Anna* was 10 when she built her first video game on Roblox, a digital platform where young people can make, share and play games together. She used Roblox much like a child from a previous generation might have used cardboard boxes, marker pens and stuffed toys to build a castle or a spaceship and fill it with characters and story. There was one alluring difference: Roblox hosted Anna's tiny world online, enabling children she had never met and who maybe lived thousands of miles away from her home in Utah to visit and play. Using Roblox's in-built tools – child-friendly versions of professional software – Anna began to learn the rudiments of music composition, computer programming and 3D modelling. When she wasn't at school Anna was rarely off her computer. As she became more proficient, Anna's work caught the attention of some experienced users on Roblox, game-makers in their 20s who messaged her with a proposition to collaborate on a more ambitious project. Flattered by their interest, Anna became the fifth member of the nascent team, contributing art, design and programming to the game.

This morning Instrumental, a startup that uses vision-powered AI to detect manufacturing anomalies, announced that it has closed a $20 million Series B led by Canaan Partners. The company had previously raised $10.3 million across two rounds, including a $7.5 million Series A in mid-2017. According to a release, the Series B was participated in by other venture groups, including Series A investors Root Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, and First Round Capital, which also led its Seed round. Stanford StartX also took part in the new investment. Instrumental's technology is a hybrid of hardware and software, with a focus on the latter.

There's a good chance information about you is available for sale to advertisers and other businesses on Vertical Mass. The nearly 3-year-old West Hollywood start-up provides user data storage and analysis software for companies in music, sports, video games and Hollywood. Those companies also can list some of their user information for sale, with Vertical Mass collecting a portion of the proceeds. Fees from the software service and the data marketplace have brought Vertical Mass seven figures in revenue for two consecutive years, Chief Executive Mark Shedletsky said, declining to provide specific figures. But investors think the company is only getting started as a key information broker in the entertainment universe.