the halloween market map

Hi there,

We have 39 companies for you this Halloween, and a few are going to need some explaining.

There’s lab-grown blood, body preservation, and computers made with living neurons. We also included candy companies, because we respect the holiday.

A few of the more interesting findings:

• Put those brain cells to work. Parasma, which launched in August, is testing whether living human neurons can do some of a computer chip’s work. It trains them using electrical signals and feedback. Watch out, Nvidia.
• Send in the bugs. Swarm Biotactics fits living insects with tiny electronic backpacks so they can carry sensors and be steered into places larger machines can’t reach. It says Germany’s armed forces are already paying customers. An excellent career for a bug.
• Some assembly required. Clone is building humanoid robots with human-like skeletons, artificial muscles, and tendons. It plans to launch a redesigned torso in November to tackle workplace tasks requiring both arms.
• Dream on. Prophetic is developing ultrasound headbands intended to induce lucid dreams. Its $449 model is scheduled to start shipping at the end of 2026. We were hoping to get through eight hours (okay, four) without another gadget.
• Death has a signup button. Tomorrow.bio offers body preservation after legal death, hoping future medicine could enable revival. Whole-body preservation costs €200,000 at member rates, plus membership fees. Revival remains (no pun intended) hypothetical.
• Candy. Sort of. Voyage Foods makes a cocoa-free chocolate alternative using grape seeds left over from winemaking and sunflower ingredients. In May, Cargill announced a US rollout of their cocoa-free confectionery range, NextCoa.

Dig into the full list here.

Meanwhile, in the startup graveyard

Speaking of revival, we checked on this year’s 131 VC-backed startup shutdowns. A few post-mortems worth reading:

• Rec Room couldn’t make the metaverse pay. The social gaming platform attracted more than 150M players and creators over a decade before closing in June. Millions still visited each month, but costs still exceeded revenue.
• 80 Acres lost its rescue buyer. After buying three indoor farms and merging with Soli Organic in 2025, the vertical farming company needed a buyer itself. The prospective acquirer walked away the night before its August shutdown announcement.
• Picnic’s customer is building the replacement. The pizza-robot company shut down in May, leaving Moto Pizza’s owner with idle equipment he called a $250,000 “robot aquarium.” He was so annoyed he started his own pizza-robot company. Apparently we’re not done automating pizza.

And if you’re wondering why startups fail more broadly, our analysis of 431 VC-backed shutdowns identifies the top 9 reasons.

CB Insights' emerging technology insights platform provides all the analysis and data from this newsletter.
Our data is the easiest way to discover and respond to emerging tech.

Was this email forwarded to you?Sign up here

Copyright © 2026 CB Insights, All rights reserved.

498 7th Avenue, NY, CB Insights, New York,10018