Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States by population. The city itself is surrounded by more cities. The total population of Los Angeles is about four million; Los Angeles County has a population of closer to ten million! The Port of Long Beach is an essential trade and transit point for most of the Western United States. Hollywood is still the entertainment capital of the world. Many celebrities and movie stars live in LA but in this post I'd like to look at the LA tech and startup scene.
📈 How do you define tech company or startup?
I'm defining startup and tech company rather broadly. We live in a time where software is eating or has already eaten large sectors of our economy. There aren't any clearcut definitions of what makes a company a "tech company" or a "startup". Paul Graham famously defined a startup as having the potential for massive growth. For this post I'll use the Supreme Court's definition of pornography to define startups and tech companies: "I'll know it when I see it".
🏢 What companies are included in this list?
For this list I'm only looking at startups or tech companies that have their Headquarters Location in Los Angeles County and in Irvine, CA because it's another startup and tech hotspot in SoCal 🔥.
If you'd like to see all of the companies in our database, filter, sort and search please create an account or login.
🗺️ Map of startups in Los Angeles
Here's a map of the startups in Los Angeles:
Created this map with Mapbox Studio!
🔎 Methodology
We have over 1,300 companies in our database that have headquarters in any of the above cities. Since it's not helpful or practical to list out that many companies in a blog post I'm going to pick my favorites. Specifically I'm looking at the Total Investment Amount, Founded Year and indistries the companies are active in. I hope that this list will be helpful to job seekers and other people interested in exploring or learning more about the Los Angeles tech scene. Again, to filter, sort, search and explore the FULL DATASET please login to the Employbl dashboard.
Without further ado, here are tech companies and startups in Los Angeles broken down by the top companies in various categories.
💰 LA tech companies that have raised the most money
This list sorts companies by total investment amount, with those that have raised the most money from financiers at the top. It only looks at private companies (those that have not IPO'd) and companies that have not been acquired. It's astonishing to me how much money these companies have raised. The top 25 have all raised more than a quarter billion dollars and none of them are subject to the public markets. The companies that stand out to me are:
- Fair: raised $2 billion and has fewer than five hundred employees. Investors are clearly hoping on the self driving car bandwagon.
- LendingUSA: never heard of this company but have raised three quarters of a billion dollars and have fewer than 100 employees. The data is a little skewed because pretty much all of this money is Debt Financing, which is different from like raising a Series A or Series B. But still, continually astonishes me how a small group of people can control so much money.
- Black Unicorn Factory: This company was founded in 2020 and has raised > $400 million. I have no idea what's going on there.
- Wag Labs: Love them. Pretty sure they use Laravel, the PHP framework I love. This is the type of company I really wanted to find when building out the Employbl product 🐕.
- CloudKitchens: shocking they've raised $400 million with less than 50 employees. Maybe Travis Kalanick and his team can make everyone who works in the restaurant industry an independent contractor too -- investors clearly support it 💀
- Hyperloop One, The Boring Company: These companies all get a ton of press and have correspondingly raised a ton of money. Glad to see them on the list. Can't wait to head to SoCal in a tunnel.
