Moments from San Francisco

The one where founders from 20+ countries joined eChai at Draper University, San Francisco

Upcoming eChai events in San Francisco

eChai's free, open founder meetups across the city. RSVP and walk in.

No dated events on the calendar right now. eChai's recurring San Francisco formats:

See eChai's events

A look back at recent eChai gatherings in San Francisco, newest first.

sun
8
mar
eChai SF : International Women's Day - Bring Your +1
Mar 8, 2026 · 1 Oz Coffee, 3051 Tasman Dr, Santa Clara, CA 95054, United States. · San Francisco
thu
12
feb
eChai: AI Founder's Circle in SF/Bay Area
Feb 12, 2026 · Blue Bottle Coffee Palo Alto, 456 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States. · San Francisco
thu
18
dec
eChai Women in Tech Mixer in San Francisco
Dec 18, 2025 · Roger Bar and Restaurant, 800 Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States. · San Francisco
mon
1
dec
eChai's San Francisco Startup Mixer
Dec 1, 2025 · San Francisco
wed
12
nov
eChai SF : AI x Healthcare Meetup
Nov 12, 2025 · Blue Bottle Coffee, 456 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States. · San Francisco
thu
9
oct
eChai SF: Founder’s Food Truck Fest
Oct 9, 2025 · Dhaba Express Fremont, 3961 Washington Blvd, Fremont, CA 94538, United States. · San Francisco
thu
2
oct
eChai SF: Fund Raising for Startups - VCs Panel
Oct 2, 2025 · Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, 150 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95112, United States. · San Francisco
thu
18
sep
San Francisco Startup Mixer
<div><strong>The journey continues in San Mateo — with more stories, connections, and builders around the table.<br></strong><br></div><div>​If you thrive on real conversations, unexpected collisions, and the kind of energy that only comes when passionate people gather in the same space, you don’t want to miss this.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>What:<br></strong><br></div><div>​eChai is hosting an evening gathering at <strong>Sama Cafe in San Mateo</strong> on <strong>Tuesday, April 15th, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM</strong> — designed for people who are building, thinking, exploring, or simply curious about the startup world.<br><br></div><div>​This isn’t your typical networking event. There’s no agenda, no presentations — just real conversations over coffee, surrounded by a community that values shared experiences and mutual growth.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Why:<br></strong><br></div><div>​In a world full of noise and pitch decks, it’s refreshing to come together without expectations — to listen, exchange ideas, and build relationships that actually matter. These gatherings are about creating space for founders, operators, product folks, and investors to connect on a human level.<br><br></div><div>​You never know what can come out of a single conversation — a new perspective, a collaboration, or just the comfort of knowing someone else is in the same messy, beautiful phase of building.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>How it works:<br></strong><br></div><div>​Show up. Grab a coffee. Introduce yourself. Or don’t — let the conversations unfold naturally. The event is <strong>free to attend</strong>; you just pay for what you order at the cafe.</div><div>​Registering through <strong>eChai</strong> helps you see who else is attending, so you can reconnect with familiar faces or discover new ones you’d like to meet.<br><br></div><div>​👉 <a href="https://echai.ventures/"><strong>eChai event link → eChai.Ventures</strong></a></div><div><br>​<strong>Who it’s for:<br></strong><br></div><div>​Whether you’re a first-time founder, a repeat operator, an indie hacker, or someone simply exploring the space — you’ll find thoughtful, like-minded people here who are all navigating different parts of the same journey.<br><br></div><div>​If you’d like to join us or co-host a future gathering, feel free to DM me.</div><div>​<strong>Let’s keep building — together.</strong></div>
Sep 18, 2025 · Roger Bar and Restaurant, 800 Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States. · San Francisco
thu
11
sep
eChai SF: The AI Shift — Reinventing CX & GTM
<div>Join us for an evening of high-signal conversations with industry leaders, founders, and operators shaping the future of customer experience and go-to-market strategies in the age of AI.<br><br></div><div>​This <strong>two-panel event</strong> brings together influential voices from global tech companies and fast-growing startups to share real-world insights, strategies, and stories on how AI is transforming both customer journeys and market execution.<br><br></div><div><strong><br>​📅 Agenda: What You’ll Experience<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>6:00 – 6:30 PM | Chai &amp; Conversations<br></strong><br></div><div>​Welcome reception with light bites, casual networking, and curated intros.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 – 7:20 PM | Panel Discussion 1: “AI x CX"<br></strong><br></div><div>​Featuring leaders from <strong>Zoom, Infor, Workato and Writer</strong> this discussion will explore how AI is reimagining customer interactions, support, and engagement — from predictive service to hyper-personalized experiences.<figure data-trix-attachment="{&quot;contentType&quot;:&quot;image&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1600,&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://images.lumacdn.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,fit=cover,dpr=2,quality=75,width=800,height=800/editor-images/1f/bfd3dafa-495b-43fb-9236-a10761d92dff.png&quot;,&quot;width&quot;:1600}" data-trix-content-type="image" class="attachment attachment--preview"><img src="https://images.lumacdn.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,fit=cover,dpr=2,quality=75,width=800,height=800/editor-images/1f/bfd3dafa-495b-43fb-9236-a10761d92dff.png" width="1600" height="1600"><figcaption class="attachment__caption"></figcaption></figure><br><br></div><div>​</div><div>​<strong>7:30 – 8:20 PM | Panel Discussion 2: AI x Marketing<br></strong><br></div><div>​Hear from <strong>two AI-first founders</strong> whose companies are redefining product marketing. We’ll dig into how AI is enhancing market research, messaging, personalization, and campaign velocity — and what’s next for growth teams.<figure data-trix-attachment="{&quot;contentType&quot;:&quot;image&quot;,&quot;height&quot;:1600,&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://images.lumacdn.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,fit=cover,dpr=2,quality=75,width=800,height=800/editor-images/ye/152c3a3c-6b3c-40ab-9717-fef504b9015c.png&quot;,&quot;width&quot;:1600}" data-trix-content-type="image" class="attachment attachment--preview"><img src="https://images.lumacdn.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,fit=cover,dpr=2,quality=75,width=800,height=800/editor-images/ye/152c3a3c-6b3c-40ab-9717-fef504b9015c.png" width="1600" height="1600"><figcaption class="attachment__caption"></figcaption></figure><br><br></div><div>​</div><div>​<strong>8:20 – 9:00 PM | Open Networking<br></strong><br></div><div>​Unstructured time to meet fellow builders, operators, and leaders working on AI and CX at scale.<br><br></div><div><strong><br>​Why Attend?<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​Hear <strong>candid, insight-rich exchanges</strong> from leaders building and deploying AI at scale.</li><li>​Learn how AI is impacting both <strong>customer experience</strong> and <strong>go-to-market strategies</strong>.</li><li>​Meet peers, operators, and innovators driving real-world change.</li></ul><div>​<strong>Curated by:</strong> Khyati Brahmbhatt (eChai Ventures)<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Presented in partnership with:</strong> Zoom Developers</div><div><br></div>
Sep 11, 2025 · Zoom HQ, 99 S Almaden Blvd. · San Francisco
thu
28
aug
eChai SF: Founder’s Food Truck Fest
<div><strong>What’s Cooking?<br></strong><br></div><div>​​Forget conference rooms.<br><br></div><div>​​We’re trading decks for dosas, and demos for dumplings.<br><br></div><div>​​This isn’t your typical networking event.<br><br></div><div>​​It’s food truck vibes + founder energy.<br><br></div><div>​​Come grab your favorite street bites and dive into real conversations with fellow founders, operators, and product minds. No pitches. No panels. Just people, food, and stories worth sharing.<br><br></div><div>​​<strong>🎯 Who’s This For?<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​​Founders building the next big thing</li><li>​​Product folks and makers</li><li>​​Startup enthusiasts &amp; side hustlers</li><li>​​Investors who prefer samosas over spreadsheet.</li></ul><div>​​<strong>✨ Why Join?<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​​Unfiltered convos, zero fluff</li><li>​​Meet like-minded folks over spicy bites</li><li>​​Discover your next collab, co-founder, or just a new favorite food truck</li><li>​​<strong>And hey — don’t forget to bring your food lover friend!</strong></li></ul><div>​​<strong>Curated by:<br></strong><br></div><div>​​Khyati Brahmbhatt, for the eChai community 🌶️<br><br></div><div>​​Spots are filling up fast (and so will your plates).<br><br></div><div>​​<strong>RSVP now and roll in hungry.</strong></div>
Aug 28, 2025 · Dhaba Express Fremont, 3961 Washington Blvd, Fremont, CA 94538, United States. · San Francisco
thu
7
aug
eChai: Founder’s Food Truck Fest in Bay Area
<div><strong>What’s Cooking?<br></strong><br></div><div>​Forget conference rooms.<br><br></div><div>​We’re trading decks for dosas, and demos for dumplings.<br><br></div><div>​This isn’t your typical networking event.<br><br></div><div>​It’s food truck vibes + founder energy.<br><br></div><div>​Come grab your favorite street bites and dive into real conversations with fellow founders, operators, and product minds. No pitches. No panels. Just people, food, and stories worth sharing.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🎯 Who’s This For?<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​Founders building the next big thing</li><li>​Product folks and makers</li><li>​Startup enthusiasts &amp; side hustlers</li><li>​Investors who prefer samosas over spreadsheet.</li><li><br></li></ul><div>​<strong>✨ Why Join?<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​Unfiltered convos, zero fluff</li><li>​Meet like-minded folks over spicy bites</li><li>​Discover your next collab, co-founder, or just a new favorite food truck</li><li>​<strong>And hey — don’t forget to bring your food lover friend!</strong></li></ul><div>​<strong>Curated by:<br></strong><br></div><div>​Khyati Brahmbhatt, for the eChai community 🌶️<br><br></div><div>​Spots are filling up fast (and so will your plates).<br><br></div><div>​<strong>RSVP now and roll in hungry.</strong></div>
Aug 7, 2025 · 3725 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA. · San Francisco
thu
24
jul
VCs,Product Leaders & the 2025 Blueprint: Bay Area Edition
<div><strong>🔮 VCs, Product Leaders &amp; the 2025 Blueprint<br></strong><br></div><div>​📅 <strong>July 24th</strong> | 🕕 6–9pm | 📍 Hosted at <strong>Zoom Developers HQ, San Jose<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>What’s shaping 2025?<br></strong><br></div><div>​Join us for an evening where visionary investors and product leaders come together to share the real stories behind the bets they’re making and the blueprints they’re following.<br><br></div><div>​This is not just another panel. It’s an inside look at what’s next — from product innovation to GTM plays, AI adoption to funding strategies.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>💡 What to Expect:<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​<strong>Panel 1: Investor Lens on 2025</strong><ul><li>​Learn what top VCs are funding, what trends they’re watching, and how founders can stay ahead.</li></ul></li><li>​<strong>Panel 2: Product Leaders on What’s Actually Working</strong><ul><li>​Hear from operators and founders who are building through ambiguity, scaling with AI, and leading product teams into the future.</li></ul></li><li>​<strong>High-Value Networking</strong><ul><li>​Connect with founders, builders, investors, and operators who are driving change in SaaS, AI, and beyond.</li></ul></li></ul><div>​Curated by Khyati Brahmbhatt in partnership with <strong>Zoom Developers</strong>, this eChai evening promises unfiltered insights, meaningful connections, and a front-row seat to what 2025 could look like.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Spots are limited — RSVP now and be part of the conversation.</strong></div>
Jul 24, 2025 · Zoom HQ, 99 S Almaden Blvd, San Jose, CA 95113, USA. · San Francisco
thu
26
jun
eChai's AI x Product Dinner in Bay Area
<div>This is an intimate dinner with AI founders, product leaders, and operators who are shaping the future of intelligent products.<br><br></div><div>​Pull up a seat at the table where algorithms meet appetizers, and strategy is served with a side of serendipity.<br><br></div><div><strong><br>​🧾 The Menu<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>6:00 – 6:30 PM | Conversation Starters<br></strong><br></div><div>​<em>Appetizers &amp; Algorithms<br></em><br></div><div>​Ease into the evening over small bites and curious minds. A chance to meet fellow builders, spark fresh conversations, and skip the awkward intros.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 – 7:30 PM | Main Course<br></strong><br></div><div>​<em>The Meat of the Matter<br></em><br></div><div>​Seated dinner with rotating conversations on:<br><br></div><div>​– What it <em>actually</em> takes to build AI-first products<br><br></div><div>​– Navigating PM-Agent handoffs and orchestration<br><br></div><div>​– Where product-led growth meets model-led disruption<br><br></div><div>​– What it actually takes to build AI-First product<br><br></div><div>​No panels. No pitches. Just shared tables, strong POVs, and honest dialogue.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:30 – 8:00 PM | Dessert<br></strong><br></div><div>​<em>Sweet Takes &amp; Spicy Predictions<br></em><br></div><div>​End with cardamom-laced desserts and forward-looking reflections:<br><br></div><div>​– What will feel obvious in hindsight?<br><br></div><div>​– What belief did you recently change your mind about?<br><br></div><div>​– What’s one bet you’re making that no one else sees?<br><br></div><div>​We’ll leave you full — but hungry to keep building.<br><br></div><div><strong><br>​Who This Is For<br></strong><br></div><div>​This dinner is curated for:<br><br></div><div>​– Product leaders at the intersection of AI and scale<br><br></div><div>​– Founders building AI-native products<br><br></div><div>​– Designers, PMs, and engineers exploring intelligent UX<br><br></div><div>​– Investors curious about next-gen workflows and product motion<br><br></div><div>​We already have confirmed guests from Meta, Apple, Salesforce, Automation Anywhere, Uber, and a strong showing from growth-stage founders across the Valley.<br><br></div>
Jun 26, 2025 · San Francisco
thu
12
jun
eChai: Women in AI SF Edition
<div>eChai and Zoom Developers are bringing together some of the most inspiring women leading the charge in AI — for an evening of honest conversations, bold insights, and real community.<br><br></div><div>​We’re kicking things off with a powerhouse panel featuring senior leaders from <strong>Meta, NVIDIA, Zoom</strong>, and <strong>Walmart</strong> — women who are not only building at scale but shaping the very fabric of AI’s future. Expect real stories, hard-earned lessons, and the kind of clarity that only comes from being in the arena.<br><br></div><div>​Then, Zoom Developers will take the stage to showcase what they’re building in the AI space — a peek behind the curtain of what’s next in intelligent collaboration.<br><br></div><div>​No fluff. No posturing. Just meaningful dialogue, and time to connect with fellow builders and believers.<br><br></div><div>​Whether you’re exploring leadership in tech, building AI products, or simply curious about what’s unfolding — this room is for you.<br><br></div><div>​🧭 <strong>Evening Flow<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>6:00 – 6:30 PM<br></strong><br></div><div>​☕&nbsp; <strong>Welcome &amp; Curated Networking<br></strong><br></div><div>​Arrive early, grab a cup of chai, and meet someone new. We’ll help spark the right conversations.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 – 7:15 PM<br></strong><br></div><div>​🎤 <em>Panel: Women Leading the AI Frontier<br></em><br></div><div>​Featuring:<br><br></div><ul><li>​<strong>Sathiya Panner</strong>, Engineering Lead, Zoom</li><li>​<strong>Syamla Bandla</strong>, Sr. Director of Production Engineering, Meta</li><li>​<strong>Rupali Deshpande</strong>, AI Learning Specialist, NVIDIA</li><li>​<strong>Mamta Suri</strong>, Sr Engineering Leader &amp; AI Evangelist, Walmart</li></ul><div>​A candid conversation on what it takes to lead, build, and scale in the fast-evolving world of AI.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:15 – 7:30 PM<br></strong><br></div><div>​⚡ <em>Zoom AI Demo<br></em><br></div><div>​A quick dive into what Zoom Developers is creating to power the next generation of AI collaboration.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:30 – 8:00 PM<br></strong><br></div><div>​🍕 <em>Open Networking &amp; Pizza<br></em><br></div><div>​Chai fades into pizza as the night opens up for connection, reflection, and follow-ups.<br><br></div><div>​<br><br></div><div>​<strong>💡 Why You Should Join<br></strong><br></div><div>​Because spaces like this are rare —<br><br></div><div>​where <strong>leaders share openly</strong>,<br><br></div><div>​where <strong>builders show early</strong>,<br><br></div><div>​and where <strong>community feels real</strong>.<br><br></div><div>​Come for the insights. Stay for the spark.<br><br></div><div><br></div><div>​<strong>🔗 Powered by eChai Ventures<br></strong><br></div><div>​This event is brought to you in collaboration with <strong>eChai Ventures</strong> — a global founder’s network supporting startup communities across 25+ cities. If you’re a founder, builder, or operator looking to plug into high-trust, low-ego ecosystems — you’re already in the right room.<br><br></div>
Jun 12, 2025 · Zoom Office, 99 S Almaden Blvd, San Jose, CA 95113, USA. · San Francisco
Koumal Kalantry Nadeem Jafri Kumar Manish Koumal, Nadeem + 5 went
thu
5
jun
eChai: The Agentic Night - Live AI Agent Building Workshop with ZAMS
<div><strong>​The Agentic Night: Live AI Agent Building Workshop<br></strong><br></div><div>​Zams is opening the doors to its brand-new HQ — and unveiling the future of AI agents.<br><br></div><div>​Join us for an exclusive, hands-on launch event to experience the <strong>Zams AI Agent Builder</strong> — a powerful, no-code tool that lets you go from concept to live agent in just minutes. Whether you’re an early-stage founder, product leader, or just AI-curious, this event is designed to get your hands dirty, ideas flowing, and agents live.<br><br></div><h1>​<strong>Who is this for?</strong></h1><div>​This event is for <strong>anyone excited about building with AI</strong> — no technical background required.<br><br></div><div>​Whether you’re technical or not, you’ll walk away having built something real.<br><br></div><div>​👩‍💻 <strong>Founders</strong> exploring AI use cases and automation opportunities<br><br></div><div>​🛠️ <strong>Builders &amp; Engineers</strong> eager to ship fast with no-code tools<br><br></div><div>​🎯 <strong>Product Leaders</strong> looking to prototype and integrate agents into workflows<br><br></div><div>​🎨 <strong>Designers, Creatives &amp; Strategists</strong> experimenting with AI-powered interfaces<br><br></div><div>​🧠 <strong>AI-Curious Explorers</strong> who just want to <em>try</em> building something hands-on<br><br></div><div>​<strong><em>Absolutely no coding or prior experience needed.<br></em></strong><br></div><div>​<em>If you’ve got curiosity and a few bold ideas — you’re in the right room.<br></em><br></div><div>​<br><br></div><h1>​<strong>Event Agenda:</strong></h1><div>​<strong>6:00 PM</strong> – Doors open &amp; welcome drinks (with off course Chai)<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 PM</strong> – Opening Keynote: <em>Inside Zams’ Vision for Agentic AI (Nirman Dave, CEO)<br></em><br></div><div>​<strong>6:45 PM</strong> – Product Demo: <em>Introducing the Zams AI Agent Builder (Product Leader)<br></em><br></div><div>​<strong>7:00 PM</strong> – Live Workshop: <em>Build Your Own AI Agent<br></em><br></div><div>​<strong>8:00 PM</strong> – Showcase &amp; Spotlight: <em>Top 3 AI Agents from the Night<br></em><br></div><div>​<strong>8:30 PM</strong> – Networking, Pizza, and behind-the-scenes tour of Zams HQ<br><br></div><h1>​<strong>🧠 About Zams:</strong></h1><div>​Zams is building the <strong>UI for AI</strong> — a powerful no-code platform where anyone can go from <strong>idea to intelligent agent</strong> in minutes.<br><br></div><div>​Whether you’re designing workflows, automating tasks, or experimenting with AI use cases, Zams gives you an intuitive interface to build agents the way you’d build slides or apps — with logic blocks, not lines of code.<br><br></div><div>​It’s where <strong>human creativity meets agentic intelligence</strong>, minus the technical friction.<br><br></div><h1>​<strong>👤&nbsp; Meet the Founder – Nirman Dave</strong></h1><div>​<strong>Nirman Dave</strong> is the CEO &amp; Co-founder of Zams — Forbes 30 Under 30, INK Fellow, and creator of a no-code AI platform used by 3,000+ businesses. He is a second-time founder, product visionary, and relentless builder.<br><br></div><div>​He previously co-founded <strong>Obviously AI</strong>, where he pioneered no-code machine learning. With Zams, he’s taking that mission further — democratizing AI agent creation and making it as simple as building a website.<br><br></div><div>​<em>Nirman believes the future of AI won’t be built by a few — it’ll be crafted by many. And that starts with giving everyone a UI to build with.<br></em><br></div><div>​<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🔗 Powered by eChai Ventures:<br></strong><br></div><div>​This event is brought to you in collaboration with <strong>eChai Ventures</strong> — a global founder’s network supporting startup communities across 25+ cities. If you’re a founder, builder, or operator looking to plug into high-trust, low-ego ecosystems — you’re already in the right room.<br><br></div>
