by Sharon V

In a crowded creative landscape where attention spans are shrinking and brand noise is louder than ever, one agency is proving that timeless strategy still beats fleeting trends.

Meet Stopwatch Creative — a full-service creative studio built on precision, storytelling, and impact.

A Fresh Take on Creativity
Founded on the idea that “good ideas deserve great execution,” Stopwatch Creative bridges the gap between design and direction. Their team combines branding, digital marketing, and content strategy to help organizations not only look good but also grow stronger.

From startups looking to launch with clarity to established brands seeking a fresh voice, Stopwatch Creative tailors each project around one core principle: strategy drives creativity, not the other way around.

“Anyone can make something look nice — we make it make sense,” says a member of the Stopwatch team. “Our goal is to build brands that last longer than the latest trend.”

What Sets Them Apart
Stopwatch Creative has built a reputation for translating complex ideas into cohesive visual and digital experiences.

Their work spans:

• Brand Identity Development – From logos to full-scale rebrands.
• Marketing Strategy – Data-driven campaigns with measurable results.
• Content Creation – Visual storytelling that connects with real audiences.
• Web & Digital Design – Clean, functional, conversion-focused experiences.

Their clients appreciate the agency’s collaborative process — one that blends analytical thinking with creative intuition. Stopwatch Creative isn’t just about producing content; it’s about crafting a narrative that resonates and drives action.

Designing for Results
What makes Stopwatch Creative stand out is its balance of creativity and accountability. The team treats every brand like a living, evolving story — one that deserves a strong foundation, a compelling visual language, and a marketing strategy that delivers real-world ROI.

Their portfolio showcases everything from community-driven campaigns to brand overhauls for tech startups and cultural organizations. The common thread: straightforward storytelling and consistent execution.
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Manny Larcher, co-founder and CEO of Stopwatch Creative, brings a rare combination of marketing expertise, startup experience, and venture insight to the agency. Having co-founded successful startups, guided clients through multi-million-dollar exits, and launched global growth platforms, Manny ensures every project at Stopwatch Creative is grounded in strategy, impact, and measurable results.

In an era where creative agencies often chase trends, Stopwatch Creative is earning attention by doing something rare — building brands with meaning, purpose, and measurable momentum.

If your organization is ready to refine its message, reimagine its look, or rethink how it connects with audiences, Stopwatch Creative might be the partner to get you there — on time and on point.

👉 Learn more at stopwatchcreative.com

HiOctave, a San Francisco, CA-based AI software company helping small and mid‑sized businesses (SMBs) automate and personalize customer experiences, announced its launch and $15M in funding.

The round was led by Vinod Khosla and Khosla Ventures. Additional investors and shareholders included Celesta Capital, Anthology Fund, operated jointly by Anthropic and Menlo Ventures, and Carya Venture Partners.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development and go‑to‑market as HiOctave delivers enterprise‑grade automation, at SMB‑friendly price points, to help business owners rebuild direct, durable relationships with their customers.

Led by CEO Golan Agmon, HiOctave combines AI speed and human care to deliver efficient, personal customer engagement. Its products suite offers:

• Agentic AI assistants;
• Real human agents;
• Insights and reports;
• Knowledge bases generations

source; FinSMEs

Invigilator, a South African-founded remote assessment platform provider, raised $11M in international equity funding.
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The round was led by Kaltroco.

The company intends to use the funds to advance its expansion in both the UK and the US.

Founded in South Africa in 2020, and led by CEO Nicholas Riemer, Invigilator provides a platform that is already used by more than 100 institutions worldwide, supporting over 850,000 registered students and processing more than six million results across 75,000 assessments. Its secure, data-light architecture combines mobile and PC proctoring with live AI monitoring, AI assistance detection, identity verification, configurable authentication, and anti-plagiarism tools – all designed to protect assessment integrity while remaining inclusive and accessible.

source; FinSMEs

For individuals, the company delivers a better experience: more natural conversations, fairer compensation, and the assurance that their voices directly shape the products and services they care about. With it, research becomes a strategic advantage.

source; FinSMEs

Supabase, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a postgres development platform, raised $100M in Series E funding at a $5 Billion valuation.

The round was led by Accel and Peak XV with participation from Figma Ventures and others.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its work on “Multigres”, an enterprise-scale version of its platform designed for large, data-intensive applications.

Led by CEO Paul Copplestone, Supabase is a postgres development platform provider.

Platforms like Lovable and Bolt use it, alongside more than 100,000 customers, from over 50% of the latest Y Combinator batch, to enterprises such as PwC, McDonald’s, and Github Next, allowing them to quickly spin up a backend that instantly updates itself with commands from AI.

