CableTV Just Bought Into Vertical Shorts: Where LA's Media Money Went

A week (June 1–5) when capital moved to microdrama, women's sports, and AI creation — and the hard-tech boom behind it

In the week beginning June 1, the media and entertainment capital of Los Angeles flowed toward short, mobile-native formats and content driven directly by athletes and creators.

The signal deal: Versant Media Group, spun out of Comcast's cable channels, took a stake in GammaTime, a vertical microdrama app. Money went into women's sports media and AI content-creation platforms in the same week, and the common thread is that both the format of content and who drives it are changing at once.

The engine behind the shift is the decline of linear cable and, on the other side, the rise of vertical short-form. Research firm Omdia estimates global microdrama revenue reached roughly $11 billion in 2025 and will grow to about $14 billion this year.

In the United States, microdrama apps have already overtaken Netflix in mobile time spent. As viewing and ad dollars migrate to the vertical phone screen, traditional media has begun to ride the new format with its own intellectual property (IP) and showrunners rather than build it from scratch. The force that pulls content is also moving from studios to athletes, creators, and users. LA's week of deals sits on those two axes.

Microdrama pulls in legacy media — GammaTime

The most symbolic deal is Versant's minority stake in GammaTime, taken as part of a Series A round. Versant, the cable spin-off from Comcast that owns USA Network and Syfy, gains the right to adapt its channel brands into vertical short-form series; news brands such as CNBC and MS NOW are excluded.

GammaTime — founded by former Miramax head Bill Block, with former Google Gaming executive Slava Mudrykh and former Discovery executive Alex Montalvo — raised $14 million before its October 2025 launch from backers including Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. It produces short-form originals across romance, true crime, and fantasy, and struck a deal to rework the National Enquirer owner's archives into microdramas.

The GammaTime app, which markets “premium verticals” — microdramas skewing to romance, crime, and revenge. (Image: GammaTime)

Microdrama — one-to-two-minute vertical episodes paid for one unlock at a time — became an industry when a production-and-marketing playbook refined in China was transplanted to the U.S. in about eighteen months. The model gives away the first few episodes free, then raises a paywall at the moment of peak tension.

ReelShort and DramaBox lead the market and made the U.S. the largest territory outside China, with much of the revenue coming from mobile-first women aged 30 to 60 who favor romance, revenge, and CEO storylines. Versant's bet is an attempt to ride that wave. CEO Mark Lazarus called GammaTime's mobile-first approach a natural partnership to extend Versant's brands and deep library, and Block called the investment a turning point for GammaTime and for the category, saying Versant's IP, brand equity, and creative DNA would let it build originals at scale.

The deal carries real implications for Korea. With its drama IP and production depth, Korea is well positioned to win in vertical short-form, yet the market is currently led by Chinese-origin apps such as ReelShort and DramaBox, and Korean players started late.

The Versant approach — buying a stake in a startup and licensing channel IP into vertical series — is a template Korean broadcasters and studios could adopt. Because the short format annexes the “in-between minutes” rather than replacing full-length drama, this is K-content's next frontier.

The turn in women's sports media — Just Women's Sports

The pull of athletes and fandom is sharpest in sports media. Just Women's Sports raised a seven-figure round led by Bolt Ventures, the family office of David Blitzer. Blitzer, an active sports investor with stakes across several leagues, doubled down after first backing the company in 2022.

Returning investors included Starry Eyed Tomorrow, the family office of Gotham FC co-owners; Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund; Blue Pool Capital; and OVO Fund. When existing investors re-enter a new round, it reads as a sign the business is performing against expectations rather than narrative.

Just Women's Sports. (Image: Just Women's Sports)

Founded in 2021 by Haley Rosen on the thesis that women's sports deserve dedicated, high-quality coverage rather than an afterthought, the company is the official media partner of the NWSL and a new media partner of the WNBA. The fresh capital goes to news and content infrastructure, headcount, and athlete-led programming hosted by figures such as Lisa Leslie, Angel McCoughtry, and Kelley O'Hara. It has built an events business — from an NWSL championship party that featured a Kesha performance to a WNBA All-Star fan activation that drew roughly 600 people. Pairing athlete-led programming with in-real-life experiences sits at the intersection of media and the creator economy that legacy sports media has yet to match, and it has lifted a once-underinvested category into one of the most competitive in sports media.