Jun 5, 2025 · Zams AI, 55 Francisco St, San Francisco, CA 94133, USA. · San Francisco
wed
28
may
eChai: The AI Gold Rush - Behind The Bets SF
<div><strong>San Francisco is ground zero for the AI gold rush — but what’s fueling the next wave of AI innovation?<br></strong><br></div><div>​Join us for an intimate fireside chat with <strong>Mala Ramakrishnan</strong>, Founder &amp; Managing Partner at <strong>Progressive Ventures</strong>, where she breaks down what she’s seeing at the frontlines of the AI startup landscape: the patterns, the pitfalls, and the hard truths founders need to face if they want to build something enduring.<br><br></div><div>​With over 20 years of experience as a <strong>product, growth, and GTM operator</strong> — and now as an investor in the next wave of <strong>B2B AI companies</strong> — Mala brings a rare, dual-lens view of what it takes to succeed in a market moving faster than the hype cycle itself.<br><br></div><div>​This isn’t about trends. It’s about traction.<br><br></div><div>​You’ll walk away with sharp, grounded insights on:<br><br></div><ul><li>​What makes a B2B AI pitch compelling right now</li><li>​The blind spots most founders don’t realize they have</li><li>​How GTM and product expectations have shifted in the enterprise AI space</li><li>​What it actually takes to scale <em>beyond the buzz</em></li></ul><div>​Then, stay for a panel of <strong>growth-stage founders</strong> who are in it right now — navigating product pivots, fundraising chaos, AI integration, and the everyday realities of building while the market shifts beneath them.<br><br></div><div>​<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🗓 Agenda<br></strong><br></div><div>​​<strong>6:00 PM – Check-in + Welcome Chai<br></strong><br></div><div>​​Arrive, settle in, and grab a cup of chai while connecting with others as they arrive.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 PM</strong> —&nbsp; <strong>Investor Unplugged<br></strong><br></div><div>​A candid fireside chat with <strong>Mala Ramakrishnan</strong>, Founder &amp; Managing Partner at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mala-ramakrishnan/">Progressive Ventures</a>, where she shares what VCs are really looking for in AI founders — and what she’s betting on next. Q&amp;A with Mala.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:15 PM</strong> — <strong>Startup Sparks: Founder Spotlights<br></strong><br></div><div>​A showcase of bold ideas and live product stories from founders building what’s next in AI. From product demos to early traction — watch innovation unfold in real-time.<br><br></div><div>​***Will share more details on our Amazing Founders soon.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:45 PM – Open Networking<br></strong><br></div><div>​Will have Pizza and Chai. So, stick around, spark conversations, and maybe meet your next collaborator or investor.<br><br></div><div>​​<strong>8:00 PM – Closing &amp; Carry Forward<br></strong><br></div><div>​​We’ll wrap up officially, but feel free to stick around and continue connecting if the ideas are still flowing.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🧠 Who Should Attend<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​<strong>Founders</strong> building (or breaking into) the enterprise AI space</li><li>​<strong>Product &amp; growth leaders</strong> exploring where AI meets adoption</li><li>​<strong>Investors</strong> looking for early signals beyond the noise</li><li>​<strong>Operators</strong> curious about what traction looks like in 2025</li><li>​Anyone building in B2B AI who’s ready for real talk, not just hot takes</li></ul><div>​✨ <strong>This is the kind of room where momentum builds — and clarity cuts through.<br></strong><br></div><div>​Spots are limited. RSVP to join us.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Hosted by:</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/knbrahmbhatt">Khyati Brahmbhatt</a> | <strong>Powered by:</strong> <a href="https://echai.ventures/">eChai Ventures<br></a><br></div>
May 28, 2025 · Dr. Martin Luther King - Jr. Library, 150 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95112, United States. · San Francisco
Akash Zalavadiya Akash went
mon
12
may
eChai: ScaleUp Social - SF Edition
<div>An exclusive invite-only evening where global scale meets local connection.<br><br></div><div>​We’re hosting <strong>eChai’s ScaleUp Social</strong> — a handpicked gathering of growth-stage founders, investors, and operators shaping what’s next across India, the U.S., and beyond.<br><br></div><div>​This is <em>not</em> your average mixer. No panels. No pitches. Just real conversations with people who are building bold.<br><br></div><div>​Here’s a look at a few of the incredible folks joining us:<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Nirman Dave (Zams, ex-Obviously AI)</strong> — Forbes 30 Under 30, INK Fellow, and creator of a no-code AI platform used by 3,000+ businesses.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Mehul Shah (Ivy Growth)</strong> — prolific founder-investor with 150+ portfolio startups and the mind behind <em>21by72</em>, India’s largest Tier-2 startup summit.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Jash Gor (RCS)</strong> — 23-year-old Stanford-bound founder scaling a $2M ARR logistics SaaS from inside his family’s $100M+ public company.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Ankit Panchal (Macrotech Global)</strong> — AI-led hospitality tech innovator, AAHOA Board Member, and Young Hotelier of the Year.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Maulik Kotadiya (Valorx)</strong> — co-founder behind Salesforce-integrated solutions trusted by Google, NVIDIA, BP, and other Fortune 500 clients.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Snehaal Dhruv (PYC AI)</strong> —&nbsp; serial entrepreneur and GenAI + XR innovator, now leading immersive tech at PYC AI.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Rahul Kayala (100X.AI)</strong> — founder &amp; CEO of 100X.AI - building AI-native enterprise copilot.<br><br></div><div>​✨ <strong>Bhakti Dudhara (Aubergine Solutions)</strong> — co-founder of a global UX firm designing products for 15+ countries, from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 giants.<br><br></div><div>​We’ll also have a few Valley-based VCs, product leaders, and curious minds around the table.<br><br></div><div>​🍽️ <strong>Dinner is pay-for-what-you-order<br></strong><br></div><div>​👗 <strong>Dress code</strong>: Smart casual<br><br></div><div>​🚗 <strong>Parking</strong>: Public Parking, On the Street or valet available at Rooh<br><br></div><div>​We’ve been very intentional in curating this evening — every guest has been thoughtfully invited.<br><br></div><div>​If you’re on this list, it’s because we’d genuinely value your presence at the table.<br><br></div><div>​Come curious, leave inspired.<br><br></div><div>​Kindly RSVP to confirm your seat — we’ll take care of the rest.</div>
May 12, 2025 · Rooh, 473 University Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States. · San Francisco
tue
6
may
eChai: Startup Touchdown SF
<div>​<strong>Startup Touchdown SF</strong> is a weekly dinner series by <em>eChai Ventures</em>, built for visiting founders to plug into the Bay Area’s vibrant startup ecosystem — casually, over good food and great conversations.<br><br></div><div>​This week, with <strong>TiEcon</strong> bringing founders from across the world to Silicon Valley, we’re hosting a <strong>special Founders Dinner</strong> on <strong>May 6th in San Francisco</strong>.<br><br></div><div>​Whether you’re a founder new to the Bay, backed by a global accelerator, or a local looking to connect with ambitious builders — this dinner is for you.<br><br></div><div>​Just real conversations, meaningful connections, and practical insights from those who’ve walked the path — and those just starting out.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>What to expect:<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​A curated group of early-stage and growth-stage founders</li><li>​Bay Area locals who can help you navigate the scene</li><li>​Honest advice, introductions, and shared learnings</li><li>​A relaxed dinner format (everyone pays for what they order)</li></ul><div>​<strong>Who Should Join:<br></strong><br></div><ul><li>​<strong>Investors &amp; Angels</strong> looking for breakout early-stage opportunities</li><li>​<strong>Builders &amp; Engineers</strong> interested in upskilling, AI, or immersive learning</li><li>​<strong>Designers &amp; Product Thinkers</strong> curious about VR/AI-driven UX</li><li>​<strong>Operators &amp; Founders</strong> exploring global collaborations</li><li>​And anyone who wants to connect with <strong>visiting Indian founders during TiEcon week</strong></li></ul><div>​This is a casual dinner meetup — <strong>no stage, no panels</strong>. Just honest stories, bold ideas, and new friendships.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>You pay for what you order.</strong> No stage, no speeches — just honest conversations.<br><br></div><div>​Let’s gather, connect, and back what matters.</div>
May 6, 2025 · The Yellow Chilli by Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, 3555 Monroe St #80, Santa Clara, CA 95051, United States. · San Francisco
wed
30
apr
eChai: Startup Touchdown - SF
<div>​<strong>A New Series by eChai, Welcoming Founders &amp; Leaders to the Valley</strong>​<br><br></div><div>​This gathering is designed to help visiting founders and leaders plug into the ecosystem through real conversations, not just handshakes. It’s where community meets serendipity — over chai, conversation, and shared ambition.<br><br></div><div>​​We’re keeping it small, casual, and intentional. No panels. No slides. Just thoughtful conversations, curious minds, and real connections.<br><br></div><div>​​We’re kicking things off with someone who reflects the spirit of this series, This <strong>Edition’s First Guest: Jash Gor<br></strong><br></div><div>​​We’re excited to host Jash Gor, a 23-year-old investor and second-generation entrepreneur from India.<br><br></div><div>​​Jash leads New Business Initiatives at Riddhi Corporate Services Ltd (RCSL), a publicly listed logistics and BPO company working with India’s largest banks and government bodies. Through his family office, he’s evaluated 150+ startups, invested in 10+, and deployed $$M+ in the last 2 years — with a strong focus on logistics and B2B e-commerce.<br><br></div><div>​​He’s currently at Stanford University, taking courses on leadership and team dynamics in the AI era — and more importantly, he’s here to meet founders and builders from all backgrounds who are creating meaningful ventures.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>​Who Should Join?<br></strong><br></div><div>​​Founders building early-stage or growth-stage startups, operators or builders new to SF, ​Investors, advisors, or community builders who want to support visiting founders. Anyone curious to connect over thoughtful conversation<br><br></div><div>​<strong>​Spots are limited — RSVP early to save your seat.<br></strong><br></div><div>​​Let’s make SF a more welcoming place — one touchdown at a time.<br><br></div>
Apr 30, 2025 · Ettan, 518 Bryant St, Palo Alto, CA 94301, United States. · San Francisco
thu
24
apr
eChai: AI Founders Circle in Bay Area
<div><strong>The Room for Founders Building the Future with AI<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>Join us for an evening with founders, builders, and curious minds who are actively shaping the future with AI. This gathering isn’t about hype or headlines — it’s about sharing what we’re building, how we’re building it, and learning from each other through real conversations and experiences.<br></strong><br></div><div>​Whether you’re in the early stages of building with LLMs, launching your first AI-powered product, or iterating on infrastructure, this event is designed to bring together people who are solving real problems with AI and doing the work it takes to get there.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🎯 What You’ll Experience<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>Product Showcases from Real AI Founders</strong></div><div>​We’re inviting a handful of early-stage founders to demo their AI products. These aren’t polished keynote presentations — they’re in-the-weeds, “here’s what we shipped, what broke, and what worked” sessions. Each founder will walk us through their product, their decision-making process, and the challenges they’re navigating in real time.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Networking Designed for Builders</strong></div><div>​We’re creating space for intentional conversations — not just business cards and small talk. You’ll meet other founders, designers, PMs, engineers, and early adopters who are in different phases of their AI journey. Whether you’re looking to jam on ideas, explore a collaboration, or simply hear what others are working on, this is the space to do it.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Chai &amp; Conversations That Continue</strong></div><div>​Throughout the evening, enjoy Chai, and a cozy setup that encourages people to stick around, share stories, and have the kind of hallway conversations that often turn into something bigger.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>🕒 Agenda<br></strong><br></div><div>​<strong>6:00 PM – Check-in + Welcome Chai</strong></div><div>​Arrive, settle in, and grab a cup of chai while connecting with others as they arrive.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>6:30 PM – Product Showcases Begin</strong></div><div>​Founders take the stage for short, focused demos of what they’re building. Each demo includes a quick walkthrough, what tech they’re using, and what problems they’re solving.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>7:30 PM – Open Networking</strong></div><div>​Founders who demoed will be available for deeper discussions, and open networking begins. Grab Chai, meet people, and dive into conversations with others working on similar problems.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>8:00 PM – Closing &amp; Carry Forward</strong></div><div>​We’ll wrap up officially, but feel free to stick around and continue connecting if the ideas are still flowing.<br><br></div><div>​If you’re building something in AI and would like to demo or be part of the panel, feel free to reach out. We’re keeping the format curated and high-signal to ensure every moment adds value for the folks in the room.<br><br></div><div>​Registering through <strong>eChai</strong> helps you see who else is attending, so you can reconnect with familiar faces or discover new ones you’d like to meet.<br><br></div><div>​👉 <a href="https://echai.ventures/"><strong>eChai event link → eChai.Ventures</strong></a></div>
Apr 24, 2025 · 2727 Walsh Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA. · San Francisco
Koumal Kalantry Megha Verma Manoj Adwani Koumal, Megha + 3 went
tue
15
apr
San Francisco Startup Mixer
<div><strong>The journey continues in San Mateo — with more stories, connections, and builders around the table.<br></strong><br></div><div>​If you thrive on real conversations, unexpected collisions, and the kind of energy that only comes when passionate people gather in the same space, you don’t want to miss this.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>What:<br></strong><br></div><div>​eChai is hosting an evening gathering at <strong>Sama Cafe in San Mateo</strong> on <strong>Tuesday, April 15th, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM</strong> — designed for people who are building, thinking, exploring, or simply curious about the startup world.<br><br></div><div>​This isn’t your typical networking event. There’s no agenda, no presentations — just real conversations over coffee, surrounded by a community that values shared experiences and mutual growth.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>Why:<br></strong><br></div><div>​In a world full of noise and pitch decks, it’s refreshing to come together without expectations — to listen, exchange ideas, and build relationships that actually matter. These gatherings are about creating space for founders, operators, product folks, and investors to connect on a human level.<br><br></div><div>​You never know what can come out of a single conversation — a new perspective, a collaboration, or just the comfort of knowing someone else is in the same messy, beautiful phase of building.<br><br></div><div>​<strong>How it works:<br></strong><br></div><div>​Show up. Grab a coffee. Introduce yourself. Or don’t — let the conversations unfold naturally. The event is <strong>free to attend</strong>; you just pay for what you order at the cafe.</div><div>​Registering through <strong>eChai</strong> helps you see who else is attending, so you can reconnect with familiar faces or discover new ones you’d like to meet.<br><br></div><div>​👉 <a href="https://echai.ventures/"><strong>eChai event link → eChai.Ventures</strong></a></div><div><br>​<strong>Who it’s for:<br></strong><br></div><div>​Whether you’re a first-time founder, a repeat operator, an indie hacker, or someone simply exploring the space — you’ll find thoughtful, like-minded people here who are all navigating different parts of the same journey.<br><br></div><div>​If you’d like to join us or co-host a future gathering, feel free to DM me.</div><div>​<strong>Let’s keep building — together.</strong></div>
Apr 15, 2025 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 South B Street #500 San Mateo, CA 94401 United States. · San Francisco
fri
13
sep
Bay Area Startup Meetup
<div>eChai Ventures San Francisco will be hosting the small gathering of founders and startups folks on September 13th, Friday from 6 pm to 8 pm PDT.</div>
Sep 13, 2024 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 S B St #500, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States · San Francisco
mon
22
jul
Fundraising for Startups: Bay Area Edition
<div>Join us at eChai Ventures San Francisco for an engaging panel conversation on July 22nd, Monday, featuring investors and founders at Draper University, San Mateo.&nbsp;<br><br>Gain firsthand insights into the nuances of fundraising and hear success stories that can guide your startup journey.<br><br></div><div>Following the panel, founders will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas and receive valuable feedback from seasoned investors. This is a unique chance to refine your pitch and network with key players in the startup ecosystem.</div>
Jul 22, 2024 · Draper University, 44 E 3rd Ave, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States. · San Francisco
2 went
thu
16
nov
Bay Area Startup Meetup
eChai Ventures San Francisco will be hosting the small gathering of founders and startups folks on 29th September, Friday from 6 pm to 8 pm PDT.
Nov 16, 2023 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 S B St #500, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States · San Francisco
1 went
fri
29
sep
Bay Area Startup Meetup
eChai Ventures San Francisco will be hosting the small gathering of founders and startups folks on 29th September, Friday from 6 pm to 8 pm PDT.
Sep 29, 2023 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 S B St #500, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States · San Francisco
2 went
fri
15
sep
Bay Area Startup Meetup
eChai Ventures San Francisco will be hosting the small gathering of founders and startups folks on 15th September, Friday from 6 pm to 8 pm.
Sep 15, 2023 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 S B St #500, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States. · San Francisco
tue
5
sep
SaaS Founders Meetup in San Francisco
eChai Ventures San Francisco will be hosting the small curated gathering of founders and startups folks on 5th September, Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm. Small Group. Key Insights. Candid Conversations. SaaS Folks.
Sep 5, 2023 · Sama Coffee Shop, 800 S B St #500, San Mateo, CA 94401, United States. · San Francisco
1 went