The round followed its Series D, bringing their total funding to over $500M.

source; FinSMEs
image source; TechCrunch

"Thanks Alex, you and the TITL team are a big part of this initial success. Congrats to us all, and it's just the beginning!! 🚀" - Anthony Longo, Firesale Founder

​About TITL
We design brands and software products from portfolios behind Uber, Slack, Stripe, Snowflake, Ramp, and more. Early stage → enterprise scale. Learn more on www.titl.agency www.titl.agency

Betr, a Miami, Florida-based gaming and media company, announced a major new partnership with and investment from Lonzo Ball and LiAngelo Ball.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

The brothers will bring their podcast to the Betr Media family, where it will be rebranded and is slated to launch this Fall timed for the NBA season. The show will release 40 episodes per year, each running 45+ minutes, with Lonzo hosting from Cleveland and on the road, and LiAngelo joining from Los Angeles when not with his brother.

The show will feature authentic conversations around sports, lifestyle, and music, including Lonzo’s pursuit of an NBA title with the Cavaliers, LiAngelo’s rap career, sports predictions, and more.

As part of the multi-faceted partnership, the Ball brothers will make appearances in organic Betr media content, such as attending Jake Paul fights, and will also create paid content to support the recently revamped Betr Gaming product. To maximize reach, the Ball brothers will leverage their existing YouTube subscribers and social following where Lonzo ranks among the top five most followed NBA players.

Founded in 2022 by Joey Levy and Jake Paul, Betr is building a real money gaming app. The company’s first product, Betr Picks, launched in September 2023 and quickly grew to several hundreds of thousands of paying users in 33 states plus Washington, D.C. The company recently launched Betr Arcade, now live in 29 states, with plans on launching additional new nationwide gaming products within its single app experience in 2025 to further differentiate its product offering.

source; FinSMEs

ReCode Therapeutics, a Menlo Park, CA-based clinical-stage genetic medicines company, raised over $29M in additional funding.

​Backers were undisclosed.

It also reported expanded support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CF Foundation) and a new research collaboration with Praxis Precision Medicines, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAX).

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its R&D efforts.

ReCode Therapeutics is a clinical-stage genetic medicines company using precision delivery to power the next wave of mRNA and gene correction therapeutics. Its proprietary Selective Organ Targeting (SORT) lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform enables precise and targeted delivery of genetic medicines directly to the organs, tissues, and cells implicated in disease, enabling improved efficacy and potency.

Its lead programs include RCT2100 for the treatment of the 10% of people with cystic fibrosis who have genetic mutations in the CFTR gene that do not respond to currently approved CFTR modulators or those intolerant of approved CFTR modulators, and RCT1100 for the treatment of primary ciliary dyskinesia caused by pathogenic mutations in the DNAI1 gene. RCT1100 and RCT2100 are inhaled disease-modifying mRNA-based therapies formulated with the SORT LNP delivery platform.

source; FinSMEs

BotCity, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a governance and observability platform for Python automations, raised $12M in Series A funding.

​The round was led by Four Rivers, with participation from Y Combinator, Lew Cirne (founder of New Relic), Firestreak Ventures, Sagol Holdings, Astella, Upload Ventures, and other investors.

The company intends to use the funds to expand its operations globally, with a focus on product development and scaling its customer base.

Led by CTO Gabriel Archanjo and CEO Lorhan Caproni, BotCity is a provider of a governance and observability platform designed to help enterprises manage Python automations and AI agents. Operating internationally, it enables IT and security leaders to monitor, govern, and audit automations created outside of traditional IT oversight.

By bringing visibility and control to shadow automation, BotCity empowers organizations to innovate responsibly and at scale.

source; FinSMEs

Curated For You, an Austin, TX-based e-commerce startup providing contextualized shopping experiences, raised $8.3M in seed funding.

The round was led by Florida Funders with participation from Mudita Venture Partners, Stage 2 Capital, Acronym VC, Dynamism Capital, and Dundee Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.

Led by Katy Aucoin and Mary Brendza, Curated For You improves e-commerce by providing contextualized shopping experiences, shifting from static product categories to lifestyle-driven experiences. Empowered by agentic AI, it combines retailer performance data with real-world signals, such as trends, weather, and events, to deliver inspiring, visual stories that drive engagement and millions in revenue.

Retailers including REVOLVE, Lulus, and Steve Madden use it to create faster, more profitable customer journeys.
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source; FinSMEs

Oriane, a Dover, CO-based AI video search engine company, raised $1.5M in funding.

The round was led by Clint Capital (FR), followed by Hartmann Capital (US), Secways (ES), Archipelago Next (IC), and strategic angels from Google, PayPal, Sony, and Jellysmack.

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations nd its development efforts.

Led by CEO Julien Rosilio and CPO Yuri Mihaileanu, Oriane leverages an AI video search engine for the internet. Its multimodal technology makes millions of videos searchable across platforms, giving brands, creators, and IP owners visibility, insights, and protection in the video-first era.

