Goleta
A bit of history
Goleta incorporated as a city on February 1, 2002, after decades as the largest unincorporated community in Santa Barbara County. Its aerospace roots trace to World War II, when a Japanese submarine's 1942 shelling of the nearby Ellwood Oil Field spurred construction of a Marine Corps airfield that later became Santa Barbara Airport, and UC Santa Barbara moved onto part of that former base in 1954. The university's presence and the postwar aerospace boom shifted Goleta from a rural farming valley into a high-tech corridor now home to Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman facilities. Deckers Brands, the footwear company behind UGG, Teva, and Hoka, is headquartered in Goleta today.
Does business as ChipAgents, an agentic AI chip-design platform founded by CEO William Wang; has raised $134M in funding from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Matter Venture Partners.
$54.3MLaxmi will help people with diabetes stay in range more often, supporting better day-to-day control and long-term health through industry-first dermal continuous glucose monitoring.
Series A$23.2MQuintessent is developing optical connectivity solutions to scale computing and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).
Serimmune was founded by Patrick Daugherty, a former UC Santa Barbara chemical engineering professor who also co-founded CytomX Therapeutics; backers include Illumina Ventures, LabCorp, and Merck.
Series F$17.0MGaN semiconductor company co-founded by CEO Jeffrey Shealy and UC Santa Barbara materials scientist Dr. Steven DenBaars; raised $15M and is acquiring Vega Links.
Seed$11.0MCo-founded in 2023 by UC Santa Barbara Ph.D. students Kira Wyckoff (CEO) and Linus Kautzsch (CTO) after winning UCSB's New Venture Competition; backed by KdT Ventures and Voyager.
Digital Surgery Systems, Inc. is the legal name behind True Digital Surgery, a Goleta, CA maker of 3D robotic-assisted surgical microscopy systems that was fully acquired by German medical device company B. Braun SE in September 2025.
Seed$7.4MSnag delivers 1,500+ products to college students in 10 minutes. Order snacks, drinks, and essentials from our app.
Pre-Seed$5.0MAdvanced engineering services and contract R&D for making energy cleaner across all sources and uses.
Series H$4.9MAeluma, founded by photonics researcher Jonathan Klamkin, received a Letter of Intent for up to $30M in CHIPS and Science Act funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Seed$4.1MLaunchPoint Electric Propulsion Solutions is a propulsion and power generation company supplying lightweight, highly efficient, power-dense, electric and hybrid systems for aerospace, defense, unmanned aircraft systems, and advanced air mobility.
Transphorm, co-founded by Umesh Mishra and Primit Parikh and backed by investors including Google Ventures and KKR, was a Nasdaq-listed company (TGAN) that Renesas agreed to acquire in 2024 to expand its GaN power semiconductor business.
Series A$3.5MOpenLight has raised over $84M total, including a $50M Series A-1 round, with investors such as Capricorn Investment Group.
Seed$2.7MZymbit Resilient Edge Stack makes Linux devices more secure, reliable and recoverable. Trusted software and hardware that grows with your business.
Series A$1.6MReview medical records in minutes, not days. Our AI-powered software creates instant summaries and chronologies so you can focus on what matters.
Seed$1.5MYour platform for cost savings, optimization and tech stack benchmarking. Find redundant products. Track utilization. Deepen integrations.
This entity operates The Pad Climbing's Santa Barbara gym; the climbing-gym chain was founded in San Luis Obispo in 2002 by Kristin and Yishai Horowitz.