Founders from India, building in San Francisco

The Indian-founded and Indian-origin companies in the San Francisco ecosystem. This cross-border bridge is what eChai is here for.

Confluent Data

Jay Kreps, Jun Rao & Neha Narkhede 🇮🇳

Founded 2014 to commercialize Apache Kafka (built by the founders at LinkedIn); the data-streaming platform. IPO'd 2021; IBM announced an ~$11B acquisition in Dec 2025 (completed Mar 2026). Co-founder Neha N...

Nutanix Cloud infra

Dheeraj Pandey, Mohit Aron & Ajeet Singh 🇮🇳

Founded 2009; pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and now a hybrid multicloud platform, positioned as a key VMware alternative after the Broadcom acquisition. Public since 2016. Largely Indian-ori...

Robinhood Fintech

Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013 in Menlo Park; commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs and crypto. Public (Nasdaq: HOOD) since 2021; joined the S&P 500 in September 2025 with a market cap around $98B mid-2025. Crypto ...

Rubrik Cybersecurity

Bipul Sinha, Arvind Jain, Soham Mazumdar & Arvind Nithrakashyap 🇮🇳

Founded 2014; cloud data-management and cyber-resilience / data-security platform (backup, recovery, ransomware protection). IPO'd on the NYSE in Apr 2024 at ~$5.6B, raising $752M. Predominantly Indian-origi...

Zscaler Cybersecurity

Jay Chaudhry 🇮🇳

Founded 2007; the zero-trust cloud-security / SASE leader (Zero Trust Exchange) that pioneered securing users directly to apps rather than via the network perimeter. Public since 2018. Founder-CEO Jay Chaudh...

Abnormal AI (Abnormal Security) Cybersecurity

Evan Reiser & Sanjay Jeyakumar 🇮🇳

Founded 2018; AI-native email/human-behavior security that models normal behavior to block socially-engineered attacks. Raised a $250M Series D in Aug 2024 at a $5.1B valuation; crossed $200M ARR with 100% Y...

Alchemy Web3

Nikil Viswanathan & Joe Lau (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013; leading Web3 developer infrastructure — node APIs, rollups-as-a-service, smart wallets, gasless transactions and DeFi primitives — often called the 'AWS of web3.' Decacorn valued at $10.2B (202...

Anysphere (Cursor) Devtools

Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark & Aman Sanger

Founded 2022; maker of Cursor, the AI-native code editor that became the fastest-growing developer tool ever — from $100M ARR (Jan 2025) to ~$4B ARR (Jun 2026). Series D (Nov 2025) valued it at $29.3B with N...

Cohesity Data

Mohit Aron 🇮🇳

Founded 2013; AI-powered data security and management (backup, recovery, threat detection). Merged with Veritas' data-protection business in Dec 2024, creating a ~$7B, 12,000+ customer leader in data protect...

Mercury Fintech

Immad Akhund (Indian/Pakistani-origin founder)

Founded 2017; digital banking for startups and SMBs, serving 300,000+ companies. Raised a $300M Series C at $3.5B (March 2025), then $200M Series D at a $5.2B valuation (2026, +49% in 14 months, led by TCV)....

Postman Devtools

Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti & Abhijit Kane 🇮🇳

Founded 2012 in Bangalore as a side project; the de-facto API development and collaboration platform, used by 30M+ developers. Moved HQ to SF in 2017 and opened a new SF HQ in 2025; last valued at $5.6B (202...

Solana Labs Web3

Anatoly Yakovenko & Raj Gokal (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2018 in SF; core developer of the Solana Layer-1 blockchain, a high-throughput proof-of-stake chain (mainnet 2020) built on the novel Proof-of-History mechanism. ~250 employees across six continents;...

Together AI Cloud infra

Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Ré & Percy Liang 🇮🇳

Founded 2022; a GPU/AI-cloud ('neocloud') for training and serving open-source models at scale. Raised $305M Series B (Feb 2025, $3.3B) then $800M Series C (Jul 2026) leaping to an $8.3B valuation. Co-founde...

Sardine Fintech

Soups Ranjan (Indian-origin founder)

AI risk platform for fraud prevention, compliance (AML/KYC) and credit underwriting using device intelligence and behavioral biometrics. Raised a $70M Series C in Feb 2025 (led by Activant; a16z, GV, Experia...

YugabyteDB Data

Kannan Muthukkaruppan, Karthik Ranganathan & Mikhail Bautin 🇮🇳

Founded 2016 by ex-Facebook/Nutanix engineers; open-source distributed SQL database (Postgres-compatible) for cloud-native, globally-scaled apps. A leading distributed-database challenger to CockroachDB and ...

Baseten AI-infra

AI model inference infrastructure

Founded 2019. Infrastructure for deploying and serving AI/ML models in production at scale (used by AI-native companies incl. Lovable). Raised a $150M Series D at a $2.2B valuation ($280M+ total) from Greylo...

Cartesia Generative AI

Karan Goel, Albert Gu, Arjun Desai, Brandon Yang & Chris Ré

Founded 2023 by Stanford researchers behind the state-space (SSM/Mamba) architecture; builds ultra-low-latency real-time voice/audio foundation models (Sonic). Backed by Index, Lightspeed and General Catalys...

Decagon customer-support-AI

AI customer support agents

Founded 2023 by Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas (ex-Palantir, Citadel). Enterprise conversational-AI agents for customer support. Raised a $131M Series C (June 2025, $1.5B) co-led by Accel and a16z, then a ...

Distyl AI enterprise-AI

enterprise AI-native workflow automation

Founded 2022. Builds and deploys AI-native workflows into large-enterprise operations (partnered closely with OpenAI). Raised a $175M Series B at a $1.8B valuation ($200M+ total) from Khosla Ventures and Lig...

Glean enterprise-search

enterprise AI search & work assistant

Founded 2019 by Arvind Jain (ex-Google, ex-Rubrik co-founder) and team. Enterprise AI search and agent platform that indexes a company's apps to answer work questions and run agents. One of the Bay Area's fa...

Luma AI Generative AI

Amit Jain, Alex Yu & Alberto Taiuti

Founded 2021; maker of the Dream Machine text/image-to-video model and Ray-series generative video. Reached a ~$4B valuation as of late 2025, competing with Sora and Runway in generative video. Co-founder/CE...

Mercor HR-tech

AI hiring & expert data-labeling marketplace

Founded 2023 by Thiel Fellows Brendan Foody, Surya Midha and Adarsh Hiremath (Bay Area high-school debate teammates). Started as AI-driven recruiting; pivoted to sourcing specialized human experts to train f...

Perplexity AI Generative AI

Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho & Andy Konwinski

Founded 2022; the AI-native answer engine challenging Google search. Valuation climbed from $14B (June 2025) to ~$20B (Sept 2025) and ~$21B by early 2026. Chennai-born CEO Aravind Srinivas was named India's ...

Diaspora & cross-border networks

The India-linked founder networks eChai sits alongside in San Francisco.

TiE Silicon Valley Santa Clara

The founding chapter of TiE (1992) and the anchor of the Indian-origin founder network in the Valley. Runs TiEcon, one of the largest entrepreneurship conferences in the world.

Neythri Bay Area

A global community of South Asian women professionals and founders, with a Bay Area core and its own early-stage fund, Neythri Futures Fund.

Indiaspora Bay Area

A network of influential Indian-origin leaders across business, tech and philanthropy, connecting the diaspora to India and to each other.

IIT / BITS / ISB alumni networks Bay Area

The Bay Area alumni chapters of India's engineering and business schools remain among the densest founder and hiring networks in the ecosystem.

People in the San Francisco eChai community

Some of the founders who've been to eChai meetups in San Francisco over the years. Always more to add.

Megha Verma
Megha Verma
Founder · Growth Iris
Kumar Manish
Kumar Manish
Founder · Urbanvoicesin
Harsha Bhurani
Harsha Bhurani
Founder · Hummingbird Talent ( An eChai Company )
Manoj Adwani
Manoj Adwani
Founder · narad.io
Nadeem Jafri
Nadeem Jafri
Founder · Hearty Mart
Koumal Kalantry
Koumal Kalantry
Founder CEO · Bignano Ventures Private Limited
Akash Zalavadiya
Akash Zalavadiya
Co-Founder · Laugh Logic Labs
Marmik Bhatt

Startups building in San Francisco

Find a company or founder, or filter by what they build.

All 194 AI 27 Generative AI 8 AI agents 10 SaaS & devtools 44 Fintech 21 Crypto & web3 14 Biotech 15 Healthtech 12 Deeptech & space 27 Climate tech 21 Consumer 14 Ecommerce & marketplaces 8 Mobility 8 Cybersecurity 12 Legaltech 4 Gaming 2 Proptech 1 Edtech 1

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Affirm Fintech

Max Levchin

Founded 2012 by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin; buy-now-pay-later installment lending integrated at checkout with major merchants (Amazon, Shopify, Apple Pay). Public on Nasdaq (AFRM) since 2021. As of 2025 r...

Airbnb Consumer brands

Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia & Nathan Blecharczyk

Founded 2008 renting air mattresses in a SF loft; became the world's largest home-sharing and short-stay travel marketplace. IPO'd December 2020 (NASDAQ: ABNB) and has been consistently profitable since 2022...

Archer Aviation Mobility

Adam Goldstein & Brett Adcock

Founded 2018, HQ Santa Clara with manufacturing in San Jose (South Bay); building the Midnight eVTOL air taxi for urban 'air mobility.' Public via SPAC 2021 (NYSE: ACHR); named official air-taxi provider of ...

BioAge Labs Biotech

Kristen Fortney & Eric Morgen

Longevity biotech founded 2015; mines human aging-cohort data with AI/ML to discover targets for metabolic and aging-related diseases, including obesity/metabolic drugs. Went public on Nasdaq (BIOA) in Septe...

BitGo Web3

Mike Belshe & Ben Davenport

Founded 2013; pioneered multi-signature institutional crypto custody with a decade-long unblemished security record; ~4,600+ institutional clients and ~$100B assets under custody. IPO'd January 2026 (first p...

Block (Square / Cash App) Fintech

Jack Dorsey & Jim McKelvey

Founded 2009 as Square; HQ in Oakland. Operates Square merchant payments, Cash App (57M+ active users) and TIDAL, with a deep Bitcoin strategy — held ~8,997 BTC corporate treasury (Mar 2026) and rolled out m...

Ceribell Healthtech

Jane Chao & Xingjuan Chao

Neurotech/medtech company (founded 2014) making a rapid, portable EEG headband plus AI ('Clarity') that detects seizures and status epilepticus at the bedside. Completed an upsized ~$207M Nasdaq IPO (CBLL) i...

ChargePoint Climate tech

Richard Lowenthal, Dave Baxter, Harjinder Bhade & Praveen Mandal

Founded 2007 (as Coulomb Technologies); operates one of the world's largest EV-charging networks (NYSE: CHPT), selling AC/DC charging hardware plus cloud software to businesses, fleets and drivers across Nor...

Chime Fintech

Chris Britt & Ryan King

Founded 2012 in SF; consumer neobank offering fee-free banking, early direct deposit and credit-builder products aimed at everyday and underserved Americans. IPO'd on Nasdaq (CHYM) June 12, 2025, raising ~$8...

Cloudflare Cloud infra

Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn & Lee Holloway

Founded 2009; global CDN, edge network, DDoS/security and developer platform (Workers). Public since 2019; a foundational internet-infrastructure and security company and a major hub for edge-compute develop...

Coinbase Web3

Brian Armstrong & Fred Ehrsam

Founded 2012 in SF; the largest U.S. crypto exchange and custodian, public on Nasdaq (COIN) since 2021 and added to the S&P 500 in 2025. Went 'remote-first' with no HQ in 2021 (paid ~$25M to exit its SF leas...

Confluent Data

Jay Kreps, Jun Rao & Neha Narkhede 🇮🇳

Founded 2014 to commercialize Apache Kafka (built by the founders at LinkedIn); the data-streaming platform. IPO'd 2021; IBM announced an ~$11B acquisition in Dec 2025 (completed Mar 2026). Co-founder Neha N...

CrowdStrike Cybersecurity

George Kurtz & Dmitri Alperovitch

Founded 2011; cloud-native endpoint protection and the Falcon XDR/threat-intel platform. Public since 2019 and one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity companies (~$100B+ market cap). Recovered strongly af...

CytomX Therapeutics Biotech

Nancy Stagliano, Patrick Daugherty

Founded 2008; pioneers 'Probody' conditionally-activated masked antibodies and ADCs that localize activity to the tumor microenvironment to widen the therapeutic window. Announced a strategic ADC collaborati...

DoorDash Ecommerce

Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang & Evan Moore

Founded 2013 at Stanford as Palo Alto Delivery; the #1 US on-demand food-delivery marketplace, later adding grocery, retail and DashMart. IPO'd December 2020 (NASDAQ: DASH); acquired Wolt (2022) and SevenRoo...

Enovix Climate tech

Harrold Rust, Ashok Lahiri & Murali Ramasubramanian

Founded 2007; public (NASDAQ: ENVX) maker of 100% silicon-anode lithium-ion batteries. Its AI-1 smartphone cell was independently validated in 2025 as the highest energy density reported for a smartphone bat...

Eventbrite Consumer brands

Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz & Renaud Visage

Founded 2006; a self-service events ticketing and discovery marketplace used by millions of creators and organizers. IPO'd September 2018 (NYSE: EB); rebuilt its consumer discovery app and creator monetizati...

Figma SaaS

Dylan Field & Evan Wallace

Founded 2012; browser-based collaborative design and product-development platform. After Adobe's $20B acquisition was abandoned (2023), Figma IPO'd on the NYSE on 31 Jul 2025 (priced $33, opened $85, +250% f...

