Southern California's
Startup Directory
Every VC-backed and bootstrapped startup founded in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire, and Ventura — company profiles, funding rounds, and the investors and accelerators actually writing checks in the region, not a national list with a few SoCal names mixed in.
SeedStaxiom provides diligence-grade accounting for startups — bookkeeping, tax prep, and capital strategy, with an AI-assisted R&D tax credit engine reviewed by EY-trained CPAs. Founded by the team behind Ardius, the R&D tax credit company Gusto acquired in 2021.
Pre-Seed$4.0MSocialCrowd automatically tracks employee progress towards goals, reminds them of the work they have left, and rewards them instantly – so you can save time and stay focused!
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$24.3MSuper League runs advertising and content programmes inside game worlds such as Roblox and Minecraft; building branded experiences and selling media placements to reach players in those environments.
Series C$907.5MAn infrastructure and tunneling company founded by Elon Musk in 2016 aiming to facilitate underground transportation network.
Series C$30.0MWelcomeTech is a Los Angeles-based company founded in 2006.
Series C$229.3MGenies builds AI-driven avatars and digital characters; letting creators and brands define a character's appearance; personality and backstory and then deploy it across games; fan experiences and soci
Series C$120.1MSyntiant designs neural decision processors and the models that run on them; putting always-on speech; audio and sensor inference into battery-powered devices at very low power.
Series C$45.0MBambee gives small businesses a dedicated HR manager for a monthly fee; drafting policies and employee handbooks; guiding terminations and complaints; and keeping records; compliance work that becomes
Series C$95.0M100 Thieves is an esports and gaming lifestyle company founded in 2017 by Dan Gilbert; Scooter Braun; Nadeshot; Matthew Haag and Drake.
Series C$252.0MIru; formerly Kandji; provides Apple device management for enterprises; unifying endpoint management; compliance and identity so IT and security teams administer devices and the access they carry from
EXPLORE TOP CITIES
WHAT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BUILDS
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.
Pharmaceutical & Biopharma
Drug developers and biopharma platforms, concentrated in San Diego's Torrey Pines corridor and the LA biotech cluster. Searched as "pharmaceutical companies in San Diego / Orange County" more than any other industry phrase in our Search Console data.
Biotechnology & Life Sciences
The life-science research base behind San Diego's and Los Angeles's biotech reputations: platforms, tools, diagnostics and therapeutics spun out of UCSD, Scripps, Caltech and UCLA.
Software & SaaS
Software companies across the region, from Irvine's enterprise SaaS bench to Santa Monica's consumer apps: the broadest category here after AI, and the one people search for by city.
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.