Technology
A readable snapshot of the companies, jobs, and funding rounds shaping the local tech economy.
Santa Clara County, est. Q1 2026
25K local jobs each at Googleplex & Apple Park
84 South Bay startup rounds · AI, chips, security, medtech, robotics led the way
Applied Materials + KLA powering the AI fab boom from Santa Clara
Anchor Employers
Ranked by Santa Clara County local jobs · Q1–Q2 2026
Recently Funded
Latest public rounds · South Bay startups84 tracked rounds this year, led by AI, chips, security, medtech, robotics. The list below keeps the latest notable announcements close without turning the page into a funding archive.
AI infrastructure management software for enterprises, public-sector teams, neoclouds, and sovereign clouds: PaletteAI gives platform teams one operating model to build, govern, and run GPU clusters, AI factories, and distributed inference without locking into a single stack. The oversubscribed Series D was led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with AMD Ventures, Ericsson, LG Technology Ventures, and Maximus joining; it brings total capital raised to $260M.
Came out of stealth with a full-stack chiplet platform for custom AI silicon — pre-built building blocks for connectivity (TYL.IO), power delivery (TYL.Power), and memory (TYL.Mem) paired with TYL.Forge, which carries a design from architecture through manufacturing. The pitch is roughly half the time and cost of building a custom AI chip from scratch. Founders Mohit Gupta (CEO) and Sunil Bhardwaj came from Alphawave, SiFive, Cadence, and Rambus; the oversubscribed round was led by Matter Venture Partners with Viola Ventures, GHOVC, and Egis Technology joining.
Full-stack AI inference built on its Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) chip — a Nvidia challenger co-founded by Stanford professors and run by CEO Rodrigo Liang. This $1B first close of a Series F values SambaNova at $11B and was led by General Atlantic, with Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Capital Group, Battery Ventures, BlackRock-managed funds, Intel Capital, and the Qatar Investment Authority joining; a second close is expected within weeks. Announced alongside the round: JPMorganChase picked SambaNova as an inference-infrastructure partner, deploying its SN40 and SN50 systems for secure, on-prem AI.
A research lab building the training grounds for reliable AI agents: it constructs simulated business environments — mock codebases, microservices, and communication logs — where long-horizon autonomous agents can safely learn, test, and improve before enterprises put them into production. Founded in 2024 by Mahesh Sathiamoorthy and Alex Dimakis. The $40M pairs a Wing VC–led Series A with a prior 8VC-led seed, with Mayfield, The House Fund, Google's Jeff Dean, and dbt Labs CEO Tristan Handy joining alongside angel investors from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta.
A licensable GPU and AI architecture instead of a chip: its OxCore core packs three compute engines — a CUDA-compatible GPU, a tensor unit, and an on-die orchestrator — into one block that semiconductor and AI-system makers can drop into custom silicon without running a full chip program. Founded by Raja Koduri, the veteran GPU architect who led graphics at Intel, AMD, and Apple. The Series A was co-led by Fundomo and Samsung Catalyst Fund, with MediaTek, Intel Capital, Pegatron Venture Capital, Darwin Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital, and others joining, bringing OXMIQ to $60M total. Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller joined the board.
A fully autonomous robotic pharmacy: its machine fills and verifies prescriptions straight from sealed wholesale pill bottles — no on-site pharmacist required — to lower fulfillment costs and extend pharmacy access to retail, healthcare, and underserved settings. The system already handles the 250 most-prescribed U.S. medications. Emerging from stealth, the oversubscribed seed was led by AlleyCorp with House Capital, Ubiquity Ventures, Grep Ventures, and Banter Capital, following a $6M pre-seed led by Riot Ventures for $18.6M total. Founded by CEO Nick Desai (founder of home-care company Heal) and CTO Josh Liu (ex-Tesla, ex-Zipline).
Dexterous robotic hands for humanoid and research robots: ProHand 1.0 is a 22-degree-of-freedom, tendon-driven hand with skin-like sensors, paired with ProGlove so researchers can collect real human manipulation data and transfer it into robot learning workflows. The seed was led by First Round Capital with Y Combinator and BoxGroup participating, and the first ProHand units started shipping to researchers and robotics companies the same week.
Agentic-security platform for enterprise AI agents: it discovers where agents are running, adversarially tests them before deployment, and monitors runtime behavior for autonomous threats. The Series A was led by Marathon Management Partners, Citi Ventures, Illuminate Financial, and Workday Ventures, with continued support from Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed; Gokul Rajaram joined the board. Straiker launched in 2025 and says run-rate revenue has grown more than 15x in less than a year.