Freshworks SaaS

Girish Mathrubootham & Shan Krishnasamy 🇮🇳

Founded 2010 in Chennai (as Freshdesk); customer-service, IT and CRM SaaS suite with strong AI (Freddy) adoption. HQ moved to San Mateo in 2018; NASDAQ IPO 2021. Founder Girish Mathrubootham — a defining fig...

Genentech Biotech

Robert Swanson & Herbert Boyer

Founded 1976, the world's first biotechnology company and the birthplace of the modern industry, spun out of UCSF recombinant-DNA research. Its 40+ building South SF campus anchors the region's biotech clust...

GRAIL Healthtech

Jeff Huber (founding CEO)

Founded 2016 (spun out of Illumina); maker of the Galleri multi-cancer early-detection (MCED) blood test that screens for signals across 50+ cancers. Divested from Illumina and now an independent public comp...

HashiCorp Devtools

Mitchell Hashimoto & Armon Dadgar

Founded 2012; creators of Terraform, Vault, Consul and Nomad — the open-source stack for cloud infrastructure provisioning and secrets management. IPO'd 2021; acquired by IBM for $6.4B (completed Feb 2025). ...

Hims & Hers Healthtech

Andrew Dudum, Hilary Coles, Jack Abraham

Founded 2017; a direct-to-consumer digital-health platform connecting patients to licensed providers and personalized treatments across sexual health, weight loss, dermatology and mental health. Publicly tra...

IDEAYA Biosciences Biotech

Yujiro Hata

Oncology biotech (South SF + La Jolla) focused on precision-medicine synthetic-lethality drugs, using molecular diagnostics to match patients to targeted therapies. Publicly traded (Nasdaq: IDYA); lead PARG ...

Instacart (Maplebear) Ecommerce

Apoorva Mehta, Max Mullen & Brandon Leonardo

Founded 2012; the leading US grocery-delivery and pickup marketplace, pivoting toward a retail-enablement and advertising platform. IPO'd September 2023 (NASDAQ: CART), one of the highest-profile consumer li...

Intuitive Surgical Healthtech

Frederic Moll, Robert Younge, John Freund

Founded 1995; the pioneer and global leader of robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery via the da Vinci Surgical System (and Ion for lung biopsy). Publicly traded (Nasdaq: ISRG); one of the largest pure-...

Lime Mobility

Toby Sun & Brad Bao

Founded 2017; the world's largest shared electric-scooter and e-bike micromobility operator across 250+ cities. IPO'd on NASDAQ (LIME) on July 1, 2026 at ~$1.66B valuation after reporting $887M in 2025 reven...

Lyft Mobility

Logan Green & John Zimmer

Founded 2012 (spun out of Zimride); the #2 US ride-hailing network, now adding bikeshare, autonomous partnerships and media. IPO'd March 2019 (NASDAQ: LYFT) just ahead of Uber and posted its first profitable...

Marqeta Fintech

Jason Gardner

Founded 2009; pioneered the modern open-API card-issuing and payment-processing platform used by fintechs and enterprises. Public on Nasdaq (MQ) since June 2021. Founder Jason Gardner stepped back from CEO i...

Nextdoor Consumer brands

Nirav Tolia, Prakash Janakiraman, Sarah Leary & David Wiesen

Founded 2008 (launched 2011); the neighborhood-based social network for local recommendations, safety and community. Went public via SPAC November 2021 (NYSE: KIND); founder Nirav Tolia returned as CEO in 20...

Nutanix Cloud infra

Dheeraj Pandey, Mohit Aron & Ajeet Singh 🇮🇳

Founded 2009; pioneer of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and now a hybrid multicloud platform, positioned as a key VMware alternative after the Broadcom acquisition. Public since 2016. Largely Indian-ori...

Okta Cybersecurity

Todd McKinnon & Frederic Kerrest

Founded 2009; the leading independent identity and access management (IAM/IdP) platform, public since 2017. Acquired Auth0 (2021) to own developer identity as well. Core infrastructure for enterprise SSO and...

Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity

Nir Zuk

Founded 2005; the largest standalone cybersecurity company by revenue, spanning next-gen firewalls, Prisma cloud security and Cortex SecOps. Public since 2012; a serial acquirer driving the 'platformization'...

Pinterest Consumer brands

Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp & Paul Sciarra

Founded 2010; a visual-discovery and shopping platform for ideas and inspiration boards. IPO'd April 2019 (NYSE: PINS) and surpassed 550M+ monthly active users by 2025, leaning into AI-driven visual search a...

Planet Labs Spacetech

Will Marshall, Robbie Schingler, Chris Boshuizen

Founded 2010, Planet operates the largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites, delivering near-daily global imagery and geospatial analytics to commercial, government and defense customers. Public on NYSE (PL)...

Poshmark Ecommerce

Manish Chandra, Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala & Chetan Pungaliya

Founded 2011 in Redwood City (South Bay); a social-commerce marketplace for reselling fashion, blending shopping with community feeds and live shows. IPO'd January 2021 (NASDAQ: POSH), then acquired by South...

QuantumScape Climate tech

Jagdeep Singh, Tim Holme & Fritz Prinz

Founded 2010, spun out of Stanford; develops solid-state lithium-metal EV batteries and is public (NYSE: QS). In Aug 2025 it began construction of a 1 GWh 'Cobra' pilot line after unveiling an 844 Wh/L silic...

Reddit Consumer brands

Steve Huffman & Alexis Ohanian

Founded 2005; 'the front page of the internet,' a network of interest-based community forums. IPO'd March 2024 (NYSE: RDDT) in a landmark social-media listing, monetizing data-licensing deals with AI firms a...

Rigetti Computing Deeptech

Chad Rigetti (founder); Subodh Kulkarni (CEO)

Founded 2013, Rigetti builds superconducting quantum computers and operates them via its cloud (QCS). Public on Nasdaq (RGTI), it held ~$600M in cash/investments as of Nov 2025, took a $35M strategic investm...

Robinhood Fintech

Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013 in Menlo Park; commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs and crypto. Public (Nasdaq: HOOD) since 2021; joined the S&P 500 in September 2025 with a market cap around $98B mid-2025. Crypto ...

Roblox Gaming

David Baszucki & Erik Cassel

Founded 2004 (launched 2006) in San Mateo (South Bay); a user-generated gaming and immersive-experience platform driving the consumer 'metaverse.' Direct-listed March 2021 (NYSE: RBLX) and surpassed 85M+ dai...

Rubrik Cybersecurity

Bipul Sinha, Arvind Jain, Soham Mazumdar & Arvind Nithrakashyap 🇮🇳

Founded 2014; cloud data-management and cyber-resilience / data-security platform (backup, recovery, ransomware protection). IPO'd on the NYSE in Apr 2024 at ~$5.6B, raising $752M. Predominantly Indian-origi...

Salesforce SaaS

Marc Benioff & Parker Harris

Founded 1999; the company that defined cloud CRM and 'no software' SaaS. Anchor of the SF enterprise-software ecosystem and its largest employer; ~$38B annual revenue, aggressively repositioned around the Ag...

SentinelOne Cybersecurity

Tomer Weingarten & Almog Cohen

Founded 2013; AI-driven autonomous endpoint/XDR security platform (Singularity) and a direct CrowdStrike competitor. IPO'd 2021 in what was then the largest cybersecurity IPO. Expanding into AI-SIEM and clou...

Snowflake Data

Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes & Marcin Zukowski

Founded 2012; the cloud data-warehouse pioneer, one of the largest software IPOs ever (2020). Became a 'distributed' company with an executive office in Bozeman MT in 2021 but relocated its HQ back to Califo...

Sunrun Climate tech

Lynn Jurich, Ed Fenster & Nat Kreamer

Founded 2007; the largest US residential solar and home-battery company (NASDAQ: RUN), which pioneered the solar-as-a-service leasing model. Increasingly bundles rooftop solar with storage into virtual-power...

Sutro Biopharma Biotech

Trevor Hallam & team (Stanford/UC science)

Clinical-stage biotech using its cell-free protein-synthesis platform (XpressCF) to design next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecifics, notably in ovarian cancer. Publicly traded (Nasdaq:...

The RealReal Ecommerce

Julie Wainwright

Founded 2011; the leading authenticated luxury-consignment resale marketplace. IPO'd June 2019 (NASDAQ: REAL); reached its first quarters of adjusted-EBITDA and free-cash-flow positivity in 2024 under a turn...

ThredUp Ecommerce

James Reinhart, Chris Homer & Oliver Lubin

Founded 2009 in Oakland (East Bay); one of the largest online resale marketplaces for secondhand apparel, plus a resale-as-a-service platform for brands. IPO'd March 2021 (NASDAQ: TDUP) and returned to reven...

Twilio Devtools

Jeff Lawson, Evan Cooke & John Wolthuis

Founded 2008; the programmable communications API company (SMS, voice, email via SendGrid, and customer-data/Segment). Public since 2016; the canonical API-first / developer-first infrastructure business and...

Twist Bioscience Biotech

Emily Leproust, Bill Peck, Bill Banyai

Founded 2013; a synthetic-biology leader using a proprietary silicon-based platform to manufacture synthetic DNA at scale for drug discovery, diagnostics, agriculture and DNA data storage. Publicly traded (N...

Uber Mobility

Travis Kalanick & Garrett Camp

Founded 2009 as UberCab; the ride-hail pioneer that seeded the global gig-mobility economy and now spans rides, Uber Eats delivery, and freight. IPO'd on NYSE (UBER) in May 2019 and turned its first full-yea...

Voltus Climate tech

Gregg Dixon & Dana Guernsey

Founded 2016; a distributed-energy-resource (virtual power plant) platform that aggregates commercial and industrial demand-flexibility to sell into wholesale power markets. Went public via SPAC (Broadscale)...

Yelp Consumer brands

Jeremy Stoppelman & Russel Simmons

Founded 2004 by two early PayPal employees; the dominant US local-business reviews and discovery platform. IPO'd March 2012 (NYSE: YELP) and has reoriented around AI-assisted search and services lead-gen.

Zoox Mobility

Jesse Levinson & Tim Kentley-Klay

Founded 2014 in Foster City (South Bay); building a purpose-built, bidirectional autonomous robotaxi with no steering wheel. Acquired by Amazon in 2020 for ~$1.2B; began public robotaxi rides in Las Vegas in...

Zscaler Cybersecurity

Jay Chaudhry 🇮🇳

Founded 2007; the zero-trust cloud-security / SASE leader (Zero Trust Exchange) that pioneered securing users directly to apps rather than via the network perimeter. Public since 2018. Founder-CEO Jay Chaudh...

Abnormal AI (Abnormal Security) Cybersecurity

Evan Reiser & Sanjay Jeyakumar 🇮🇳

Founded 2018; AI-native email/human-behavior security that models normal behavior to block socially-engineered attacks. Raised a $250M Series D in Aug 2024 at a $5.1B valuation; crossed $200M ARR with 100% Y...

Airtable SaaS

Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad & Emmett Nicholas

Founded 2012; no-code/low-code database-spreadsheet hybrid for building custom business apps. Peaked at an $11B valuation; repositioned in 2024–2026 as an AI-native app-building platform (Airtable AI / Omni)...

Alchemy Web3

Nikil Viswanathan & Joe Lau (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013; leading Web3 developer infrastructure — node APIs, rollups-as-a-service, smart wallets, gasless transactions and DeFi primitives — often called the 'AWS of web3.' Decacorn valued at $10.2B (202...

Anchorage Digital Web3

Diogo Mónica & Nathan McCauley

Founded 2017; the first U.S. federally chartered crypto bank (OCC national trust charter), providing institutional custody, staking, trading and settlement. Valued at ~$4.2B (backers include a16z, GIC, Goldm...

Anysphere (Cursor) Devtools

Michael Truell, Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark & Aman Sanger

Founded 2022; maker of Cursor, the AI-native code editor that became the fastest-growing developer tool ever — from $100M ARR (Jan 2025) to ~$4B ARR (Jun 2026). Series D (Nov 2025) valued it at $29.3B with N...

Aptos Labs Web3

Mo Shaikh & Avery Ching (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2021 by former Meta Diem/Libra engineers; develops the Aptos Layer-1 blockchain (Move language, high throughput). Raised ~$350M (a16z, Jump, FTX Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures). Direct...

Astranis Spacetech

John Gedmark, Ryan McLinko

Founded 2015, Astranis builds small, low-cost geostationary (MicroGEO) communications satellites to deliver broadband to underserved regions. It raised a $187M Series C in 2025 (Khosla Ventures, Founders Fun...

Bolt Fintech

Ryan Breslow & Eric Feldman

Founded 2014; one-click checkout and shopper-network platform for online retailers. Peaked at an $11B valuation (2021), crashed to ~$300M (2024); founder Ryan Breslow returned as CEO and in 2026 was raising ...

Brex Fintech

Henrique Dubugras & Pedro Franceschi

Founded 2017 by Brazilian founders; corporate cards, spend management and business banking for startups and enterprises. Peaked at a $12.3B valuation (2022); became operating-cash-flow positive in 2025. In A...

Cerebras Systems Deeptech

Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie

Founded 2015, Cerebras makes the Wafer-Scale Engine — the largest AI chip ever built — and sells AI training/inference systems and cloud. It closed a ~$1.1B round (Sept 2025) at a ~$23B valuation, reported ~...

Character.AI Consumer brands

Noam Shazeer & Daniel De Freitas

Founded 2021 in Menlo Park (South Bay); a consumer platform for chatting with customizable AI companion characters, a breakout hit with Gen Z. Valued at ~$1B (2023); in a $2.7B August 2024 deal Google licens...

Cohesity Data

Mohit Aron 🇮🇳

Founded 2013; AI-powered data security and management (backup, recovery, threat detection). Merged with Veritas' data-protection business in Dec 2024, creating a ~$7B, 12,000+ customer leader in data protect...

Color Health Healthtech

Othman Laraki, Elad Gil, Nish Bhat, Taylor Sittler

Founded 2015 as Color Genomics; a population-health platform spanning genetic testing, cancer risk screening and virtual care, plus an AI 'Copilot' for oncology built with OpenAI (2024). Scaled national COVI...

d-Matrix Deeptech

Sid Sheth, Sudeep Bhoja

Founded 2019, d-Matrix builds digital in-memory-compute (DIMC) chips (Corsair platform) targeting cost- and energy-efficient generative-AI inference. It raised $275M (Nov 2025) at a ~$2B valuation, and its C...

Databricks Data

Ali Ghodsi, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica, Reynold Xin & Berkeley AMPLab co-founders

Founded 2013 out of UC Berkeley (creators of Apache Spark); the leading data + AI 'lakehouse' platform. Closed a >$4B Series L in Dec 2025 at a $134B valuation and surpassed a $5.4B revenue run-rate (up 65% ...

Discord Gaming

Jason Citron & Stanislav Vishnevskiy

Founded 2015; a voice-, video- and text-chat platform for communities that began in gaming and expanded across interest groups. Last valued at ~$14.7B; filed confidentially for an IPO in early 2026, with Hum...

Druva Data

Jaspreet Singh & Milind Borate 🇮🇳

Founded 2008 in Pune, later HQ'd in Santa Clara; the leading SaaS platform for data resiliency / cloud backup and cyber recovery, delivered fully as-a-service on AWS. A unicorn (~$2B); one of the earliest In...

Etched Deeptech

Gavin Uberti, Chris Zhu, Robert Wachen

Founded 2022, Etched builds Sohu — a transformer-specialized ASIC that hard-wires the transformer architecture into silicon for dramatically faster/cheaper inference. It reportedly secured ~$500M in early 20...

Faire Ecommerce

Max Rhodes, Marcelo Cortes, Daniele Perito & Jeffrey Kolovson

Founded 2017; a B2B wholesale marketplace connecting 100,000+ independent retailers with 20,000+ makers and brands. Reached a peak $12.6B valuation; a late-2025 tender valued it near $5.2B as it scaled ARR p...

Figure AI Deeptech

Brett Adcock

Founded 2022, Figure is the most-funded pure-play humanoid robotics company (~$1.9B raised). Its Figure 03 humanoid, launched October 2025 and redesigned for high-volume manufacturing and home use, was named...

Fireworks AI Cloud infra

Lin Qiao & Dmytro Dzhulgakov

Founded 2022 by ex-Meta PyTorch engineers; a fast, cost-optimized generative-AI inference platform for enterprises. Raised $250M Series C in Oct 2025 at a $4B valuation and was in talks in 2026 at a reported...

Freenome Healthtech

Gabriel Otte, Charlie Roberts, Riley Ennis

Founded 2014; a multiomics liquid-biopsy company using machine learning on blood-based genomic, protein and methylation signals for early cancer detection (lead: colorectal cancer screening). Raised $254M in...

Groq Deeptech

Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman

Founded 2016 by an ex-Google TPU engineer, Groq builds LPU inference chips optimized for low-latency LLM serving via GroqCloud. After raising at a ~$6.9B valuation in 2025, it became the landmark AI-chip dea...

Harness Devtools

Jyoti Bansal & Rishikesh Tirumala 🇮🇳

Founded 2017; AI-native software-delivery / DevOps platform (CI/CD, feature flags, cloud-cost, and 'everything after code'). Raised a $240M Series E in Dec 2025 (Goldman-led) at a $5.5B valuation with $250M+...

