The 2026 San Diego Hardtech 50
San Diego's hardware companies have raised $10 billion. Here are the 50 building the physical future.
Published by Neal Bloom | Rising Tide Partners
This list and the recognition event behind it wouldn’t exist without the partners who believe in San Diego’s hardtech future: SDSU Mission Valley, Procopio, REACH Defense, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Savills, JP Morgan and Firestorm as Partners, and Deloitte, Sequoia, Wells Fargo, Camber Road, and IP 5000 Marketplace as Supporters. Building a real ecosystem takes a village — grateful to have this one.
San Diego has a deeptech problem. Not the kind that worries you — the kind that makes you proud and a little competitive.
The companies building hardware, manufacturing advanced materials, designing autonomous systems, and developing medical devices here have now collectively raised over $10.1 billion, with $4.55 billion raised in the last year alone. This isn’t a software ecosystem pretending to be something else. This is real atoms, real physics, real manufacturing — and it’s concentrated in one of the most underrated tech cities in the world.
I started the SD Hardtech 50 last year to make that case publicly. A year later, the case makes itself.
This year we went deeper. In partnership with Metis Partners and IPRScore, we ran a full IP analysis across the cohort. The 50 companies on this list hold 689 patent families and 1,935 patent filings. That’s not just capital formation. That’s an IP moat being built in San Diego, sector by sector.
The methodology: inclusion is driven by total capital raised and funding momentum, weighted by stage, category fit, and ecosystem signal. Public companies are excluded. Pure therapeutics are excluded — this list requires a hardware or hardware/software core. This year we also added a Next Wave list for companies not yet at the funding threshold but building something worth tracking. You’ll find that in a separate post.
What follows isn’t a ranked list. It’s a map of the clusters — because the real story of San Diego hardtech isn’t any single company. It’s the density.
Defense & Autonomy
San Diego has always been a defense town. What’s changed is that the defense companies being built here now are software-defined, AI-native, and moving at startup speed. The cluster below has collectively raised billions and is delivering hardware into active military operations. The DoD is spending, and SD is building.
Shield AI — Designs and manufactures autonomous aircraft powered by AI pilots for frontline military missions. Their $2B Series G in March 2026 brings total raised to $3.58B — the largest private fundraise in San Diego history. Hivemind AI is now deployed across F-16s, V-BAT drones, and multiple platforms worldwide.
Aevex Aerospace — $433M in revenue in 2025. Filed for a NYSE IPO (ticker: AVEX) at a $2.35B valuation. 5,000+ one-way-attack drones delivered. The most combat-proven drone manufacturer on this list and one of the most consequential defense companies to emerge from San Diego.
Brain Corp — 20,000+ autonomous robots deployed at Walmart and global retailers. $193M total raised. The operating system for commercial autonomous robots — quietly powering the floors of retail, logistics, and hospitality worldwide.
Firestorm — Modular defense drones plus field manufacturing. $82M Series B closed April 2026. $100M U.S. Air Force contract. $150M total raised. Firestorm isn’t just building drones — they’re building the ability to manufacture drones closer to where conflict happens.
SkySafe — RF-based drone detection and airspace security deployed by U.S. federal agencies and law enforcement. $30M raised. As the sky fills with drones, SkySafe is building the traffic control and threat detection layer for the new aerial environment.
Seasats — $20M Series A in February 2026. DARPA-backed solar autonomous ocean vehicles. $63M total raised. Seasats drones patrol the ocean indefinitely — no crew, no fuel, just persistent maritime intelligence for defense, climate monitoring, and commercial operations.
Modal AI — Qualcomm spinout. Onboard autonomy hardware for drones in GPS-denied environments. DoD-certified Blue UAS. The compute module that makes drones autonomous in the environments where the DoD needs them most.
Comma AI — Open-source driver assist system with 34M+ miles driven. George Hotz’s iconoclastic bet on affordable autonomy — built on a comma three device and openpilot software. Not playing by Valley rules, and it’s working.