Major Company Profiles
The largest local employers, trimmed to the essentialsSearch, cloud, AI, and advertising. The largest campus presence in the South Bay.
- Gemini AI driving search, Cloud, and device integration across all products
- Waymo robotaxi service expanding commercially to multiple US cities
Consumer hardware, software, and services. One Apple Park Way, Cupertino.
- Apple Intelligence on-device AI rolling out across iPhone, Mac, and iPad
- M5 chip family now spans iPad Pro (Oct 2025) and MacBook Pro (Mar 2026); M5 MacBook Air and Mac mini next
CPU pioneer mid-restructuring under CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Once the defining company of Silicon Valley.
- Lip-Bu Tan took over as CEO in March 2025 and has since stripped out layers of management and cut more than 25K jobs; further cuts depend on the foundry business landing outside customers
- Reported preliminary foundry deals with Apple and Tesla; chip yields still trail TSMC
Enterprise networking, security, and observability. The largest employer in downtown San Jose.
- Splunk acquisition ($28B) transforms Cisco into a major security + observability platform
- Networking hardware and software being repositioned for AI infrastructure demand
The world's largest semiconductor equipment company. Every chip in your phone, laptop, and AI server was made using Applied's machines.
- Deposition, etch, and inspection equipment used in every advanced AI chip — from TSMC's A16 to HBM memory stacks
- Record equipment backlog driven by TSMC, Samsung, and Intel expanding AI chip capacity
Professional network and recruiting platform. Microsoft-owned, headquartered in Sunnyvale.
- AI-assisted job matching, writing tools, and profile optimization launching for Premium users
- B2B advertising and Premium subscriptions driving revenue growth for Microsoft
GPUs and AI accelerators. The defining company of the current AI era. Santa Clara's crown jewel.
- Blackwell GPUs now deployed across every major cloud; the next-generation Vera Rubin platform ramps through 2026, with Jensen Huang projecting $1 trillion in Blackwell and Rubin orders by 2027
- Market cap above $5 trillion — the world's most valuable company
Enterprise workflow automation. The quiet giant of South Bay SaaS.
- Now Platform AI Agents automating enterprise IT, HR, and customer workflows at scale
- One of the fastest-growing large enterprise software companies in the world
Hiring Pulse
A quick read, not every open roleGrowing headcount — AI hardware demand lifting chipmakers and server builders, with security and SaaS also expanding
Stable or post-restructuring — open roles but no broad expansion
Post-layoff recovery — limited openings, cautious on headcount
Smaller, But Notable
A curated sample of growth companies and startups
Its Corsair in-memory compute chip targets AI inference at the data center edge. Microsoft-backed; raised a $275M Series C in late 2025 at a $2B valuation (~$450M total) to take on NVIDIA on inference.
AI lab building general world models: causal, multimodal systems that simulate physical environments for robotics, science, gaming, healthcare, and defense. Raised a $310M Series B at a $1.45B valuation in June 2026, with Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, and IQT joining Natural Capital.
Sells the building blocks of a custom AI chip: ready-made chiplets for connectivity, power, and memory, plus a platform that takes a design from architecture through manufacturing. Came out of stealth in July 2026 with $43M.
Humanoid robots for real warehouse and factory work, now mass-produced at its BotQ factory in San Jose. Raised $1B+ in a 2025 Series C at a $39B valuation, with backing from NVIDIA, Intel Capital, Qualcomm, and Salesforce. BMW pilot underway.
Norwegian-founded humanoid robot company building NEO for home use and EVE for commercial deployments. US headquarters in Palo Alto.
Redesigns the AI data center network from scratch — one high-radix switch layer instead of three, cutting latency and power for hyperscale AI. Emerged from stealth March 2026 with $200M+ Series A.
Building Memo, a household robot that does dishes, laundry, and tidying. Raised $165M Series B at $1.15B valuation in March 2026; beta launches late 2026 with 3,000+ people on the waitlist.
The visual brain for robots. Ex-Apple Face ID engineers building integrated 4D perception systems that give humanoids and robot arms the ability to see and track. $107M raised, CES 2026 Best of Innovation.
AI chip startup building LLM training processors claimed to be 10× more efficient than Nvidia GPUs. Founded by ex-Google hardware engineers; $500M Series B in Feb 2026.
Agentic AI cybersecurity platform bridging IT and OT security — autonomous threat detection and response at machine speed. $125M in March 2026.
Industrial robotics foundation model trained on internet-scale video, enabling factory and logistics robots to adapt in real-world conditions. $450M Series A, $1.7B valuation.
LPU inference chip clocking record token speeds. Built by ex-Google TPU team.