| Company Name | Company Description | Total Amount Raised | Min Employees | Max Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fair | Fair Servicing, LLC operates as a software development company. The Company provides an application for car dealers which includes roadside assistance, routine maintenance, insurance, and driving features. Fair Servicing serves customers in the United States. | $2,101,000,064 | 200 | 500 |
| Scopely | Scopely, Inc. provides interactive entertainment and mobile games. The Company offers diverse portfolio of original and beloved franchises games. Scopely serves customers worldwide. | $998,499,968 | 1000 | 5000 |
| LendingUSA | LendingUSA is an award-winning point-of-sale fintech company that offers merchants a seamless financing solution with access to loan decisions in seconds, promotional financing terms, and low monthly payment options for its customers across various niche markets. | $760,000,000 | 50 | 200 |
| LIVEKINDLY | LIVEKINDLY is a collective of plant-based heritage and start-up brands including The Fry Family Food Co., LikeMeat, and LIVEKINDLY Media. Committed to transforming its global food system and the only company in the plant-based food sector to own and operate the entire value chain of production. | $535,000,000 | 500 | 1000 |
| 8minute Solar Energy | Founded in 2009, 8minute Solar Energy is the nation’s largest independent developer of solar PV and storage projects. To date, 8minutenergy has 7.5 GW of PV and 1 GW of storage under development in North America, operates 700+ MW in solar assets, and been awarded more than 1.5 GW in power purchase agreements. | $455,000,000 | 50 | 200 |
| Black Unicorn Factory | Black Unicorn Factory specializes in turning small startups into public stock market ready Unicorns. Black Unicorn Factory is located in the LAX area of Los Angeles, California and is founded by a team of Growth Hacking experts. | $420,000,000 | 1 | 100 |
| CloudKitchens | CloudKitchens is a ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant company started by Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber. | $400,000,000 | 5 | 10 |
| Hyperloop One | Virgin Hyperloop (formerly Hyperloop Technologies, Hyperloop One and Virgin Hyperloop One) is an American transportation technology company that works to commercialize the high-speed technology concept called the Hyperloop, a variant of the vacuum train. Hyperloop systems are intended to move passengers and/or cargo at airline speeds at a fraction of the cost of air travel. | $368,426,752 | 100 | 500 |
| Wag Labs Inc | Wag Labs, Inc. provides software solutions. The Company offers dog walking and dog sitting application for busy dog owners to connect community they can hire on-demand for dog walking, sitting, and boarding services. Wag Labs serves customers in the United States. | $361,449,984 | 200 | 2000 |
| Jam City | Jam City, Inc. (formerly MindJolt and Social Gaming Network) is an American video game developer based in Culver City, California. Jam City has nine studios located in the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. As of 2021, it employs 825 people. As of 2021, Jam City's games have 31 million monthly active users and 1.3 billion total downloads. | $302,000,000 | 500 | 1000 |
| Produce Pay Inc | ProducePay is a new tech-based cash flow solution that provides domestic and foreign fresh produce farmers (growers) who ship to the U.S. with immediate access to distribution and financing. ProducePay's solutions provide the working capital fresh-produce growers’ need to complete their harvest and grow. | $299,900,000 | 50 | 200 |
| Orca Security | Orca’s cloud-native solution reads a company’s cloud configuration and can detect malware, misconfigurations, and other vulnerabilities. | $292,000,000 | 100 | 500 |
| ReCharge | Recharge is an eCommerce platform that helps merchants launch and scales their subscription business. Recharge powers billions of dollars in annual processing for nearly 30 million consumers. It specializes in the fields of eCommerce, Subscriptions, Payments, and SaaS. | $277,000,000 | 200 | 500 |
| DAQRI | Daqri develops 4D augmented reality technology. The Company provides a platform that offers enterprise-class augmented reality solution that allows organizations to visualize technical assets interactively in 4D, with a support of cloud-based data system. | $275,000,000 | 100 | 500 |
| Skydance Media | Skydance Media, LLC operates as a diversified media company. The Company produces and distributes movies, television programs, and other shows. Skydance Media operates in the United States. | $275,000,000 | 200 | 500 |
| NantOmics LLC | NantOmics, LLC is a biotechnology company based out of 9920 Jefferson Street, Culver City, California, United States. | $250,800,000 | 20 | 100 |
| Anduril Industries | Anduril Industries, Inc. provides security solutions. The Company offers solutions for military based security, energy facility protection, wildfire detection, and infrastructure defense. Anduril Industries provides its services in the United States. | $241,000,000 | 100 | 500 |