Included Health Healthtech

Owen Tripp (merger of Grand Rounds + Doctor On Demand)

Formed 2021 via the Grand Rounds/Doctor On Demand merger (later + Included Health); an integrated virtual-care and care-navigation platform for employers and health plans spanning primary care, behavioral he...

insitro Biotech

Daphne Koller

Founded 2018 by Coursera/Stanford ML pioneer Daphne Koller. A TechBio drug-discovery platform integrating in-vitro cellular data with human clinical data via machine learning to find targets and intervention...

Lyten Climate tech

Dan Cook, Bryce Tennant & Michael Stowell

Founded 2015; develops lithium-sulfur batteries and 3D-graphene 'supermaterials.' In July 2025 it acquired Europe's largest battery-energy-storage manufacturing operation from bankrupt Northvolt, plus a Pola...

Mammoth Biosciences Biotech

Jennifer Doudna, Trevor Martin, Janice Chen, Lucas Harrington

Co-founded 2017 by CRISPR Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna; develops ultra-small CRISPR systems (Cas14/Casɸ) for in-vivo therapeutics and CRISPR-based diagnostics. Reached unicorn status in 2021 ($195M raise)....

Mercury Fintech

Immad Akhund (Indian/Pakistani-origin founder)

Founded 2017; digital banking for startups and SMBs, serving 300,000+ companies. Raised a $300M Series C at $3.5B (March 2025), then $200M Series D at a $5.2B valuation (2026, +49% in 14 months, led by TCV)....

Mysten Labs (Sui) Web3

Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, Kostas Chalkias & Adeniyi Abiodun

Founded 2021 by ex-Meta Novi/Diem engineers; builds the Sui Layer-1 blockchain and Move-based infrastructure for Web3 apps. Reached a $2B valuation (2022) having raised ~$336M (FTX Ventures, a16z, Jump). [FL...

Neuralink Healthtech

Elon Musk & founding team

Founded 2016; developing implantable brain-computer interfaces (the N1 implant + R1 surgical robot) to restore movement/communication, with first human implants in 2024. Maintains a large Fremont operation a...

Nuro Deeptech

Dave Ferguson, Jiajun Zhu

Founded 2016 by ex-Waymo engineers, Nuro builds autonomous driving systems, having shifted from its own delivery pods to licensing its 'Nuro Driver' L4 stack. Its 2025 Series E raised ~$203M (Uber, Nvidia) a...

Pacific Fusion Climate tech

Will Regan & Eric Lander

Founded 2023; pursuing inertial-confinement fusion driven by a pulser-based electromagnetic 'pulsed magnetic' driver rather than lasers. Stunned the sector with a ~$900M Series A in 2024 (General Catalyst, B...

Patreon Consumer brands

Jack Conte & Sam Yam

Founded 2013; the leading membership platform letting creators earn recurring income directly from fans. Valued at ~$4B (2021); expanded into gifts, commerce and a native app, positioning as a core pillar of...

Perfect Day Climate tech

Ryan Pandya & Perumal Gandhi

Founded 2014; pioneer of precision-fermentation animal-free dairy proteins (whey) that a third-party LCA found cut greenhouse-gas emissions up to 97% and blue-water use up to 99% vs conventional dairy. Now r...

Perplexity Consumer brands

Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho & Andy Konwinski

Founded 2022; a consumer AI 'answer engine' challenging traditional search, now with an agentic Comet browser and shopping features. Valuation rocketed from $121M (April 2023) to ~$20B by September 2025, one...

Phantom Web3

Brandon Millman, Francesco Agosti & Chris Kalani

Founded 2021; the dominant multichain self-custody crypto wallet (Solana-first, now multichain), with ~15M+ active users and ~$20B annual trade volume. Raised a $150M Series C at a $3B valuation (January 202...

Physical Intelligence Deeptech

Karol Hausman, Sergey Levine, Lachy Groom

Founded 2024, Physical Intelligence builds general-purpose foundation models (pi-zero) that let a single AI transfer manipulation skills across different robot bodies — folding laundry, assembling electronic...

Pilot Fintech

Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar & Jeff Arnold

Founded 2017; tech-enabled bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for startups and SMBs. Backed by Sequoia, Index and Bezos Expeditions; hit a $1.2B valuation in 2021. Serves thousands of venture-backed companies.

Plaid Fintech

Zach Perret & William Hockey

Founded 2013; the connective 'plumbing' of fintech — APIs linking consumer bank accounts to apps, plus identity, anti-fraud, credit and payments. Peaked at $13.4B (2021); a 2026 tender offer set the valuatio...

Postman Devtools

Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti & Abhijit Kane 🇮🇳

Founded 2012 in Bangalore as a side project; the de-facto API development and collaboration platform, used by 30M+ developers. Moved HQ to SF in 2017 and opened a new SF HQ in 2025; last valued at $5.6B (202...

PsiQuantum Deeptech

Jeremy O'Brien, Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson, Pete Shadbolt

Founded 2016, PsiQuantum is building a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer using photonic qubits fabricated on standard semiconductor processes (with GlobalFoundries). It closed a ~$1B round (Sept 2...

Retool Devtools

David Hsu

Founded 2017 (YC); low-code platform for building internal business tools and apps fast, now extending into AI agents. Valued ~$3.2B with ~$138M+ revenue; a leader in the internal-tooling / developer-product...

Ripple Web3

Chris Larsen & Jed McCaleb

Founded 2012; enterprise crypto payments and infrastructure built around the XRP Ledger, plus the RLUSD stablecoin. In 2025 spent ~$2.45B on acquisitions — Hidden Road ($1.25B prime brokerage, closed Oct 202...

SambaNova Systems Deeptech

Rodrigo Liang, Kunle Olukotun, Christopher Ré

Founded 2017 out of Stanford, SambaNova builds reconfigurable dataflow (RDU) AI chips and full-stack systems for enterprise/government AI inference and training. It has raised over $1.1B (Series D at a ~$5B ...

Scale AI Data

Alexandr Wang & Lucy Guo

Founded 2016; data-labeling and data-engine platform for training AI/ML models and a major government/defense AI contractor. In Jun 2025 Meta took a ~49% stake for ~$14.3B, valuing Scale at ~$29B, and co-fou...

Sentry (Functional Software) Devtools

David Cramer & Chris Jennings

Founded 2012 as an open-source project; the widely-adopted application error-monitoring and performance/observability platform for developers. Valued ~$3B; a flagship open-source-first devtools business with...

Sigma Computing Data

Rob Woollen & Jason Frantz

Founded 2014; cloud-native BI and analytics that lets business users explore live warehouse data with a spreadsheet-like interface (deeply tied to Snowflake/Databricks). Raised a $200M Series D in 2024 at a ...

Sila Nanotechnologies Climate tech

Gene Berdichevsky, Gleb Yushin & Alex Jacobs

Founded 2011 by Tesla employee #7 Gene Berdichevsky; makes silicon-anode battery materials that boost energy density. Raised a $375M Series G in June 2024 (total >$900M) to complete its Moses Lake, WA manufa...

Skydio Deeptech

Adam Bry, Abraham Bachrach, Matt Donahoe

Founded 2014, Skydio is the largest US drone maker. After exiting consumer drones in 2023 it pivoted to defense, public safety and enterprise autonomy; over half of its $1.2B in bookings now come from defens...

Solana Labs Web3

Anatoly Yakovenko & Raj Gokal (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2018 in SF; core developer of the Solana Layer-1 blockchain, a high-throughput proof-of-stake chain (mainnet 2020) built on the novel Proof-of-History mechanism. ~250 employees across six continents;...

Stripe Devtools

Patrick & John Collison

Founded 2010; developer-first payments infrastructure, the most valuable private fintech/infra company in the US (~$90B+ tuck-in tender valuations 2024–2025). A defining API-infrastructure company: 'seven li...

Substack Consumer brands

Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie & Jairaj Sethi

Founded 2017; a subscription-publishing platform for newsletters, audio and video that pays writers directly. Raised a $100M Series C in July 2025 at a $1.1B valuation (led by BOND and The Chernin Group), cr...

Supabase Devtools

Paul Copplestone & Ant Wilson

Founded 2020; the open-source Firebase alternative — a Postgres-based backend-as-a-service (auth, storage, edge functions, realtime, vector search). A breakout among AI-app and indie developers; raised a lar...

The Bot Company Deeptech

Kyle Vogt, Paril Jain, Luke Holoubek

Founded 2024 by Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt, The Bot Company builds household robots to automate chores. It closed a $150M Series B in March 2025 led by Greenoaks at a $2B post-money valuation, raising ~$300...

Thumbtack Consumer brands

Marco Zappacosta, Jonathan Swanson, Sander Daniels & Jeremy Tunnell

Founded 2008; a local-services marketplace connecting homeowners with pros for repairs, cleaning and projects. Last valued at ~$3.2B (2021); shifted to a home-management app and AI-guided project matching, w...

Together AI Cloud infra

Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Ré & Percy Liang 🇮🇳

Founded 2022; a GPU/AI-cloud ('neocloud') for training and serving open-source models at scale. Raised $305M Series B (Feb 2025, $3.3B) then $800M Series C (Jul 2026) leaping to an $8.3B valuation. Co-founde...

Vercel Devtools

Guillermo Rauch

Founded 2015 (as ZEIT); the frontend cloud behind open-source Next.js and, increasingly, an 'AI cloud' with the v0 generative-UI tool. Closed a $300M Series F in Sep/Oct 2025 at a $9.3B valuation. A central ...

Watershed Climate tech

Taylor Francis, Christian Anderson & Avi Itskovich

Founded 2019 by ex-Stripe carbon-tools builders; enterprise carbon-accounting and climate-disclosure software that measures footprints, sets science-based targets and automates regulatory reporting. Raised a...

Waymo Deeptech

(Alphabet; John Krafcik/Tekedra Mawakana, Dmitri Dolgov)

Alphabet's autonomous-driving unit (spun out of Google's self-driving project, 2016) operates commercial robotaxi service across SF, the Peninsula/Silicon Valley and beyond, including freeways as of late 202...

Zipline Deeptech

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Keenan Wyrobek, Will Hetzler

Founded 2014, Zipline operates the world's largest autonomous drone-delivery network for medical supplies, food and retail across the US and Africa. It surpassed 2 million deliveries in January 2026 and rais...

Ayar Labs Deeptech

Charles Wuischpard (CEO), founders Alex Wright-Gladstein, Chen Sun, Mark Wade

Founded 2015, Ayar Labs makes optical I/O (co-packaged silicon photonics 'TeraPHY' chiplets) to move data between AI chips at far higher bandwidth and lower power than copper. Backed by AMD Ventures and NVID...

Loft Orbital Spacetech

Pierre-Damien Vaujour, Alex Greenberg

Founded 2017, Loft Orbital offers 'space infrastructure as a service' — its standardized satellite buses (and Condosat model) let any customer fly a payload without building a satellite. It raised $170M (Jan...

MatX Deeptech

Reiner Pope, Mike Gunter

Founded 2023 by ex-Google engineers, MatX designs chips purpose-built for the largest LLMs, prioritizing throughput for frontier AI labs. It raised a $500M Series B in early 2026 led by Jane Street and Situa...

Turo Mobility

Andre Haddad

Founded 2010 (as RelayRides); the largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace, 'the Airbnb of cars.' Filed to IPO in 2022 but formally withdrew its S-1 in February 2025 amid soft market conditions; remains ...

Twelve Climate tech

Etosha Cave, Kendra Kuhl & Nicholas Flanders

Founded 2015 (as Opus 12), spun out of Stanford; its CO2 electrolyzer turns captured CO2, water and renewable electricity into 'E-Jet' sustainable aviation fuel and other fossil-free chemicals. Announced $64...

Vannevar Labs Deeptech

Brett Granberg, Nini Moorhead, Scott Sanders

Founded 2019, Vannevar Labs builds AI-powered intelligence and non-kinetic capabilities — turning foreign open-source communications into real-time actionable intelligence for the US military and allies. It ...

Aetherflux Spacetech

Baiju Bhatt

Founded 2024 by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, Aetherflux (recently renamed Cowboy Space Corporation) is developing space-based solar power — LEO satellites that beam energy to Earth via infrared lasers. ...

Andreessen Horowitz / a16z crypto Web3

Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon

a16z (founded 2009) runs a16z crypto, the world's most influential crypto/Web3 venture arm, led by Chris Dixon. Its four crypto funds held ~$9.5B AUM (2025); its first fund returned a 5.4x net DPI. Raising a...

Antora Energy Climate tech

Andrew Ponec, David Bierman & Justin Briggs

Founded 2017; makes thermal batteries that store renewable electricity as heat in glowing-hot solid carbon blocks to deliver zero-carbon industrial heat and power. Raised a $150M Series B in early 2024 (Deca...

Anyscale Cloud infra

Ion Stoica, Robert Nishihara & Philipp Moritz

Founded 2019 out of UC Berkeley RISELab; the company behind open-source Ray, the distributed-compute framework widely used to train and serve large AI models. A key AI-infrastructure/compute-orchestration pl...

ArsenalBio Biotech

Ken Drazan (CEO), Kole Roybal & Alex Marson (UCSF science)

Founded 2019 on UCSF-developed programmable cell-therapy tech; builds next-generation autologous CAR-T therapies for solid tumors. Raised $325M Series C in September 2024, one of the year's largest biotech r...

Asher Bio Biotech

Andy Yeung, Ivana Djuretic

Founded 2019 and backed by Third Rock Ventures; develops 'cis-targeted' immunotherapies (cytokines that signal only to specific immune cell types) to improve precision in cancer and immunology. Lead asset AB...

Atom Computing Deeptech

Ben Bloom, Rob Hays (CEO)

Founded 2018, Atom Computing builds neutral-atom quantum computers and demonstrated a >1,000-qubit system. Playground Global led its earlier Series B; in late 2025 it was in talks to join the federal quantum...

Cala Health Healthtech

Kate Rosenbluth & Deanna Harshbarger (Stanford science)

Bioelectronic neurotech medtech company (founded 2013) whose wrist-worn Cala kIQ delivers transcutaneous afferent patterned stimulation (TAPS) to reduce hand tremor in essential tremor and Parkinson's. Close...

Carbon Health Healthtech

Eren Bali & Caesar Djavaherian

Founded 2015 by Udemy co-founder Eren Bali; a tech-enabled hybrid primary/urgent-care provider with an AI-assisted EHR and a national clinic network. Well-funded private; expanded AI charting in 2024.

Chan Zuckerberg Biohub SF Biotech

Priscilla Chan & Mark Zuckerberg (founders); Stephen Quake (science)

Nonprofit research institute (launched 2016) in Mission Bay that funds and collaborates across UCSF, UC Berkeley and Stanford, pursuing AI-powered biology, virtual cell models and infectious-disease tools. B...

Charm Industrial Climate tech

Peter Reinhardt, Shaun Meehan & Kelly Hering

Founded 2018 by Segment co-founder Peter Reinhardt; converts agricultural biomass (corn stover) into bio-oil via pyrolysis and injects it into geologic storage for permanent carbon removal. Raised a $100M Se...

Coffee Meets Bagel Consumer brands

Arum, Dawoon & Soo Kang

Founded 2012 by three sisters (of Shark Tank fame); a curated, 'quality over quantity' dating app that emphasizes intentional matches. Bay Area's most prominent homegrown dating platform; relaunched with new...

Column Fintech

William Hockey & Annie Hockey

Founded 2019 by Plaid co-founder William Hockey; a nationally chartered 'developer infrastructure bank' offering deposits, ACH/wire, real-time payments and lending directly to fintechs — no middleware. Notab...

Docker Devtools

Solomon Hykes (founder); Scott Johnston (CEO)

Founded 2013 (from dotCloud); popularized software containers and remains the default developer local-container toolchain (Docker Desktop, Hub, Build Cloud). Refocused on developer tooling after selling its ...

Fizz Consumer brands

Teddy Solomon & Ashton Cofer

Founded 2020 at Stanford; an anonymous Gen Z social network scaled to 240+ college campuses and 60+ high schools, positioned as the 'anti-Facebook.' Raised $41.5M total (Owl Ventures, NEA) and added a studen...

Heirloom Carbon Technologies Climate tech

Shashank Samala & Noah McQueen

Founded 2020; limestone-based direct air capture that accelerates natural mineralization to pull CO2 from the air in ~3 days. Operates North America's first commercial DAC facility in Tracy, CA and signed a ...

Mill Climate tech

Matt Rogers & Harry Tannenbaum

Founded 2020 by Nest co-founder Matt Rogers; a countertop kitchen bin that dries and grinds food scraps overnight into dry 'Food Grounds' that are mailed back to be turned into animal-feed ingredient, divert...

Muon Space Spacetech

Jonny Dyer, Reuben Rohrschneider, Dan McCleese

Founded 2021, Muon Space designs and operates end-to-end small-satellite constellations for climate, weather and defense/commercial Earth-observation missions. It closed a ~$146M Series B (initial 2024 + $89...

Pantera Capital Web3

Dan Morehead

Founded 2013; the first U.S. institutional asset manager focused exclusively on blockchain, spanning venture, liquid-token and yield strategies. Long-standing early backer across the ecosystem; in 2025 retur...

Paradigm Web3

Matt Huang & Fred Ehrsam

Crypto-native VC founded 2018 by ex-Sequoia partner Matt Huang and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam; among the most respected research-driven crypto funds (backer of Uniswap, Phantom, Optimism and more). In 2...

