Southern California's
Tech
Startup Directory
Showcasing Southern California's innovation, one startup at a time. Every funded and bootstrapped company, from seed round to first dollar of revenue, tracked as it happens.
Includes SEC Form D filings from the last 3 years, plus all-time totals for companies sourced from YC and news coverage.
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$30.0MPrice with precision. Negotiate with confidence. Turquoise is the platform 300+ healthcare organizations use to make sense of rates, contracts, and compliance.
Series B$29.0MExplore the world of STAUD—modern clothing, iconic handbags, and everyday pieces with a point of view. Sign up for emails and get an exclusive offer on your first order.
Series B$27.5M
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.
Series B$26.4MThe future takes shape
Series B$25.5MMapped turns any building's systems, sensors, and devices into a structured, real-time world model — the data foundation AI agents and applications need to understand and act on the physical world.
858 Therapeutics (its name references San Diego's 858 area code) has raised $110M across Series A and B rounds led by Versant Ventures and Avidity Partners, with participation from NEA and Insight Partners.