Its team is already operating across the US, London, Paris, and Barcelona.

source; FinSMEs

​The 2025 Forbes Under 30 Summit returns to Ohio for its third and biggest iteration yet. Across four days in Columbus, we will convene the world’s top young leaders, founders and creators. The Summit is more an immersive experience than a static conference—featuring a private concert, A-list speakers, exclusive networking opportunities, industry-focused excursions, local culinary experiences, a legendary city crawl, a powerful day of community service and more.

Mimica cofounders Tuhin Chakraborty and Raphael Holca-Lamarrea, a London, UK-based process intelligence company, raised $26.2M in Series B funding.

​The round was led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Khosla Ventures, LGVP, and Entrepreneurs First.

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.

Led by CEO Tuhin Chakraborty and Raphael Holca-Lamarre, Mimica helps enroll employees and infer workflow diagrams to automatically train AI agents within enterprise environments. Its AI automatically translates the clicks and keystrokes that comprise a team’s work into comprehensive process maps, providing an actionable roadmap for process improvement and intelligent automation.

It is used by Fortune 500 leaders to identify high-impact automation opportunities, delivering millions in time and cost savings.

source; FinSMEs

Belfort, a San Francisco, CA-based KU Leuven spin-off company which specializes in encrypted compute, raised $6M in Seed funding.
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The round was led by Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Anagram, Protocol VC, Inovia Capital, Syndicate One, Prototype, Credibly Neutral, and angel investors including Jeff Dean (Google’s Chief Scientist) and Naval Ravikant.

The company intends to use the funds to double its team, advance product development, and support early enterprise pilots across its San Francisco and Leuven offices.

Belfort accelerates encrypted compute to make it practical at scale, ensuring data can be processed without ever being decrypted. A spin-off from KU Leuven’s COSIC lab, it has offices in San Francisco and Leuven.

The team includes: Laurens De Poorter (ex Kraken Ventures & Google[x]), Dr Furkan Turan (PhD KU Leuven, ex Intel), Michiel Van Beirendonck (PhD KU Leuven, ex Microsoft Research & Rambus) and Prof Ingrid Verbauwhede (Prof KU Leuven, Visiting Prof Stanford).

source; FinSMEs

by Manny Larcher 
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Few figures have shaped the trajectory of artificial intelligence (AI) as profoundly as Yann LeCun. Known as one of the “Godfathers of AI,” LeCun’s pioneering research in deep learning and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) has transformed how machines see, learn, and interact with the world. His journey — from a young scientist in France to Chief AI Scientist at Meta and a Turing Award laureate — reflects not just the story of one man, but the rise of modern AI itself.

​Yann André LeCun was born in 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France. His interest in both mathematics and physics steered him toward computer science, a field still in its infancy when he began his studies. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) in 1987, where he began laying the foundation for the neural network architectures that would later reshape AI.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, LeCun joined AT&T Bell Labs, one of the leading industrial research centers of its era. It was here that he developed Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) — algorithms inspired by the human visual system, designed to recognize patterns in data.

His architecture, later known as LeNet-5, was able to read handwritten digits with remarkable accuracy. Banks soon adopted this technology for processing checks, and postal systems used it for reading zip codes. Though the AI community at the time was skeptical of neural networks — often preferring symbolic reasoning approaches — LeCun persisted. His conviction that learning representations directly from data was the way forward proved prescient.

​In 2003, LeCun joined New York University (NYU) as a professor of computer science. There, he co-founded the NYU Center for Data Science, which became a hub for advancing machine learning and deep learning research.

During this period, LeCun refined his work on deep learning, representation learning, and energy-based models, which explored how neural networks could model uncertainty and probability. He trained generations of students and researchers who would go on to advance the field themselves.

​By 2013, as deep learning began its renaissance (spurred in part by the landmark 2012 ImageNet breakthrough), LeCun was recruited by Facebook to lead its new AI research division: Facebook AI Research (FAIR).

At FAIR, LeCun and his team worked on expanding deep learning beyond vision, applying it to natural language processing, robotics, and generative models. His role was not just technical but strategic: advocating for open research, releasing papers, tools, and datasets that the wider community could use. FAIR became one of the most influential AI research labs in the world.

Today, LeCun serves as Chief AI Scientist at Meta (Facebook’s parent company), continuing to guide long-term AI research.

​In 2018, Yann LeCun, along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, was awarded the Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” The trio is celebrated for their foundational contributions to deep learning, earning them the nickname “Godfathers of AI.”

​CNNs remain LeCun’s signature invention. Their layered architecture — convolution, pooling, and fully connected layers — enables machines to recognize patterns at increasing levels of abstraction:

• Early layers detect edges and textures.
• Intermediate layers detect shapes and parts of objects.
• Deep layers combine them into full object recognition.

