero, First Round Capital, et al. Stage: Late Stage. Based in San Francisco, California, United States, United States.
Fibr AI (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 20)
Fibr AI provides an AI-powered platform to automate website testing and personalization for marketers. Fibr’s AI‑CRO stack (Web Pilot/MAX) generates 1:1 landing pages and runs continuous tests to lower CAC; a $1.8m pre‑seed in July 2024 supported launch and early customer trials. Founders Ankur Goyal and Pritam Roy both have Fortune 500 Experience, Hyper Connectors, Influencers, Unicorn Experience, Prior Exit, Prior VC-Backed Experience, Prior VC-Backed Founder, Serial Founder, from Top Universities, and VC-Backed Founder. Total Funding: $3.8m. Notable backers: 2am VC, Accel, Kunal Shah, Sprint Vc, Sunil Kumar. Stage: Pre-seed / Seed. Based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, Asia.
Picogrid (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 41)
Picogrid builds a unified platform for autonomous systems connecting sensors and autonomous devices. Picogrid’s Legion platform unifies drones, sensors and SIGINT tools; a $12m seed (Mar 26, 2024) led by Initialized is followed by new Army work announced August 20, 2025. Together founders Martin Slosarik, Zane Mountcastle, and Dan Chirita Prior have VC-Backed Experience, Prior VC-Backed Founder, Serial Founder, from Top University, VC-Backed Founder. Total Funding: $13.1m (Last funding was a Grant, August 26, 2024). Notable backers: Alumni Ventures, Credo Ventures, DOMiNO Ventures, Giant Step Capital, Initialized Capital, Starburst Ventures, US Department of Energy. Stage: Early Stage. Based in El Segundo, California, United States, United States.
Beyond Presence (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 67)
Beyond Presence provides AI-powered interactive avatars for human-like conversations and video creation. Beyond Presence builds sub‑second, 1080p conversational avatars and A2V APIs; it raised $3.1m pre‑seed on October 14, 2024 to take research into production. Founders Awais Shafique and Felix Altenberger both have Fortune 500 Experience, Unicorn Experience, Prior Exit, Prior VC-Backed Experience, Prior VC-Backed Founder, Serial Founder, from Top University, VC-Backed Experience, and VC-Backed Founder. Total Funding: $3.1m (Pre Seed, October 14, 2024). Notable backers: 10x Founders, ALBA Management GmbH, Builders VC, HV Capital. Stage: Pre-seed / Seed. Based in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Europe.
Spherecast (YC S24) (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 92)
Spherecast is an inventory copilot for multi-channel brands supporting with demand planning, replenishment and ops management. Spherecast (YC S24) is an inventory copilot automating demand planning and replenishment for multi‑channel brands; portfolio listings indicate backing from āltitude alongside YC. Founders Paul Dietrich, Leon Hergert, Pascal Schindler have Fortune 500 Experience, Prior VC-Backed Experience, Serial Founder, from Top Universities, VC-Backed Experience, and VC-Backed Founder. Total Funding: $500k (Pre Seed, December 2, 2024). Notable backers: Y Combinator, āltitude. Stage: Pre-seed / Seed. Based in San Francisco, California, United States, United States.
Existing Specter users: Access the real-time startup feed here.
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That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!
Stay tuned for the next updates and feel free to share with your friends.