Patch Climate tech

Brennan Spellacy & Aaron Grunfeld

Founded 2020; an API-first marketplace and infrastructure layer for buying carbon credits and carbon removal, letting companies integrate offsetting/removal into their products and procurement. Has raised mo...

Profluent Biotech

Ali Madani

Founded 2022; a Bio-AI 'frontier models for programmable biology' company. First to demonstrate LLM-generated functional proteins (Nature Biotechnology, 2023) and open-sourced OpenCRISPR-1, an AI-designed ge...

Rondo Energy Climate tech

Pete von Behrens & John O'Donnell

Founded 2020; the Rondo Heat Battery stores renewable power in brick stacks to supply continuous high-temperature industrial heat. Closed a $60M Series B in June 2024 with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Micro...

Sardine Fintech

Soups Ranjan (Indian-origin founder)

AI risk platform for fraud prevention, compliance (AML/KYC) and credit underwriting using device intelligence and behavioral biometrics. Raised a $70M Series C in Feb 2025 (led by Activant; a16z, GV, Experia...

Scribe Therapeutics Biotech

Benjamin Oakes, Jennifer Doudna, Brett Staahl, David Savage

Founded 2018 out of the Doudna lab; engineers proprietary CRISPR (CasX/XE) genome and epigenome editors for in-vivo therapeutics. Multi-billion-dollar collaborations with Sanofi and Prevail/Lilly. Presented ...

Span Climate tech

Arch Rao

Founded 2018 by former Tesla Powerwall lead Arch Rao; reinvents the home electrical panel as a smart, software-controlled hub for solar, batteries, EV charging and electrified appliances. Raised a $96.5M Ser...

Teal Health Healthtech

Kara Egan & Avnesh Thakor

Femtech company developing the Teal Wand, an at-home self-collection device for cervical cancer (HPV) screening that received FDA clearance in 2025. Aims to expand access beyond in-clinic Pap smears. Venture...

WeaveGrid Climate tech

Apoorv Bhargava & John Taggart

Founded 2018; software that helps utilities manage EV charging load, orchestrating managed charging to avoid grid upgrades as EV adoption surges. Partners with utilities including PG&E, DTE and Xcel. One of ...

Xaira Therapeutics Biotech

Marc Tessier-Lavigne (CEO), David Baker (co-founder)

Launched April 2024 with a landmark ~$1B commitment incubated by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs. Combines machine learning, large-scale data generation and therapeutic development; co-founded by Nob...

YugabyteDB Data

Kannan Muthukkaruppan, Karthik Ranganathan & Mikhail Bautin 🇮🇳

Founded 2016 by ex-Facebook/Nutanix engineers; open-source distributed SQL database (Postgres-compatible) for cloud-native, globally-scaled apps. A leading distributed-database challenger to CockroachDB and ...

AirMyne Climate tech

Sky Dauphin & Mark Cyffka

Founded 2022; builds modular direct-air-capture machines that pull CO2 from ambient air for downstream utilization or sequestration, targeting a lower-cost chemical process. An early-stage Berkeley DAC start...

Inversion Semiconductor Manufacturing

(stealth-emerged 2024/25)

An early-stage advanced-manufacturing startup developing next-generation chip-fabrication machines, aiming to make the most powerful chips up to ~15x faster and to reshore advanced fabrication capacity to th...

Ambience Healthcare healthtech

AI clinical documentation & coding

Founded 2020 by Nikhil Buduma and Mike Ng. AI documentation and medical-coding platform for health systems. Closed a $243M Series C in July 2025 (Oak HC/FT, a16z) at a $1.25B valuation, reaching unicorn stat...

Anthropic Generative AI

Dario Amodei & Daniela Amodei

Founded 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders; builds the Claude family of frontier models with a safety-first mission and dominant enterprise/coding traction. Overtook OpenAI in the valuation race in 2026, reaching ~$9...

Baseten AI-infra

AI model inference infrastructure

Founded 2019. Infrastructure for deploying and serving AI/ML models in production at scale (used by AI-native companies incl. Lovable). Raised a $150M Series D at a $2.2B valuation ($280M+ total) from Greylo...

Cartesia Generative AI

Karan Goel, Albert Gu, Arjun Desai, Brandon Yang & Chris Ré

Founded 2023 by Stanford researchers behind the state-space (SSM/Mamba) architecture; builds ultra-low-latency real-time voice/audio foundation models (Sonic). Backed by Index, Lightspeed and General Catalys...

Chef Robotics foodtech

physical AI for food manufacturing

San Francisco company providing AI-enabled meal-assembly robots to food manufacturers on a robotics-as-a-service model; robots have completed 70M+ servings across the US and Canada. A rare Bay Area foodtech/...

Clay sales-tech

AI go-to-market / sales data automation

Founded by Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan. AI-powered GTM platform that aggregates 100+ data sources and automates prospecting, enrichment and outbound. Raised a $100M Series C in August 2025 at a $3.1B valua...

Coalition insurtech

active cyber insurance

Founded by Joshua Motta and John Hering. Combines cyber insurance with proactive security monitoring and incident response, bundling coverage with digital-risk management for businesses. Has raised roughly $...

Cognition AI agents

Scott Wu, Steven Hao & Walden Yan

Founded 2023; maker of Devin, the autonomous AI software engineer, and acquirer of Windsurf's IDE. Roughly $492M annualized revenue with clients including Goldman Sachs, Citi and Dell. Raised >$1B at a ~$26B...

Commure AI agents

Hemant Taneja (General Catalyst) & team

Founded 2017 and scaled via General Catalyst; deploys AI and agents (ambient scribe, revenue-cycle automation) across US health systems. Raised $200M+ growth financing at a ~$7B post-money valuation to expan...

Decagon customer-support-AI

AI customer support agents

Founded 2023 by Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas (ex-Palantir, Citadel). Enterprise conversational-AI agents for customer support. Raised a $131M Series C (June 2025, $1.5B) co-led by Accel and a16z, then a ...

Deel HR-tech

global HR, payroll & EOR platform

Founded 2019 in San Francisco by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang. Global payroll, contractor management and employer-of-record platform serving 100+ countries. Raised ~$979M total; valued at $12B (Feb 2025). Nota...

Distyl AI enterprise-AI

enterprise AI-native workflow automation

Founded 2022. Builds and deploys AI-native workflows into large-enterprise operations (partnered closely with OpenAI). Raised a $175M Series B at a $1.8B valuation ($200M+ total) from Khosla Ventures and Lig...

Eve legaltech

AI platform for plaintiff law firms

SF-based legal-AI company (CEO Jay Madheswaran) building an AI platform that helps plaintiff/personal-injury firms manage cases and deliver outcomes. Raised $103M in a Series B at a $1B+ valuation, led by Sp...

EvenUp legaltech

AI for personal-injury law

Founded 2019 by Rami Karabibar, Raymond Mieszaniec and Saam Mashhad. AI that builds demand packages and case documents for personal-injury firms. Raised a $150M Series E in October 2025 at a $2B+ valuation (...

Fieldguide accounting-tech

agentic AI for audit & advisory firms

SF-based vertical-AI platform (YC) delivering end-to-end agentic workflows for audit, assurance and advisory firms to raise margins and win business. Has raised ~$122M. A leading example of AI reshaping the ...

Glean enterprise-search

enterprise AI search & work assistant

Founded 2019 by Arvind Jain (ex-Google, ex-Rubrik co-founder) and team. Enterprise AI search and agent platform that indexes a company's apps to answer work questions and run agents. One of the Bay Area's fa...

Gusto HR-tech

payroll, benefits & HR for SMBs

Founded 2011 in San Francisco by Josh Reeves, Tomer London and Edward Kim. Payroll, benefits and HR platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Raised ~$746M total; last valued around $9.5B, with steady exp...

Harvey legaltech

legal AI for law firms & enterprises

Founded 2022 by Winston Weinberg (ex-litigator) and Gabriel Pereyra (ex-DeepMind/Meta AI). AI agents for contract analysis, due diligence, compliance and litigation, used by 142,000+ lawyers across 1,500+ cu...

Lambda AI

Stephen Balaban & Michael Balaban

Founded 2012; GPU cloud and hardware for AI training and inference (the "AI Developer Cloud"). Raised a $480M Series D at ~$2.5B (Feb 2025) and a $1.5B+ Series E (TWG Global) in Nov 2025 targeting a ~$4–5B+ ...

LangChain developer-tools

AI agent engineering platform

Founded 2022 by Harrison Chase. Widely used open-source framework plus LangSmith/LangGraph tooling for building, observing and deploying LLM agents. Raised a $125M Series B at a ~$1.3B valuation (~$160M tota...

Luma AI Generative AI

Amit Jain, Alex Yu & Alberto Taiuti

Founded 2021; maker of the Dream Machine text/image-to-video model and Ray-series generative video. Reached a ~$4B valuation as of late 2025, competing with Sora and Runway in generative video. Co-founder/CE...

Mercor HR-tech

AI hiring & expert data-labeling marketplace

Founded 2023 by Thiel Fellows Brendan Foody, Surya Midha and Adarsh Hiremath (Bay Area high-school debate teammates). Started as AI-driven recruiting; pivoted to sourcing specialized human experts to train f...

Metronome fintech-infra

usage-based billing infrastructure

Founded 2019 in San Francisco by Scott Woody and Kevin Liu. Real-time usage-based billing and metering infrastructure powering AI and SaaS companies (OpenAI, Anthropic among reported users). A key Bay Area f...

Newfront insurtech

technology-enabled insurance brokerage

Founded by Spike Lipkin and Gordon Wintrob. A software-driven commercial insurance brokerage and benefits platform. Raised ~$300M total ($200M Series D, 2022); acquired by WTW (Willis Towers Watson) for ~$90...

OpenAI Generative AI

Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever & team

Founded 2015; maker of ChatGPT, GPT-series and the Sora video model — the company that ignited the generative-AI era. Closed a record ~$40B round in 2025 and by early 2026 was valued around $852B, one of the...

Pacaso proptech

co-ownership marketplace for second homes

Founded 2020 by Austin Allison and Spencer Rascoff (ex-Zillow). Proptech marketplace enabling fractional co-ownership of luxury second homes via managed LLCs. Raised a $125M Series C; a headline Bay Area pro...

Perplexity AI Generative AI

Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho & Andy Konwinski

Founded 2022; the AI-native answer engine challenging Google search. Valuation climbed from $14B (June 2025) to ~$20B (Sept 2025) and ~$21B by early 2026. Chennai-born CEO Aravind Srinivas was named India's ...

Persona identity

identity verification infrastructure

Founded 2018 in San Francisco. Configurable identity-verification and fraud/KYC infrastructure now positioning as the 'verified identity layer' for an agentic-AI world. Raised a $200M Series D in 2025 (led b...

Physical / embodied AI & robotics

Pinecone AI

Edo Liberty

Founded 2019; the pioneering managed vector database powering retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for AI apps. Previously valued at ~$750M; a foundational piece of the AI-infra/memory stack founded by ex-AW...

Pivot Bio agtech

nitrogen-fixing microbial agtech

Berkeley-based agtech using gene-edited soil microbes to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer for corn, wheat and other crops, cutting emissions and input costs. Has raised ~$617M. The flagship Bay Area agt...

Rippling HR-tech

workforce management (HR + IT + finance)

Founded 2016 in San Francisco by Parker Conrad and Prasanna Sankar. Unifies HR, IT and finance (payroll, devices, apps, spend) on one employee-data platform. Raised a $450M Series G in May 2025 at a $16.8B v...

Sesame AI Generative AI

Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar & Ryan Brown

Founded 2023; its Conversational Speech Model and viral Maya/Miles voice personas set a new bar for natural voice AI in early 2025. Raised a $250M Series B led by Sequoia and Spark in Oct 2025 after a $47.5M...

Sierra customer-service-AI

enterprise AI customer-service agents

Founded 2023 by Bret Taylor (ex-Salesforce co-CEO, OpenAI chair) and Clay Bavor (ex-Google). Builds branded AI agents that resolve customer-service interactions, billed per successful outcome. Raised a ~$950...

Speak edtech

AI language-learning app

Founded 2016 in San Francisco by Andrew Hsu and Connor Zwick. AI speaking-focused language tutor backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund. Raised a $78M Series C in Nov 2024 reaching unicorn status at a $1B valuati...

Vanta security

automated security & compliance

Founded 2018 by Christina Cacioppo (also a notable woman founder). Automates security compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR) and trust management for thousands of companies. Raised large 2024–2025 rounds...

World Labs Generative AI

Fei-Fei Li, Justin Johnson, Christoph Lassner & Ben Mildenhall

Founded 2024 by "godmother of AI" Fei-Fei Li to build large world models for spatial intelligence. Emerged from stealth in Sept 2024 with $230M, launched the Marble 3D-world generation platform in late 2025,...

Writer AI agents

May Habib & Waseem Alshikh

Founded 2020; full-stack generative-AI platform (Palmyra models) for enterprises to build and deploy AI apps and agents on their own data. Raised at a ~$1.9B valuation with ~$326M total funding; a leading en...

xAI Generative AI

Elon Musk

Founded 2023; builds the Grok models and integrates them into X. Raised ~$20B in a Nvidia-led round in early 2026 pushing its valuation toward $230B, positioning it as a third frontier lab alongside OpenAI a...

Who funds founders in San Francisco

The funding ladder here, from a first angel cheque up to later-stage funds. Jump to a rung, or browse the list.

Operator angels 2 Micro-VCs 3 Seed funds 7 Venture capital firms 20 Crypto & web3 funds 5 Cross-border (India-linked) funds 6

Operator angels 2

Often a founder's first cheque, from operators who've built here.

Naval Ravikant / AngelList San Francisco

India-born angel investor and co-founder/chairman of AngelList, which democratized syndicates, rolling funds and startup investing (supporting $170B+ in assets). Personal early bets include Uber, Twitter, Notion, Postmates and Yammer. On...

Elad Gil San Francisco

Prolific solo GP and operator (ex-Google, Twitter; co-founder Color and Mixer Labs), author of 'High Growth Handbook'. One of the earliest investors in AI leaders including Perplexity, Harvey, Mistral and Character.AI, plus Airbnb, Coinb...

Micro-VCs 3

Small, fast funds writing the first institutional cheques.

Felicis Ventures San Francisco / Menlo Park

Early-stage firm founded by former Googler Aydin Senkut, an active operator-angel turned institutional GP. Early bets on Shopify, Canva, Notion, Adyen and Cruise. Multi-sector seed and Series A, from AI to bio.

Floodgate Menlo Park

Seed firm co-founded by Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko, pioneers of the 'super angel' / micro-VC model and the 'thunder lizard' thesis. Earliest bets include Twitter, Lyft, Twitch and Okta. First-check, prime-mover investing.

Homebrew San Francisco

Seed firm founded by ex-operators Hunter Walk (YouTube) and Satya Patel (Twitter), later restructured into an evergreen fund investing partners' own capital. Early backer of Chime, Plaid, Gusto and Cruise. Operator-led, high-touch seed s...

Seed funds 7

Dedicated seed funds for your first priced round.

Y Combinator San Francisco (HQ) / Mountain View

The world's most influential startup accelerator, now led by CEO Garry Tan. Runs multiple batches a year with a standard deal (~$500K) and has launched Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart and Reddit. Its continuity fund also in...

Initialized Capital San Francisco

Seed-stage firm co-founded by Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian, now led by Brett Gibson and Jen Wolf. Earliest institutional backer of Coinbase and Instacart; also backed Cruise, Flexport and Patreon. Concentrated, high-ownership seed bets.

SV Angel San Francisco

Ron Conway's legendary super-angel outfit and one of Silicon Valley's most networked seed investors. Early checks into Google, Airbnb, Twitter, Pinterest, Square and Dropbox. Now runs SV Angel Growth alongside its seed practice.

First Round Capital San Francisco (+ NY, Philadelphia)

Seed-focused firm known for hands-on community and its First Round Review content. Backed Uber (first check), Notion, Roblox, Square and Warby Parker. Runs curated founder networks and structured company-building support.

Uncork Capital San Francisco / Palo Alto

One of the original Silicon Valley seed funds, founded by Jeff Clavier (formerly SoftTech VC). Early backer of Fitbit, SendGrid, Eventbrite and PagerDuty. Classic first-check, high-conviction seed investor.

Craft Ventures San Francisco

Early-stage firm co-founded by David Sacks (PayPal, Yammer) and Bill Lee, with a strong SaaS and marketplace thesis. Backed Airbnb, SpaceX, Reddit, Bird and Cerebral. Known for deep go-to-market and SaaS-metrics playbooks.

Unusual Ventures Menlo Park / San Francisco

Seed firm co-founded by John Vrionis and Indian-origin serial founder Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics, Harness, Traceable). Built around a structured 'Get Ahead' seed playbook. Backed Harness, Arctic Wolf, Robinhood (early) and Abnormal Security.

Venture capital firms 20

Multi-stage firms that lead Series A and beyond.

Sequoia Capital 2800 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

The most storied venture firm in the world, seeded on Sand Hill Road in 1972. Early backer of Apple, Google, Nvidia, Airbnb, Stripe and WhatsApp. In 2023-24 it split off its China (HongShan) and India/SEA (Peak XV Partners) arms, so the ...