Natilus — $28M Series A in February 2026. Blended-wing cargo aircraft designed to carry 50–100% more freight per flight than conventional aircraft. Major airlines are pulling them into commercial passenger planes and billions in orders. One of the most ambitious aircraft programs in the country — and it’s based in San Diego.
Energy & Battery
Ten years ago, San Diego’s energy startup scene was thin. Today it’s one of the most active battery and clean energy clusters in the country — anchored by materials discovery, next-generation chemistries, and infrastructure plays. This cohort alone represents multiple distinct bets on what the energy transition actually requires.
Wildcat Discovery Technologies — AI-driven battery materials discovery. $90M+ most recent raise, $165M total. Partners with global automakers and battery manufacturers to find next-generation chemistries. Ranked #1 in patent families across the entire Hardtech 50 — the most IP-rich company on this list.
Monarch Energy — $400M LS Power commitment. Utility-scale green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel. $25.4M raised directly. One of the most significant strategic backing arrangements in the clean energy sector.
Tempo (formerly RedoxBlox) — Thermochemical energy storage for industrial decarbonization. $30M Series A. $15M+ in DOE and California Energy Commission grants. Renamed and refocused — building the thermal storage that heavy industry needs to actually decarbonize.
Sonocharge — Piezoacoustic platform extending lithium-ion battery life and enabling faster charging. $38.6M total raised. No extra hardware — just acoustic energy applied to existing cells to make them last longer and charge faster.
South 8 Technologies — Liquefied gas electrolytes for next-gen lithium batteries. $37M total raised. LG and Shell backed. Freshest raise on this list — April 2026. Batteries that work at temperature extremes, enabling EV and aerospace applications that existing chemistries can’t serve.
Unigrid — Sodium-ion batteries — a safer, non-lithium alternative for stationary and e-mobility storage. $15.2M raised. The case is simple: lithium is expensive and geopolitically complicated. Sodium is not.
American Lithium Energy — High-performance silicon-anode lithium cells for EVs, aerospace, and defense. Highest energy-density cells in their class. $13.2M raised. Backed by defense and aerospace customers who need batteries that don’t compromise.
PowerFlex Systems — $100M PE-backed. Smart EV charging and energy management for commercial real estate. The invisible infrastructure behind thousands of charging stations in parking garages, office campuses, and retail centers nationwide.
mPower — Flexible DragonSCALES™ solar cells powering satellites and space systems. Defense and commercial missions. $14.4M raised. The power layer for the new space economy — solar cells that conform to any surface and survive the harsh realities of orbit.
UCAP Power — Maxwell Technologies spinout. Ultracapacitor storage for grid, mobility, and industrial peak power. $7.3M raised. Ranked #4 in forward patent citations in the Hardtech 50 IP analysis — foundational technology with meaningful IP that others are building on.
Aptera — Solar EV requiring no daily charging for most commuters. $9M raised in January 2026, $223.7M total raised. The three-wheeled, ultra-efficient vehicle that keeps finding believers. At its core, Aptera is an energy thesis: a vehicle designed around the assumption that the sun is the best charging station.
Diagnostics & Med Device
Twelve companies. No pure therapeutics. Every one of them is building hardware, devices, or diagnostic instruments — the physical objects that touch patients, run samples, or deliver treatment. San Diego’s medtech cluster is maturing fast, and the IP data backs it up: this subcohort holds some of the deepest patent portfolios on the list.
Element Biosciences — Next-generation genomic sequencing platform. $278M most recent raise, $678M total. One of San Diego’s most consequential deeptech companies — built on chemistry and optics that challenge Illumina on its home turf. The $100 genome.
Truvian Health — Benchtop blood testing delivering lab-accurate results in minutes at the point of care. $74M most recent raise, $208M total. The vision: every clinic and urgent care has a Truvian device. Ranked #3 in active trademarks in the Hardtech 50.
Biolinq — Intradermal continuous glucose monitoring sensor. $100M Series C, $276M total raised. Advancing toward FDA clearance. Ranked #1 in forward patent citations across the entire Hardtech 50 — the most-cited IP in the cohort. If this works at scale, it changes how hundreds of millions of diabetics manage their disease.
