Southern California's
Startup Directory
Series B$84.3MRebuilding healthcare with AI at the core
Pre-Seed$250KBetter, faster tech vendor research
Series D$833.1MWe provide efficient in-space mobility that moves payloads from low Earth orbit to any destination. Our vehicles deliver rapid, reliable access, reducing costs and timelines to make space operations feasible for commercial, government, and scientific missions.
Series C$80.1MOutpace AI-driven attacks. Unify Digital Risk Protection, Human Risk Management, and Email Security to stop digital threats before they scale, empower your teams to lead your defense, and scale your SOC with agentic AI.
Artificial Intelligence
The region's largest single cluster by company count — AI and machine learning threaded through nearly every other industry here, from defense to biotech to entertainment.
Aerospace & Defense
Home to SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and a new wave of hypersonics and space-infrastructure startups.
Entertainment & Gaming Tech
Hollywood's production infrastructure, live events, and a growing games and creator-tools scene.
Semiconductor Hardware
Qualcomm and Broadcom anchor a chip-design cluster spanning the region.
Medical Technology
A deep biotech research base and a growing bench of medical device and diagnostics startups.
B2B
Business software and services sold to other companies. The largest single category of startup across Southern California, spanning sales tools, vertical operating systems, and everything in between.
Industrials
Manufacturing, hardware, and physical-world operations. Overlaps heavily with the region's decades-old aerospace and defense manufacturing base, now extending into robotics and automated production.
Consumer
Products and apps built directly for individual consumers, drawing on Southern California's media and entertainment base.
Healthcare
Health tech, medical devices, and healthcare services, backed by a decades-old biotech research base and a deep bench of clinical and diagnostics startups.
Fintech
Financial technology: payments, banking, investing, and financial infrastructure.
Education
Education technology and learning platforms built across Southern California.
Real Estate & Construction
Property technology, construction tech, and real estate services.
Series B$27.1MFounded and led by Dr. Quyen Nguyen, a UC San Diego head-and-neck surgeon named to Forbes' 50 Over 50 Innovation list.
The Encinitas-based clinical-stage biotech was acquired by Eli Lilly for $1.2 billion in cash, after IPOing on Nasdaq (VTYX) in 2021.
$26.9M
Series D$26.8MModifying lipid-signaling pathways to improve treatments for people living with cancer
Founded by Jonathan Yaney and backed by Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, the company builds a kinetic (spinning) launch system to hurl satellites toward orbit instead of using rocket boosters for the first stage.
Series A$26.4MFounded by serial food entrepreneur Jamshid Ashourian, who previously founded ProVita and invented the 'Fruit For Life' shelf-stable fruit product.
Series B$26.4MThe future takes shape