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) 2865 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park (+ SF)

Founded 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, now a multi-stage giant with 40B+ under management across crypto, bio, American Dynamism and AI. Portfolio includes Coinbase, Airbnb, Databricks and Anduril. Known for its heavyweight fou...

Founders Fund The Presidio, San Francisco

Peter Thiel's contrarian, founder-friendly firm, run day-to-day by partners including Brian Singerman and Napoleon Ta. Made defining bets on SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Stripe and Facebook. Famous for large concentrated positions and a de...

Benchmark San Francisco

A deliberately small, equal-partnership firm with no junior investors, known for high-conviction Series A leads. Legendary early bets on eBay, Uber, Snap, Twitter, Discord and Dropbox. Each partner sits directly on boards; no growth arm.

Greylock Partners 2550 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

One of the oldest US venture firms (1965), now heavily focused on early-stage enterprise and consumer, plus a strong AI push led by partners like Reid Hoffman and Saam Motamedi. Backed LinkedIn, Airbnb, Figma, Discord and Coinbase. Runs ...

Accel 500 University Ave, Palo Alto

Multi-stage global firm (Palo Alto, London, Bangalore) famous for its early Facebook bet. Portfolio spans Slack, Atlassian, CrowdStrike, Spotify and Vimeo. Its India office (Accel India) is a major force in the domestic startup scene, re...

Kleiner Perkins 2750 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

A defining Sand Hill Road institution (1972) that backed Amazon, Google, Genentech and Twitter. Revitalized in recent years around early-stage bets by partners like Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman, with wins in Figma, Rippling and Loom.

Lightspeed Venture Partners 2200 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

Multi-stage global firm with strong enterprise and consumer franchises and a large India practice (Lightspeed India). Backed Snap, Affirm, Rubrik, Nutanix and Mistral. Active across the US-India corridor, making it doubly relevant to eCh...

Khosla Ventures Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

Founded by Indian-origin billionaire Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems co-founder, IIT Delhi alum) in 2004, with a bold science and deep-tech thesis. Notably the first institutional investor in OpenAI; also backed DoorDash, Instacart, Strip...

Index Ventures San Francisco (+ London)

Transatlantic multi-stage firm with deep SF and European roots. Backed Figma, Discord, Scale AI, Roblox, Wiz and Revolut. Known for pairing US and European market access for founders.

General Catalyst San Francisco (+ Cambridge, NY)

Fast-growing multi-stage platform pursuing a 'global resilience' and health-transformation thesis. Backer of Stripe, Anthropic, Ramp, Snap, HubSpot and Mistral. Has scaled into one of the largest venture platforms by AUM.

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) 2855 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

One of the largest and oldest US venture firms, investing across tech and healthcare from seed to growth. Portfolio includes Databricks, Robinhood, Cloudflare, Uber and Plaid. Bicoastal, with a major Sand Hill Road presence.

Bessemer Venture Partners San Francisco (+ Menlo Park)

Century-old firm turned cloud-software powerhouse, author of the widely cited 'State of the Cloud' report. Backed Shopify, Twilio, LinkedIn, Toast and Pinterest. Strong SaaS and vertical-software franchise.

Mayfield Fund 2800 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park

Early-stage firm (est. 1969) led by managing partner Navin Chaddha, an IIT Delhi alum and one of the most consistent Forbes Midas List investors. Committing ~$3B to AI 'inception' bets; past wins include Lyft, HashiCorp, Poshmark and Sol...

Norwest Venture Partners 525 University Ave, Palo Alto

Multi-stage firm (backed by Wells Fargo) investing across the US, India and Israel. Notable India-corridor bets via Norwest India include roughly all major consumer franchises; global portfolio spans Uber, Spotify, Plaid and Calm. Deep o...

Foundation Capital Menlo Park

Early-stage firm with a long enterprise and fintech track record. Backed Netflix (early), Chegg, Sunrun and Solana. Focused on seed and Series A across AI, fintech and infrastructure.

Redpoint Ventures Woodside / Menlo Park

Multi-stage firm with dedicated early and growth funds. Backed Stripe, Snowflake (early), Twilio, HashiCorp and Ramp. Strong in infrastructure and developer-tooling.

Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) Menlo Park (+ SF)

Later-stage growth specialist (est. 1980) writing large Series B+ checks. Backed Twitter, Snap, Slack, Coinbase, Figma and Discord. Focuses on scaling breakout companies toward IPO.

Sutter Hill Ventures 755 Page Mill Rd, Palo Alto

Low-profile but highly influential firm that incubates and builds enterprise-infrastructure companies. Famed for its foundational, company-building role in Snowflake, Pure Storage and Lacework. Operates as a single evergreen partnership.

Menlo Ventures San Francisco (+ Menlo Park)

Multi-stage firm (est. 1976) that has become a major AI backer, leading a large strategic investment in Anthropic and running the Anthology Fund with it. Past bets include Uber, Roku, Warby Parker and Benchling.

Crypto & web3 funds 5

Funds backing web3 and crypto-native teams.

a16z crypto San Francisco

Andreessen Horowitz's dedicated crypto/web3 arm, investing across stages since 2013 and led by Chris Dixon. Backed Coinbase, Uniswap, OpenSea and Sky (Maker). Runs the CSX accelerator, which came to San Francisco in 2025; managed ~$9.5B ...

Paradigm San Francisco

Premier crypto-native investment firm founded in 2018 by Matt Huang (ex-Sequoia) and Fred Ehrsam (Coinbase co-founder). Backed Uniswap, Coinbase, Optimism and Blur; raised a then-record $2.5B crypto fund in 2021. Deep technical research ...

Conviction San Francisco

AI-native venture firm founded in 2022 by Sarah Guo (ex-Greylock), a pre-ChatGPT AI conviction bet. Backed Mistral AI, Harvey, Cognition, Sierra and Thinking Machines Lab. Co-hosts the influential 'No Priors' podcast; raising larger succ...

Pantera Capital Menlo Park

The first US institutional crypto asset manager, launched by Dan Morehead in 2013 across venture, hedge and token funds. Early backer of Bitcoin infrastructure, Circle, Polkadot and many token networks. Multi-strategy exposure across the...

Haun Ventures San Francisco

Crypto/web3 firm founded by Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor and the first female GP at a16z. Raised a large debut fund pairing early and acceleration vehicles. Focused on onchain consumer, infrastructure and policy-forward crypto...

Cross-border (India-linked) funds 6

India-linked funds that bridge founders to global markets.

Nexus Venture Partners Menlo Park + Mumbai/Bangalore

The definitive US-India cross-border VC, investing seed to Series B on both sides of the corridor with a growing AI, deep-tech and infrastructure-software focus. Backed Postman, Druva, Rubrik (seed), Delhivery and Turing. Raised a ~$700M...

Celesta Capital Silicon Valley (San Mateo) + Bengaluru

Global deep-tech VC led by Sriram Viswanathan, Nicholas Brathwaite and Michael Marks, with offices in Silicon Valley, Bengaluru and Montreal. In 2025 it spearheaded a $1B+ US-India Deep Tech Investment Alliance and is raising a large Ind...

Together Fund Silicon Valley + Bengaluru

Operator-led, AI-first VC on the US-India corridor, founded in 2021 by Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks), Manav Garg (Eka) and Shubham Gupta. Backs founders building global SaaS/AI companies out of India. Distinctive for its network of I...

Neotribe Ventures Santa Clara / San Francisco

Deep-tech-leaning early and growth firm founded by Kittu Kolluri (ex-NEA general partner, an Indian-origin GP). Partners with founders across the US, Europe, Israel, India and Australia on 'breakthrough technologies'. Backs AI, security ...

Sherpalo Ventures (Ram Shriram) Menlo Park

Angel firm founded in 2000 by Kavitark Ram Shriram, a Google founding board member and one of its first investors ($250K in 1998). Portfolio spans 50+ companies including Google, InMobi, Paperless Post and Gusto, with recent bets like Sk...

B Capital San Francisco (+ LA)

Multi-stage global growth firm co-founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Raj Ganguly, partnered with BCG. Invests across the US and Asia (including a strong India/SEA practice led by Kabir Narang) in enterprise, fintech and h...

Incubators & accelerators in San Francisco

Incubators, accelerators, corporate programs and institutions. Jump to a type, or browse the list.

Accelerators 13 Hacker & founder houses 2 Corporate programs 4 University & research 4

Accelerators 13

Y Combinator Dogpatch, San Francisco (560 & 580 20th St)

The world's most influential startup accelerator and the anchor of the Bay Area ecosystem, running batches that give founders roughly $500K on standard terms plus three months of intensive guidance culminating in Demo Day. Founded in 200...

Techstars San Francisco San Francisco

The San Francisco chapter of the global Techstars network, a 13-week mentorship-driven accelerator investing about $120K per company and plugging founders into 10,000+ mentors and investors worldwide. The Spring 2025 class was composed e...

500 Global 814 Mission St, San Francisco

A global venture firm and accelerator (formerly 500 Startups) headquartered in San Francisco, known for a high-volume, geographically diverse seed program that has invested in thousands of companies across dozens of countries. Founded in...

AngelPad San Francisco (and NYC)

A small, highly selective seed accelerator founded in 2010 by ex-Google product manager Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas, taking roughly 15 teams per batch from ~2,000 applicants. Nicknamed the 'anti-Y Combinator' and ranked #1 US accele...

Alchemist Accelerator 156 2nd St, San Francisco

A venture-backed accelerator focused specifically on enterprise / B2B startups whose revenue comes from other companies, running a roughly six-month program with seed investment (~$36K) into about 75 companies per year. Founded by Ravi B...

HF0 (Hacker Fellowship Zero) 1000 Fulton (Archbishop's Mansion), Alamo Square, San Francisco

A 12-week live-in residency accelerator for repeat technical founders, who move into a historic 22,000-sq-ft mansion across from Alamo Square Park and focus solely on building, with HF0 investing around $500K. Founded by Dave Fontenot. I...

Neo San Francisco

A mentorship community, accelerator and VC fund founded in 2017 by Ali Partovi, positioned as a founder-friendly rival to YC with low-dilution terms — a $750K uncapped SAFE for startups and $40K no-strings grants for standout college stu...

PearX (Pear VC) Menlo Park

The small-batch (~20 teams) pre-seed accelerator run by Menlo Park seed firm Pear VC, founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson in 2013. PearX invests $250K–$2M per company, provides $1M+ in cloud credits and hands-on GTM coaching, and ...

Boost VC San Mateo

A San Mateo pre-seed accelerator and fund founded in 2012 by Adam Draper (son of Tim Draper) and Brayton Williams, self-styled as the 'Y Combinator of sci-fi startups.' It writes ~$500K first checks into deep tech — aerospace, robotics, ...

a16z Speedrun San Francisco

Andreessen Horowitz's flagship accelerator, launched in 2023, investing up to $1M plus ~$5M in credits (including AI compute) across an intense 12-week program that ends with a San Francisco Demo Day. Originally gaming-focused, it is now...

Plug and Play Tech Center 440 N Wolfe Rd, Sunnyvale

A Sunnyvale-based innovation platform, accelerator and VC that CB Insights ranked the most active startup accelerator in the world (2020–2022) with ~929 deals per year. Founded by Saeed Amidi, it connects 3,000+ startups with 180+ invest...

IndieBio / SOSV SF Dogpatch (3rd St), San Francisco

A pioneering biotech and deep-tech accelerator opened by SOSV in San Francisco in 2015 (rebranded 'SOSV SF' in 2026), offering ~$525K plus a 25,000-sq-ft wet-lab facility and a 4–6 month program. Between 2015 and 2025 its 310 graduates r...

HAX (SOSV) San Francisco office (HQ Newark, NJ)

SOSV's hard-tech accelerator, one of the earliest hardware-focused programs (founded 2011 as HAXLR8R by Cyril Ebersweiler and Sean O'Sullivan), investing $250K–$500K in pre-seed hardware and climate/industrial startups. Its main resource...

Hacker & founder houses 2

AGI House Hillsborough (villa) & San Francisco (Twin Peaks)

A prominent AI hacker-house brand and community of founders and researchers hosting hackathons and demo nights, backed at various points by figures like Sergey Brin and Grimes. Notably there are two competing entities using the name — a ...

Genesis House Hayes Valley, San Francisco

A 21-bedroom hacker collective founded in March 2021, operated out of a bright-blue Victorian in Hayes Valley and often called one of the hottest hacker houses in SF. It gives community members the 'all the resources' bundle to start a c...

Corporate programs 4

NVIDIA Inception NVIDIA HQ, Santa Clara

NVIDIA's free, equity-free virtual accelerator for AI and deep-learning startups, grown to a network of 40,000+ companies by 2026. Members get preferred hardware pricing, up to $100K in DGX Cloud/H100 credits and cloud-partner credits, t...

Google for Startups Accelerator Google, Mountain View / Bay Area

Google's equity-free accelerator (part of Google for Startups, launched 2011) running cohorts of 10–15 growth-stage companies through a mix of remote and in-person technical mentorship, product and leadership training, and access to Goog...

Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub Microsoft Silicon Valley, Mountain View / online

Microsoft's open-to-all startup program (no funding or investor backing required) providing up to ~$350K in benefits, including up to $150K in Azure credits, OpenAI/Azure OpenAI credits, GitHub access, and 1:1 technical advisory plus a m...

AWS Activate AWS, San Francisco / online

Amazon Web Services' startup program, offering eligible pre-Series-B startups credit packages from $1K up to $200K to run on 200+ AWS services including AI/ML and Bedrock models, plus technical resources. Since 2013 AWS Activate has issu...

University & research 4

Stanford StartX 2627 Hanover St, Stanford Research Park, Palo Alto

A non-profit, equity-free accelerator for Stanford-affiliated founders (students, faculty, alumni), located in Stanford Research Park close to campus and Sand Hill Road. Founded in 2009, StartX supports companies through a founder commun...

Berkeley SkyDeck 2150 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley

UC Berkeley's flagship accelerator and incubator, a joint venture of the Haas School of Business and College of Engineering established in 2012, housed in the tallest building in downtown Berkeley. Its cohort program pairs startups with ...

Bakar Labs (Bakar BioEnginuity Hub) Woo Hon Fai Hall, UC Berkeley

A large biotech incubator run by UC Berkeley in partnership with QB3, occupying the adaptively reused former Berkeley Art Museum. Opened in November 2021, it offers flexible wet-lab and office space — as little as a single bench — plus f...

QB3 / UCSF Rosenman Institute UCSF Mission Bay, San Francisco

QB3 is the University of California's life-sciences innovation hub, spinning off incubators (QB3@953, now part of MBC Biolabs) and VC firms (Mission Bay Capital) over a 20-year track record. Its health-tech arm, the UCSF Rosenman Institu...

Coworking spaces in San Francisco

Where founders and early teams set up.

Founders, Inc. Fort Mason Center, Marina District, San Francisco

A 42,000-sq-ft startup campus and early-stage fund at Fort Mason on the SF waterfront, founded in 2020 by Furqan Rydhan. It offers workspace for up to ~80 founders plus a hardware lab (CNC, 3D printers, robotics/BCI gear), media studio, ...

South Park Commons South Park, SoMa, San Francisco

A technical community and VC firm founded in 2016 by former Dropbox execs Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal, described as an 'anti-incubator' focused on the 'minus one to zero' pre-idea phase of company building. It backs members' compani...

The Commons SF 550 Laguna St, Hayes Valley, San Francisco

An affordable ($70–$140/month) members' coworking space in a 4,000-sq-ft exposed-brick vault beneath Hayes Valley, aiming to build an intergenerational campus of builders through events like potlucks, writing club and a Sunday open house...

Cerebral Valley Hayes Valley, San Francisco

Originally a nickname for the AI-dense Hayes Valley neighborhood, now also an organization that runs hackathons, summits and community programming connecting technical talent, AI startups, enterprises and investors. It has become a defin...

Startup communities & events in San Francisco

The wider scene eChai is part of: communities, recurring meetups and annual conferences. Jump to a type, or browse the list.

Communities 11 Recurring meetups 8 Annual conferences 13 Media & platforms 4

Communities 11

TiE Silicon Valley (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Santa Clara / Bay Area

The largest and founding chapter of TiE, the global South-Asian-rooted entrepreneurship nonprofit. Runs year-round mentoring, angel investing (TiE Angels), charter-member networking, and pitch programs, and has empowered ~25,000 entrepre...

South Park Commons (SPC) San Francisco (SoMa/South Park)

A technical community and VC firm founded in 2016 by ex-Facebook/Dropbox execs Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal, focused on the 'minus one to zero' pre-idea stage. Described as an 'anti-incubator'; over 1,000 technologists have joined to...

Founders, Inc. (f.inc) Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

A 42,000 sq ft startup campus and first-check fund founded in 2020 by Furqan Rydhan, at Fort Mason in the Marina. Backs founders in AI, hardware, robotics, AR/VR, and content creation, with a CNC/3D-print hardware lab, media studio, and ...

Cerebral Valley San Francisco (Hayes Valley / citywide)

The umbrella brand/community for SF's AI builder scene (the nickname coined for Hayes Valley's dense AI cluster). Runs co-working sessions in startup offices, a curated events newsletter, hackathons, and connects ML engineers, researcher...