| The Boring Company | The Boring Company (TBC) is an American infrastructure and tunnel construction services company founded by Elon Musk. Its current and proposed projects are designed for intra-city ("loop") transit systems, although the company has stated that current tunnels are being built so they could support eventual transition to Hyperloop-based transportation on longer inter-city routes. | $233,000,000 | 50 | 200 |
| FloQast | FloQast is an accounting software vendor based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 2013, the company provides close management software for corporate accounting departments to help them improve the way they close the books each month. | $229,866,656 | 100 | 500 |
| SEMYOU | semYOU is a new kind of web experience and represents a new cloud computing framework for desktop apps. With this new idea we are moving currently software for the desktop pc to the cloud. | $220,000,000 | 1000 | 5000 |
| Headspace | Live a healthier, happier, more well-rested life in just a few minutes a day with the Headspace app. | $215,853,472 | 200 | 500 |
| Rockley Photonics | Rockley Photonics Limited manufactures photonics chips and custom integrated packaged products. The Company offers products for broad market applications ranging from communications to consumers. Rockley Photonics serves customers in the United Kingdom. | $207,000,000 | 100 | 500 |
| Tala | Tala is a financial technology company on a mission to build a financial system that works for everyone. Our first product is a lending app that instantly underwrites and delivers credit to customers who have little or no formal borrowing history. | $204,439,712 | 500 | 1000 |
🔧 Los Angeles Startups By Industry
At Employbl we collect industry data on startups too. The below graph shows the industry categories for all of the thousand+ startups in the database. As you can see the majority of the companies are categorized as "Software Companies" though there's a strong presence of "SaaS" and "AI" companies. One company can have up to three industry categories. For more info on industry categorization see this post.
✨ New startups in LA (2021)
What better way to find out who's starting up than to look at when they started? This list looks at companies founded recently. The pandemic thoroughly shook up our economy, makes sense that some of these brand new companies can be looking to cash in on the new economic order of things. These companies were all founded in 2020 or 2021. Click on the company name to view more info about each startup!
| Company Name | Company Description | Total Amount Raised | Min Employees | Max Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| That's No Moon | That's No Moon is a content creation company that provides products and services for the entertainment industry. | $101,500,000 | 5 | 10 |
| AXON Networks | AXON Networks has raised the bar for broadband connectivity, delivering a suite of products and solutions that help ISPs transform their businesses and deliver a robust quality of experience to their customers. Spun out of Greenwave Systems, AXON Networks partners with ISPs to help evaluate their technologies and business models. | $27,000,000 | 100 | 500 |
| CreatorPlus | CreatorPlus builds new film studio and streaming platform for digital-first storytellers and their audience who are hungry to support them. | $12,000,000 | 5 | 10 |
| CURIO | About CURIO:Today's customers want things now. But they also want quality & style. CURIO is an app and shop-by-chat service that curates high style clothing and gifts from local boutiques and delivers them to your door in under two hours. | $8,220,000 | 5 | 10 |
| Gardens Interactive | Founded by designers of such award-winning indie titles as Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Dustforce, Blaseball, and more, Gardens Interactive is a game studio focused on the future of online play, growing lush, living spaces that need to be cared for by their communities, and fostering meaningful, memorable stories between players around the world. | $4,499,998 | 1 | 10 |
| ThoughtWorld | ThoughtWorld is an interactive digital platform helping people share and refine their thoughts and opinions. The platform was built to encourage people to think, find compromises, collaborate with others, and be unafraid to pose new ideas, even bad ones. | $2,015,000 | 1 | 10 |
| Pahdo Labs | Pahdo Labs is a 2D game company building the next-generation MMO centered on game creation. The company's mission is to cultivate a virtual world built by players, an online place where people can have a meaningful role in something bigger than themselves, own and share the products of their ingenuity, and foster a sense of belonging for others. | $2,000,000 | 1 | 10 |
| Epsilon3 | Epsilon3 is building the future of spacecraft operations software. If you’re excited about space, join our team! https://angel.co/company/epsilon3 | $1,125,000 | 5 | 10 |