Allez Health — Biosensor platform for continuous glucose monitoring. $60M Series A+. Two San Diego companies competing for the same future in CGM — both on this list, neither standing down.
Carlsmed — AI-driven personalized surgical plans and implants for spine surgery. $64.5M most recent raise, $109M total. Ranked #2 in forward patent citations in the Hardtech 50. Other companies are building on Carlsmed’s foundational work — that’s the definition of pioneering IP.
Zerigo Health — Connected light therapy for chronic skin conditions. $43M Series B with Cigna Ventures and Leaps by Bayer. Home-use devices delivering clinical-grade phototherapy without a dermatology visit.
Alume Biosciences — Nerve illumination tools to reduce surgical complications. $34.5M total raised. Phase 1/2 studies underway. Solving one of surgery’s most persistent problems — nerve damage — by making nerves visible in the surgical field.
Luna Diabetes — Series A raised 2025. Automated insulin delivery for pen users — the smallest delivery system available. For the hundreds of millions of insulin-dependent diabetics who use pens rather than pumps, Luna is building the closed-loop system that didn’t exist.
Xzom — Founded by Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm. Liquid biopsy for early detection in 30 minutes. If this works — and the founder pedigree demands taking it seriously — it’s one of the most consequential diagnostics companies in the country.
Cooler Heads — $11M Series A in July 2025. Scalp cooling preventing chemotherapy-induced hair loss. Amma™ system now shipping. A device solving a problem oncology patients have faced for decades — with real clinical evidence and real commercial traction.
Neuralace Medical — FDA-cleared non-invasive magnetic stimulation for diabetic neuropathy and nerve pain. Axon Therapy treating patients. Cleared, treating patients, and solving a problem that affects tens of millions of people — with no drugs and no implants.
Psyonic — Advanced bionic limbs with multi-touch sensory feedback. Relocated HQ to San Diego. Ability Hand now shipping. A bionic limb at a fraction of the cost of legacy prosthetics, with sensory feedback that changes what it means to hold something.
Advanced Manufacturing
Three companies. Each one is rethinking what manufacturing means at a fundamental level — not optimizing an existing process, but replacing it.
Resilience — Builds next-generation biomanufacturing facilities to produce complex medicines at scale. DoD-backed. $825M most recent raise, $3.36B total — one of the most heavily capitalized private manufacturing companies in the country. Their La Jolla campus is a template for domestic pharmaceutical supply chain independence. Ranked #1 in active trademarks across the entire Hardtech 50.
Fabric8Labs — Electrochemical metal 3D printing — high-resolution parts without powders or lasers. $56M Series B in November 2025, $132M total raised. A fundamentally different approach to additive manufacturing that’s cleaner, cheaper, and more precise.
Intrepid Automation — Scalable additive manufacturing systems. Series A funded. Range 3D printer delivering up to 10x throughput over conventional systems. Built for production, not prototyping.
Semiconductors & Computing
San Diego has a deep semiconductor heritage — Qualcomm, Broadcom, and decades of DARPA-funded research built an ecosystem that spawns chip companies at an unusual rate. This cohort reflects that lineage: edge AI, RF, quantum, composable compute, and next-generation display technology, all coming from the same ZIP codes.
Wiliot — Ambient IoT tags backed by SoftBank, Amazon, and Qualcomm Ventures. Turning everyday packaging and products into connected, intelligent data nodes — with zero batteries. The infrastructure layer for the physical internet.
Kneron — Full-stack edge AI chips for vehicles, security, and IoT. $49M raised. 2023 IEEE Innovation Award. Building the inference layer for a world where AI runs on the device, not in the cloud.
GigaIO — Rack-scale composable AI/HPC architecture. $21M Series B in 2025. National Research Platform selected. Building the compute fabric that lets AI clusters work without the bottlenecks that slow everything else down.
Monarch Quantum — $55M raised in March 2026. $76M total. $60M+ in contracts with Quantinuum, NASA, and Infleqtion within six months of founding. One of the fastest-rising companies in the SD ecosystem — quantum computing infrastructure for the near-term era.