AGI House SF San Francisco (+ Hillsborough mansion)

A prominent AI hacker house / residency in the Bay Area (AGI House Hillsborough opened late 2022, AGI House SF late 2023). Hosts frequent hackathons drawing ~150 Bay Area techies, plus demo nights, workshops, and residencies for AI found...

Neythri San Francisco Bay Area (global)

The world's largest community of South Asian professional women (3,200+ members across 14+ countries), founded 2020 by Mythili Sankaran, Chitra Nayak, and Sruthi Ramaswami; membership is concentrated in the Bay Area. Programming spans le...

Indiaspora San Francisco / Silicon Valley

A nonprofit network of global Indian-diaspora leaders founded in 2012 by Silicon Valley entrepreneur M.R. Rangaswami (co-founder of Sand Hill Group). Convenes founders, investors, philanthropists, and policy leaders through forums and a ...

On Deck / ODF (Founder Fellowship) San Francisco (remote-first)

SF-based founder community (founded 2017) whose flagship ODF Founder Fellowship is a ~10-week program pairing early-stage founders with community, speakers, and support to find co-founders and conviction. Has helped 1,000+ companies rais...

HF0 Residency San Francisco

An SF-based accelerator/residency (est. 2023, led by Dave Fontenot) offering a focused 12-week live-in residency for repeat and high-performing (often AI-heavy) founders, with up to $1M uncapped for ~5% equity, culminating in a Demo Day ...

Berkeley SkyDeck Berkeley

UC Berkeley's flagship startup accelerator, a ~6-month program offering ~$200K for 7.5% with 900+ advisors and a Demo Day to 600+ investors. Anchors the East Bay founder community alongside UC Berkeley's research pipeline. Format: cohort...

Startup Grind Silicon Valley (chapter) Silicon Valley / Bay Area

The local chapter of the global Startup Grind community, running frequent fireside chats, founder panels, and networking (e.g., recurring 'Funded Female Founders' events) across the Bay Area. Also the host org for the annual Startup Grin...

Recurring meetups 8

AI Tinkerers San Francisco San Francisco

A recurring meetup community for engineers, founders, and researchers working on AI agents, multimodal/voice, RAG, AI coding tools, evals, and production AI infra. Sessions blend demos, lightning talks, and hands-on building. Format: mon...

GDG San Francisco (Google Developer Group) San Francisco

The SF chapter of Google Developer Groups, hosting monthly meetups with technical training on emerging Google/AI/Android technologies plus networking. Recent events feature AI, spatial computing, and Google I/O recaps. Format: monthly de...

SF Bay Area AI User Group / SF-Bay AI Developers San Francisco Bay Area

One of the largest Bay Area AI Meetup communities, congregating AI enthusiasts for tech talks, workshops, and code labs on practical AI for developers, designers, and marketers. Format: monthly meetups (Meetup.com), talk + workshop.

Hackers/Founders Bay Area (South Bay, San Mateo, SF)

A long-running grassroots meetup where hackers and founders gather to drink, geek out, and help each other build companies. Hosts coffees, socials, and talks across the Bay from the South Bay to San Mateo to SF. Format: recurring casual ...

Y Combinator Demo Day YC HQ, Dogpatch, San Francisco

YC's twice-per-batch (roughly quarterly) showcase where each startup gets one minute and one slide to pitch investors at YC's Dogpatch offices. The 2025 batches skewed young and heavily AI. Format: invite-only investor demo day, ~2x+ per...

Cerebral Valley Hackathons San Francisco (rotating startup offices)

A recurring series of high-profile AI hackathons run under the Cerebral Valley brand, frequently partnered with model/tool vendors (e.g., Google Gemini, ExecuTorch, TED AI). Draw hundreds of builders for weekend sprints on agentic/multim...

StrictlyVC San Francisco San Francisco

An intimate, high-signal evening event series (a TechCrunch sub-brand founded by Connie Loizos) bringing together VCs and founders for on-stage interviews and networking. Runs periodically through the year in SF (e.g., spring 2026 editio...

SF New Tech San Francisco

For ~15 years (2006–2020) SF's premier stage for early-stage startup demos and entrepreneurial networking; nearly 1,000 companies presented, many becoming unicorns/IPOs. Now lives on as a curated archive (historical note; included for ec...

Annual conferences 13

TiEcon Santa Clara Convention Center

TiE Silicon Valley's flagship annual conference and one of the world's largest entrepreneurship gatherings. TiEcon 2025 (spring) drew ~3,000 attendees, 150 speakers, and 50 sponsors on an AI theme with keynotes from Satya Nadella, Shanta...

Dreamforce Moscone Center, San Francisco

Salesforce's mega-conference and the Bay Area's largest tech event, taking over downtown SF. Dreamforce 2025 ran Oct 14–16 with 40,000+ in person, 200,000+ online, and 1,500+ sessions, positioned as a giant AI (Agentforce) showcase. Form...

NVIDIA GTC (GPU Technology Conference) San Jose Convention Center

NVIDIA's marquee AI/accelerated-computing conference anchored in downtown San Jose, headlined by Jensen Huang's keynote. GTC 2026 runs Mar 16–19 (keynote Mar 16), centered on agentic and physical AI, robotics, and AI-factory infrastructu...

SaaStr Annual San Mateo County Event Center

The world's largest SaaS/cloud community conference, co-located with a dedicated AI Summit. SaaStr Annual 2025 ran May 13–15 in San Mateo with ~13,000–15,000 founders, VCs, and execs. Format: 3-day annual conference, spring.

AI Engineer World's Fair Marriott Marquis, San Francisco

The leading conference for AI engineers (organized by Swyx / Latent Space). The 2025 edition ran Jun 3–5 at the SF Marriott Marquis; the 2026 edition is set for Jun 29–Jul 2 in SF, with tracks on agents, evals, and in-production AI. Form...

Cerebral Valley AI Summit San Francisco

An invite-only, high-density gathering of AI founders and lab leaders (hosted by Newcomer + Volley). The SF edition returned Nov 12, 2025 with leaders from Anthropic, xAI, Vercel, Replit, and more; run ~twice yearly (one SF, one elsewher...

Y Combinator AI Startup School San Francisco

YC's free, hand-picked event for top CS/AI students. The inaugural 2025 edition (Jun 16–17, SF) gathered 2,500 top undergrads, master's, and PhD candidates to hear Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Satya Nadella, Andrej Karpathy, Andrew Ng, Fei-Fei...

SF Tech Week (by a16z) San Francisco (citywide, SoMa hub)

A decentralized week-long festival powered by Andreessen Horowitz's Tech Week platform; SF Tech Week 2025 ran Oct 6–12 with hundreds of community-hosted fireside chats, investor panels, demo days (e.g., SPEEDRUN), and parties across the ...

TechCrunch Disrupt Moscone West, San Francisco

TechCrunch's flagship startup conference, home of the Startup Battlefield 200 pitch competition. Disrupt 2025 ran Oct 27–29 at Moscone West with 10,000+ attendees from 40+ countries and 250+ sessions. Format: 3-day annual conference, Oct...

Startup Grind Global Conference Fox Theatre, Redwood City

Startup Grind's flagship annual gathering in the heart of Silicon Valley; the 2025 edition (Apr 29–30, Fox Theatre, Redwood City) convened ~5,000 startups from 150+ countries for mainstage talks, workshops, and deal-making on GenAI, GTM,...

The AI Conference Pier 48, San Francisco

A vendor-neutral AI conference organized by Ben Lorica and the MLconf team. The 2025 edition ran Sep 17–18 at Pier 48 (Mission Rock), covering AGI, LLMs, infra, alignment, and AI startups. Format: 2-day annual conference, September.

GitHub Universe Fort Mason Center, San Francisco

GitHub's annual developer conference. The 2025 edition ran Oct 28–29 at Fort Mason, SF, focused on AI-assisted development (Copilot) and the developer platform; the 2026 edition returns to SF Oct 28. Format: 2-day annual developer confer...

RSA Conference Moscone Center, San Francisco

The world's largest cybersecurity conference and a major magnet for security startups and investors. RSAC 2025 ran Apr 28–May 1 at Moscone; RSAC 2026 is set for Mar 23–26, SF. Format: 4-day annual conference, spring.

Media & platforms 4

TechCrunch San Francisco

The Bay Area's most influential startup/tech news outlet, covering funding, launches, and the founder ecosystem, and the producer of Disrupt and StrictlyVC events. Editorial leadership includes Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos. Format: dail...

The Information San Francisco

A subscription-based, SF-headquartered tech publication (founded by Jessica Lessin) known for scoops on startups, VC, and Big Tech, plus subscriber events and a strong founder/investor readership. Format: premium daily journalism + commu...

Newcomer San Francisco

A widely-read VC/startup newsletter and media brand by Eric Newcomer covering venture capital, AI, and dealmaking; co-produces the Cerebral Valley AI Summit and Newcomer's own conferences. Format: newsletter/podcast + summits.

StrictlyVC (newsletter) Tiburon / San Francisco

A free daily newsletter (founded 2013 by Connie Loizos, now a TechCrunch sub-brand) chronicling the VC and startup scene in Silicon Valley and beyond, paired with its intimate StrictlyVC live events. Format: daily newsletter + recurring ...

Women founders in San Francisco

Women building companies here, and the founder networks and funds backing them.

Anne Wojcicki biotech

co-founder & CEO, 23andMe

Co-founded consumer genomics pioneer 23andMe in 2006 with Linda Avey and Paul Cusenza, making DNA-based ancestry and health insights mainstream. One of the Bay Area's most prominent women founders and a self...

Tracy Young sales-tech

co-founder & CEO, TigerEye (previously PlanGrid)

Serial Bay Area founder. Co-founded construction-software company PlanGrid, which sold to Autodesk for $875M in 2018. In 2022 she co-founded TigerEye, an AI-powered go-to-market planning and sales-forecastin...

Navrina Singh AI-governance

founder & CEO, Credo AI (Indian-origin)

Indian-origin founder of Credo AI (founded 2020), a leading AI governance and responsible-AI platform helping enterprises manage AI risk and compliance. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI (202...

Surbhi Rathore conversational-AI

co-founder & CEO, Symbl.ai (Indian-origin)

Indian-origin co-founder and CEO of Symbl.ai, a programmable AI platform that lets developers analyze, act on and comply with voice and video conversations at scale. Recognized on Inc.'s 2024 Female Founders...

Leena Joshi sales-tech

co-founder & CEO, CloseFactor (Indian-origin)

Indian-origin founder (IIM Calcutta MBA) who founded CloseFactor in 2020, an ML-driven GTM/sales-research platform that surfaces in-market accounts and buying signals. CloseFactor was acquired by HubSpot in ...

Ruchi Sanghvi community

founder, South Park Commons (Indian-origin)

Indian-origin engineer who was Facebook's first female engineer (built News Feed), later founded Cove (acquired by Dropbox, where she became VP Ops). In 2015 she founded South Park Commons in SF — a technica...

Clara Shih fintech

founder, Hearsay Systems; former CEO of Salesforce AI

Founded Hearsay Systems (2009), an SF-based compliant digital-engagement platform for financial-services advisors. Later served as CEO of Salesforce AI, one of the most senior women in enterprise AI. A promi...

All Raise community

women & nonbinary VC/founder parity nonprofit

Founded 2017 by ~36 senior female investors (incl. Stacey Bishop, Sarah Tavel) and headquartered in San Francisco. The leading nonprofit driving gender parity in VC and startups — runs VC Principal/Partner c...

Elpha community

professional network for women in tech

SF-based professional and social network for women in tech (40,000+ members), founded by Cadran Cowansage and a Y Combinator graduate. Offers public forums, DMs, career resources and a women-in-tech hiring p...

How Women Invest venture

women-led venture fund & LP network

San Francisco-based venture platform investing across multiple funds and leveraging a ~14,000-strong network of women investors to identify and fund high-potential female founders. Pairs capital deployment w...

Girl Geek X community

women-in-tech events & content network

Bay Area women-in-tech community (roots in the long-running Bay Area 'Girl Geek Dinners') led by Angie Chang and Sukrutha Bhadouria. Runs company-hosted dinners, virtual conferences and a podcast connecting ...

Watermark community

women executives & leaders network

One of the largest Bay Area membership organizations for women executives, board directors and entrepreneurs. Runs leadership development, board-readiness and its flagship Watermark Conference for Women, bui...

Hustle Fund venture

Elizabeth Yin, pre-seed fund for underrepresented founders

Bay Area pre-seed fund co-founded by Elizabeth Yin (ex-500 Startups) with a strong track record backing women and underrepresented founders. Runs the 'Angel Squad' community democratizing angel access and pu...

AnitaB.org community

women in computing nonprofit (Grace Hopper Celebration)

Belmont-headquartered global nonprofit advancing women and non-binary technologists, best known for producing the Grace Hopper Celebration, the world's largest gathering of women in computing. Provides commu...

Female Founders Fund venture

Bay Area presence (HQ New York) [FLAG]

FLAG: NOT Bay-Area-HQ'd — Female Founders Fund (F3) is a New York-based early-stage VC firm (founder Anu Duggal) investing exclusively in women-founded tech companies across digital health, AI, deep tech and...

Startup neighbourhoods in San Francisco

The neighbourhoods where the city's founders cluster.

San Francisco (SoMa, Mission Bay & AI Alley)

The city itself is now the centre of gravity: SoMa and Hayes Valley for AI, the 'Cerebral Valley' corridor, Jackson Square's AI Alley, and Mission Bay for biotech and health.

121 companies 25 investors 18 coworking

Strong in AI, Devtools

South San Francisco (Biotech Bay)

The self-styled 'Birthplace of Biotech': Genentech's home turf and the densest life-sciences campus cluster in the world.

8 companies

Strong in Biotech, Devtools

Peninsula & Sand Hill Road

Palo Alto and Menlo Park: Stanford, the classic venture row on Sand Hill Road, and a band of frontier-AI and deeptech names.

27 companies 24 investors 3 coworking

Strong in Web3, Deeptech

South Bay & Silicon Valley

The original Silicon Valley: the chip and infrastructure giants, and the scale-ups that grew up next to them.

29 companies 2 investors 4 coworking

Strong in Deeptech, Climate tech

East Bay

Berkeley and Oakland: university-adjacent deeptech, climate and hardware, at a fraction of the city's rents.

14 companies 2 coworking

Strong in Climate tech, Biotech

Answers about the San Francisco startup scene

What does the startup ecosystem in San Francisco look like?

It is the world's #1 startup ecosystem and the centre of the AI wave. The frontier AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) are here, alongside the deepest clusters anywhere in fintech, SaaS and developer tools, crypto, biotech in South San Francisco, deeptech, climate and space. The vertical pages and Founder Circuit above map who is building what.

Where do founders network in San Francisco and the Bay Area?

At meetups, demo days, AI hacker houses and dinners far more than at conferences. eChai runs free, open founder meetups in the Bay, with an India-in-the-Bay flavour. Beyond eChai there is a thick layer of communities, from SF Tech Week to the AI-house scene, all listed in the communities section below. The simplest first step is to show up to an upcoming event.

Which are the top AI startups and labs in San Francisco?

The frontier labs, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, are all in the Bay, together worth over a trillion dollars. Around them sits a deep field of applied-AI, AI-agent and AI-infrastructure companies. See the AI, Generative AI and AI agents vertical pages above for the full, filterable list.

Who are the Indian founders in Silicon Valley?

A remarkable share of the Bay's most valuable companies are Indian-founded or Indian-led, from AI and SaaS to fintech and security. The Diaspora tab above maps that cluster company by company, and lists the India-linked networks, TiE Silicon Valley, Neythri and Indiaspora, that eChai connects into.

Who are the active VCs and angel investors in the Bay Area?

Sand Hill Road hosts the storied funds (Sequoia, a16z, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Greylock and more), alongside a deep bench of seed funds, crypto funds, and a set of cross-border US-India funds. The investors section above lists firms by type, including the India-linked ones.

Which accelerators and incubators are in San Francisco?

Y Combinator anchors the region, alongside Techstars, a16z's programs, university engines like Berkeley SkyDeck and StartX, and the AI hacker-house scene (AGI House, South Park Commons and more). The incubators and coworking section above lists them by type.

How do I find a co-founder in San Francisco?

Go where founders already gather. Accelerators like Y Combinator and South Park Commons run co-founder matching, but most pairings start informally at meetups, hackathons and AI houses. Come to a few eChai Bay Area events, meet people building adjacent things, and the conversations tend to find their own way to co-founder fit.

How do I join the startup community in San Francisco as an Indian founder?

eChai is free and open, and the Bay chapter is built around the India ↔ Bay bridge. Pick an upcoming event above, RSVP and walk in, no application or fee. It is one of the most natural on-ramps for an Indian founder landing in the Bay to meet both diaspora founders and the wider ecosystem.

What are the best startup events in San Francisco this week?

The upcoming events block above is live: RSVP to the next eChai Bay Area meetup. Beyond eChai, the region runs SF Tech Week, Dreamforce, NVIDIA GTC, TechCrunch Disrupt and a constant stream of AI meetups and hackathons, listed in the communities section.

New to the Bay Area startup scene? Start here.

eChai runs free, open founder meetups in the Bay, and connects the India ↔ Bay founder bridge. No membership, no fee, just show up. RSVP to the next one and meet the people building here.

See upcoming San Francisco events
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