Collectibles and fandom media — CardsHQ

A deal in a similar vein landed in collectibles. Los Angeles-based Shamrock Capital, alongside EnOne Ventures, made a growth investment that merges CardsHQ and Sports Card Investor into a single company. The platform binds retail, live breaking, and data and media products such as Market Movers to grow the trading-card community, connecting athletes, fans, and content directly. Shamrock — which began as the Roy E. Disney family investment firm and now manages about $7.4 billion with a focus on media, entertainment, and sports, while EnOne invests around player-association IP — makes the deal a window into how LA capital views fandom-based media.

AI-made content — Sekai and Board

The shift of content creation from professional studios to users also drew capital this week. Sekai, an AI platform that builds mini-apps from text prompts, raised a $20 million Series A co-led by Khosla Ventures and Connect Ventures, with a16z Speedrun, Mayfield, and others participating. Users type an idea in plain language — “an app that picks today's outfit based on the weather, my mood, and what's clean in my closet” — to build an app, and remix others'. More than 15 million mini-apps have been created, with over 200,000 added daily, and average time on app tops one hour a day. Early traction came from highly shareable creations such as interactive birthday cards.

Sekai's site, an AI mini-app platform built around “create, play, remix,” where users make apps from text. (Image: Sekai)

Sekai is the fourth startup of founder Lucky Zhang, who has sold companies to Apple and ByteDance. Launched in 2024 — the name means “world” in Japanese — it began with anime fan-fiction experiences and broadened into general app creation after AI coding models improved sharply last year. Zhang frames Sekai as online expression through active creation rather than passive social-media scrolling, arguing that mini-apps could become a new format much as short-form video reshaped social media. Because Connect Ventures began as a joint firm of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA), the company is also preparing creator and celebrity partnerships, and creator monetization, through CAA.

New York-based Board raised a Series A of the same size led by Union Square Ventures. Michael Mignano joins the board in his first investment since joining USV, and angels including Biz Stone, Tim Ferriss, and Scott Belsky took part. Founded by Brynn Putnam — who sold Mirror to lululemon for $500 million — Board markets “together tech”: a $399, 24-inch touchscreen that recognizes physical game pieces, blending the tactile feel of board games with the interactivity of video games. Since launch it has reached homes, schools, hospitals, and restaurants across all 50 states, and 85% of users play 30 or more sessions a month. The company is preparing Board Studio, a natural-language tool that turns an idea into a playable prototype in under an hour, aiming to move AI creation off the screen and onto the table where people gather — a sign, too, of long-unloved consumer tech reviving on the back of AI.

The same week, bigger money went “physical”

If media showed a shift in format and authorship, the largest dollars in LA the same week flowed to physical industry — satellites, rocket engines, robots. Satellite maker Apex raised more than $200 million to reach a $2.3 billion valuation, while orbital-mobility company Impulse Space and uncrewed-defense company Mach Industries pulled in $500 million and $300 million, respectively. As launch costs fell, the bottleneck moved to the mass production of satellites and parts, and security programs like Golden Dome and contracts from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) stoked demand for commercial manufacturers that can scale fast. The money pools along the South Bay aerospace belt running through El Segundo, Hawthorne, Redondo Beach, and Huntington Beach.

The bottleneck after launch — Apex and Impulse

Apex's problem statement is simple: launch got fast, but satellites are still built one bespoke unit at a time. Its answer is to turn the satellite bus — the spacecraft's frame — from a per-mission design into a configurable, standardized product. Founded in 2022 by Ian Cinnamon and Max Benassi, the company set a record for the fastest clean-sheet bus from design to on-orbit operation, and its first Aries satellite, launched two years ago, is still working in low Earth orbit (LEO). Its Aries, Nova, and Comet platforms range up to a 3,000 kg payload on the Comet “Mini”; its Factory One in LA can build more than 200 satellites a year at peak, and headcount has more than doubled in a year to over 350. The round was led by Glade Brook Capital Partners and co-led by Washington Harbour Partners.