| Black Unicorn Factory | Black Unicorn Factory specializes in turning small startups into public stock market ready Unicorns. Black Unicorn Factory is located in the LAX area of Los Angeles, California and is founded by a team of Growth Hacking experts. | $420,000,000 | 1 | 100 |
| Appia Bio | Appia Bio is an early-stage biotechnology company based in Los Angeles, California. Appia Bio is focused on discovering and developing engineered allogeneic cell therapies across a broad array of indications with a scalable technology platform that increases access for patients. | $52,000,000 | 10 | 50 |
| FootPrint Coalition | FootPrint Coalition is a media and investment group using robotics and nanotechnology to clean up the planet. It combines high impact media with early-stage and opportunistic growth stage investments. It was launch by actor Robert Downey Jr. | $50,000,000 | 5 | 10 |
| Theorycraft Games | Theorycraft Games operates as an independent game studio. Theorycrafting is an honor players reserve for the deepest games in the world. It’s what we do when a game is worthy of endless speculation and debate about how best to play. | $37,500,000 | 1 | 10 |
| NXCR | NXCR is a vehicle subscription startup that makes mobility flexible, affordable, and fully digital. It creates a profitable platform that enables vehicle subscriptions to thrive as a sustainable business model in automotive retail. | $30,000,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Future State Brands | Future State Brands is a consumer goods and marketing company that is bringing cannabis from the black market to the supermarket. | $25,000,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Amuse | Amuse is an e-commerce cannabis delivery business that is reinventing the way consumers order and consume cannabis. | $23,000,000 | 200 | 500 |
| Tryft | Tryft provides a platform for both buyers and sellers to sell vintage goods or brand new (sustainable and eco-friendly) products which in-turn allows buyers to shop at thrift prices; saving money, increasing re-usability and decreasing waste. | $22,070,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Universal Hydrogen | Universal Hydrogen is dedicated to making hydrogen aviation a near-term reality. The company is building a hydrogen ecosystem for aviation through strategic partnerships and new technologies for hydrogen distribution and propulsion. | $20,500,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Involve.ai | Involve.ai organizes all customer data and interactions in a single dashboard so you can quickly predict customer health, stop customers from leaving, and expand them to increase revenue. | $18,459,996 | 10 | 50 |
| Pragma | Pragma is a “backend game engine” that enables multiplayer and social games. Pragma provides developers full extensibility, visibility and scalability. | $16,200,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Pearpop | Pearpop is the marketplace for social collaborations between the teeming hordes of musicians, craftspeople, chefs, clowns, diarists, dancers, artists, actors, acrobats, aspiring celebrities, and actual celebrities. | $16,000,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Rarible | Rarible is an operator of a community-owned NFT marketplace that allows users to buy and auction off digital art. It is used to create, sell, or collect digital items secured with blockchain. | $15,950,000 | 5 | 20 |
| Mobix Labs | Located in Irvine, California, Mobix Labs is a highly innovative, IP rich, and dynamic Fabless Semiconductor company focused on developing cutting-edge, fully integrated, Bulk CMOS, single-chip, single-die, mmWave Beamformers, antenna solutions, and RF Semiconductors for 5G and Beyond. | $12,500,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Alive Ventures | Alive Ventures is a startup studio that imagines and builds companies, products, and services that help older adults live work and love. | $12,000,000 | 2 | 10 |
| Big Time Studios | Big Time Studios is a new game company dedicated to crafting online adventures through space and time. | $10,300,000 | 10 | 50 |
| Whatifi | Whatifi provides a new way to watch movies on your phone with friends. Whatifi unlocks the ability to discuss, debate and decide what happens next in the movies you watch with friends and family, offering dozens of plotlines, character arcs, and endings. | $10,000,000 | 10 | 50 |
👋 That's all folks.. for now..
Welp, hopefully that provided a good introduction to some of the newest and best funded startups in the LA tech scene. I realize that all the data in a static list can be hard to sort through, which is why we've built the Employbl dashboard to filter companies and startups based on criteria of your choosing. Login to give it a try. Did you like this list? Any startups we missed? Features you'd like to see on the platform? New cities to explore? Send me a tweet!.