Saphlux — $43.6M Series C in April 2026. $94.9M total raised. Quantum dot micro-LED for ultra-high-resolution displays. The display technology behind next-generation AR/VR and high-performance monitors — built around a semiconductor process Saphlux pioneered.
QuantalRF — $15M Series C. Advanced RF amplifiers based on former NASA scientist’s innovations. The signal layer for next-gen communications — satellites, defense systems, and 5G infrastructure that need amplifiers built for more demanding conditions.
Trident IoT — $10M raised. IoT silicon and modules with U.S.-based certification services. Building chip-level infrastructure for connected devices with a domestic supply chain focus — increasingly relevant in a world rethinking semiconductor geopolitics.
FoodTech
Two companies. Both are building the infrastructure for protein sources that don’t depend on industrial agriculture at scale. Both are San Diego-headquartered. Both have been at this long enough to have real data.
BlueNalu — Cell-cultivated seafood — mahi-mahi and bluefin tuna grown from cells, not fishing boats. $132.25M total raised. The most capitalized cell-cultivated seafood company on the planet. When the regulatory environment catches up, BlueNalu is ready.
Plantible Foods — Duckweed-derived Rubi Protein as a scalable egg-white replacement. $56.4M total raised. FDA approved. Now scaling commercially. If you’ve eaten something with a clean protein label at a startup event in the last year, there’s a reasonable chance it was Plantible.
Logistics, Sensor & Water
The connective tissue of the hardtech economy — the companies building the sensing, tracking, and infrastructure layers that make the rest of it work. Water, connectivity, monitoring, and the physical internet of assets.
Netradyne — AI dashcams analyzing driver behavior in real time to reduce risk for commercial fleets. $90M Series D, $352M total raised. Deployed across hundreds of thousands of vehicles. The safety and intelligence layer of commercial trucking. Ranked #3 in forward patent citations in the Hardtech 50.
Tag-N-Trac — $10M Series A. IoT asset tracking and monitoring for cold chain and industrial logistics. Real-time location and condition data for assets that can’t afford to go missing or out of spec.
Totum Labs — $13M Series A. Low-power satellite-based asset tracking using proprietary DMSS technology. Tracking anything, anywhere — without cellular coverage. The IoT layer for remote, maritime, and industrial assets that live off the grid.
Subeca — $6M Series A. Smart water metering using Amazon Sidewalk. SUEZ-backed. Marin Municipal pilot live. Water is infrastructure. Subeca is digitizing it — giving utilities real-time visibility into consumption and leakage that analog meters never could.
Aquacycl — Bioelectrochemical wastewater treatment generating electricity from pollutants. Earthshot Prize finalist. $14M total raised. Treating wastewater while generating power from it — circular infrastructure for municipalities and industrial facilities worldwide.
Space & Frontier
One company on this list doesn’t fit any cluster. It gets its own.
Lifeship — Lunar DNA seed bank and bioarchive platform. A pyramid on the Moon landed March 2025 via Firefly Blue Ghost. Two more lunar missions in 2026, including Astrolab FLEX rover deployment. Lifeship is building a backup of life on the Moon — the most ambitious archive project in human history. Some companies on this list are building the future of energy, or defense, or medicine. Lifeship is building the future of the species.
By the Numbers
Total raised (all-time): $10.1B across 50 companies Raised in the last 12–15 months: $4.55B Patent families (Hardtech 50 cohort): 689 Patent filings: 1,935
IP analysis conducted by Metis Partners and IPRScore.
This list is a collaboration. Thanks to everyone in the SD ecosystem who shared signal, made introductions, and helped make this community what it is.
Neal Bloom is the founder of Rising Tide Partners, RTP Communities, and Interlock Capital. RTP and Interlock Capital portfolio companies appearing on this list: Seasats, Natilus, BlueNalu, Luna Diabetes, and Xzom.
See also: The Next Wave: 30 San Diego Hardtech Companies to Watch
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