A cleanroom assembling satellites. As launch grew cheap, the bottleneck moved to satellite “mass production.” (Photo: dot.LA/Apex)

Apex is moving deeper into defense. Tied to Golden Dome, it is working with Northrop Grumman on space-based interceptor (SBI) capability for the U.S. Space Force, and its Nova 1 platform will host Project Shadow, the first commercially led on-orbit interceptor demonstration, due to launch this summer. The stage after launch is becoming an industry too: Redondo Beach-based Impulse Space raised a $500 million Series D, pushing total funding above $1 billion. Founded by Tom Mueller, who ran propulsion in SpaceX's early days, Impulse builds the “in-space mobility” infrastructure that moves satellites and payloads once in orbit. With Apex handling what goes up and Impulse handling how it moves afterward, the space supply chain is splitting into stage-by-stage specialists.

Faster, cheaper weapons — Mach and Layup

The biggest defense bet of the week went to Huntington Beach-based Mach Industries, which raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation — roughly quadrupling its value in a year. The round was led by deep-tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, with Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures among the participants. Ethan Thornton, the 22-year-old founder who dropped out of MIT at 19, set out to raise $200 million but lifted it to $300 million amid oversubscription. Its lineup spans five uncrewed craft — the VTOL jet Viper, high-altitude glider Glide, surveillance platform Stratos, low-cost counter-drone interceptor Dart, and long-range Pike — and it recently won a DIU contract for the Navy's “runway-independent strike aircraft.”

Last month's acquisition of solid-rocket-motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum is among the reasons investors wrote big checks. The $50 million cash-and-equity deal beat out more than eight other suitors. As drones drive a surge in demand, rocket motors are scarce, the market is held by two primes — Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman — and lead times stretch years. The deal gives Mach its own propulsion and a new commercial arm, Mach Energetics, that sells engines. In the same city, Layup Parts raised a $42 million Series A for a software-driven manufacturing platform that sources composite parts such as carbon fiber faster and cheaper, from prototype to production. The logic: to print satellites, engines, and airframes quickly, the parts supply chain underneath has to speed up first.

Layup Parts' website, pitching faster composite-part supply from prototype to production. (Photo: Layup Parts)

AI steps off the screen — Alfred and “physical AI”

AI is joining the same physical axis. Alfred, a stealth startup sited in Hawthorne across from the SpaceX Falcon factory, was founded nine months ago by former Tesla designer Ankit Ukil and former Meta Reality Labs engineer Dometor Gulyas. The team, drawn from Tesla, Ford, and Honda, builds software to shorten R&D for physical systems like robots and cars, and is raising at a $40 million valuation. Sam Altman invested through his venture fund Hydrazine Capital, alongside Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, and Chapter One. “Physical AI” is the fastest-moving pocket of capital this year — by one count, related startups raised roughly $5.3 billion in April alone. Nvidia unveiled a standard humanoid blueprint for academics, and Altman has said robots are OpenAI's next frontier. Behind the way space, defense, and robots cluster into one thread is this larger current of software meeting moving machines again.

Fintech and deep tech — Ramp, minerals and quantum

In fintech, Ramp raised a $750 million Series F at a $44 billion valuation, led by Iconiq, GIC, and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Thrive Capital among participants; LA's Pinegrove Venture Partners also took part. The value nearly tripled from $16 billion at its Series E a year ago, and March total purchase volume rose roughly 170% year over year. Ramp frames “intelligence paid by the token” as a third pillar of corporate spend after people and vendors, positioning itself as the infrastructure to track and manage the AI usage that OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google bill per token.