CNNs now power technologies ranging from facial recognition to autonomous driving, medical imaging, and computer vision for robotics. LeCun’s insight that hierarchical representations could be learned automatically from raw data has become one of the cornerstones of AI.

LeCun has always looked ahead, seeking not only to improve current AI but to rethink its foundations. In recent years, he has championed self-supervised learning — methods by which machines can learn from vast amounts of unlabeled data, much like humans learn by observing the world.

He argues that the future of AI lies in building systems with common sense reasoning: the ability to understand, predict, and reason about the physical and social world, not just classify images or translate text.

​The Harvard Lecture: AI Meets Physics. In 2019, LeCun delivered a lecture at Harvard University (covered in Harvard Magazine), exploring how neural networks intersect with physics.
Key insights from his talk:

• Neural networks in science: AI is being used to analyze data in fields like particle physics, helping researchers identify subatomic particles from complex collision patterns.
• The “black box” problem: While neural networks work well, their inner workings are often opaque. For science — especially physics, which values explanation as much as prediction — this opacity poses challenges.
• Uncertainty and blurry predictions: Neural networks struggle with uncertainty. For example, when asked to predict the next frame in a video, they often produce blurry results, averaging over possible futures.
• Borrowing from physics: LeCun suggested that ideas from statistical physics — such as energy-based models — could help AI better handle uncertainty. Physics offers mature tools for modeling complex, probabilistic systems.
• Interpretability vs performance: In industry, performance is often valued over understanding. In science, interpretability is essential. This tension remains one of AI’s central challenges.
• Ethical dimensions: While AI is advancing medicine and science, it also raises ethical concerns: surveillance, bias, and authoritarian misuse. The balance between innovation and responsibility is critical.

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LeCun’s lecture underscored a theme running through his career: AI is not just about engineering smarter systems — it is about rethinking how machines learn, reason, and integrate with human knowledge.

Yann LeCun’s story is still unfolding. From the invention of CNNs to his leadership at Meta and his ongoing work on self-supervised learning, he continues to shape the frontiers of AI. His vision extends beyond building better algorithms: it is about creating AI systems that can reason about the world, partner with humans in discovery, and perhaps one day approach human-level intelligence.
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The central questions he poses — how to make AI interpretable, how to handle uncertainty, and how to balance performance with understanding — remain at the heart of the field.

​Yann LeCun’s journey reflects the evolution of AI itself. From handwritten digit recognition at Bell Labs to global debates about ethics and the future of intelligence, he has remained both a pioneer and a provocateur. His work reminds us that AI is not only a technological revolution but also a scientific and philosophical one — requiring insights from physics, mathematics, and human values alike.

As he continues to push AI beyond pattern recognition toward reasoning and common sense, Yann LeCun’s legacy will likely be measured not only by the systems he built but by the questions he dared to ask.

Marloo, a London, UK and Auckland, New Zealand-based AI Assistant for financial advisers, raised $2.7m in pre-seed funding.

The round was led by Blackbird Ventures with participation from CoVentures, alongside Tom Hambrett (Chief Legal Officer, Revolut), Sam Halse (former COO, Adyen), Philip Fierlinger (Co-founder, Xero), Tom Kelly (Co-founder, Heidi Health), Warren Hogarth (Co-founder, Tilt), and many others.
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The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts to create new features.
Founded by Shakeel Lala, Hardy Michel, and Ben Robertson, Marloo is the developer of AI tools that enable financial advisers to automate note-taking, document creation, and client communication.

It features:

• Customised meeting templates to generate summaries in the exact format and tone users need;
• Ask Marloo anything across stored information;
• Team collaboration with secure sharing capabilities and contextual notes that create holistic client records, ensuring everyone operates from a single source of truth.
• REnterprise-grade security standards including SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR compliance.

Marloo is already serving wealth, planning, insurance and mortgage firms globally.

FinSMEs

Mazlo, a San Francisco, CA-based fintech startup focused on tools for nonprofits, raised a $4.5 million in seed funding.

Backers included Westbound Equity Partners, Super{set}, Social Good Fund, a16z, along with friends, family, and advisors like Charles Oppenheimer and Chef Dunny.

The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its development efforts.

Led by Kian Alavi, CEO, and Sean Anderson, CPO, Mazlo is a FinTech company making it easier for fiscal sponsors, and nonprofits that practice fiscal sponsorship, to manage their finances and support their projects. They provide organizations with a suite of features to manage funds, ensure compliance, and provide real-time financial visibility. Mazlo simplifies accounting, controls spending, and centralizes grant management.

​Mazlo is a financial technology company, not a traditional bank, and banking services are provided by Regent Bank, Member FDIC.

source; FinsMes