Ramp's website, positioning itself for spend management in the AI era. (Photo: Ramp)

Deep-tech money ran through LA funds too. Critical-minerals explorer Atana Elements raised a $27.5 million seed led by Lowercarbon Capital; its team, drawn from BP, Hess, Rio Tinto, and ExxonMobil, pairs oil-and-gas subsurface methods with AI to find flowing mineral systems such as lithium brines and helium in about 22 months versus the usual five to ten years. UK quantum-computing firm Oxford Quantum Circuits raised a $350 million Series C led by Bullhound Capital — the largest quantum Series C on record. LA's Overture Ventures and Alpha Edison participated in the two deals, respectively.

Consumer brands — California Naturals

Capital also reached consumer brands beyond tech and media. Clean personal-care brand California Naturals closed a Series B led by Align Ventures and named Hayden Hiatt as CEO, expanding its hair, body, and everyday lines across major retailers including Target, Ulta Beauty, and CVS, with a pitch built on gentler, “clean” ingredients.

California Naturals' website. (Photo: California Naturals)

Seoul's Unastella, inside the same field

The current reaches Korea. Seoul-based launch startup Unastella, founded in 2022, closed a $24 million (about 33.5 billion won) Series B led by Altos Ventures, with the Korea Development Bank, Hana Ventures, and LA-based Strong Ventures participating; total funding reaches $44 million. Jae Park, who developed combustion systems for Korea's Nuri rocket before a stint at the German Aerospace Center, says the company aims to be a commercial launch business that reaches the market fast rather than a research group chasing the most impressive rocket. Its choice of a cheap electric motor pump over a heavy turbopump in a kerosene/liquid-oxygen system reflects that trade-off — giving up some payload to commercialize sooner. Its UNA EXPRESS-I, launched in May 2025 from a company site in Goheung, was the first rocket flown from Korean soil by a domestic private company on its own.

What the 22-person company is really aiming at is next year's UNA EXPRESS-II; reaching 100 km, it believes, opens the door to partnerships with Korea's major aerospace and defense firms. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has flown components on UNA EXPRESS-I and transferred electric-motor-pump technology to the company. The small-launch market has been led by the U.S. and China; in Korea, Hanwha Aerospace (which took over Nuri technology), KOSDAQ-listed Innospace, and Perigee Aerospace (developing its Blue Whale rocket) compete, and the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), launched in 2024, has committed $266 million over seven years to launch infrastructure. LA capital riding on a Seoul rocket is a sign that the commercial-space logic of building fast and cheap has crossed borders.

A message for Korea

Of the week's deals, the one with the most direct implications for Korea is microdrama. Vertical short-form is a format where K-drama's production craft, star system, and deep IP can carry over directly — yet the market is led by Chinese-origin apps such as ReelShort and DramaBox, and Korean players started late. The Versant approach — taking a stake in a startup and licensing channel IP into vertical series — is a model Korean broadcasters and studios could move toward: rework existing drama libraries into vertical series and secure equity in microdrama platforms. Stand still, and Korean drama IP gets adapted by foreign platforms while the value accrues offshore; move first, and a new export lane opens beyond conventional licensing.

The capital signal points the same way. Just as Seoul's Unastella drew funding from Altos Ventures and LA's Strong Ventures, Korean startups can plug directly into U.S. and global capital flows — in content as in launch vehicles. Across both currents LA showed in the first week of June — short, mobile-native media, and hard tech back to mass production — Korea holds two strengths at once: content IP and manufacturing capability. The question is how fast it connects those strengths to the shift in format and the flow of capital, and the real test will be whether this money turns into watch time, production, flights, and contracts in the quarters ahead.

Table — LA venture funds active this week

LA-area venture funds that dot.LA grouped under “LA Venture Funds” this week, with their portfolio deals. (Some funds also keep offices outside LA.)

Sources: dot.LA Weekly; The Hollywood Reporter; Sports Business Journal; TechCrunch; Axios; Business Insider; Inc.; microdrama market figures from Omdia, Sensor Tower, and Media Partners Asia; company announcements and venture-fund websites.