Enhanced Radar
Hiring
What they do:
AI for air traffic control
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
Top Space & Defense Startups in California
This list has 75 startups and was last updated on Oct 15, 2026. 30 of them are hiring right now. Biggest hubs: San Francisco (47) and Los Angeles (23). Largest teams: Relativity Space, Astranis, and Momentus. Latest round: Vanguard Defense raised $6.28M (Mar 10, 2026).
75 startupsPage 2 of 3
IMPACT Drones
Hiring
What they do:
Air Defense as a Service for Civilian Infrastructure.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Drone swarm defence at a small-unit level
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Tesseract builds better thrusters for modern satellites
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HQ: Livermore, CA, United States
Consus
Hiring
What they do:
The fastest and cheapest way to use AI with ITAR or CUI data.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Rocket cargo delivery to contested environments
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Autonomous street sweeping as a service by retro-fitting vehicles
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Search and automation for engineer-to-order companies
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Unified flight software and hardware for the mission of tomorrow
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
The GD&T Analysis Platform for Engineering Drawings
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
A new kind of camera that can see through walls.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Building a nervous system for the atmosphere
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
We're building robot birds for surveillance.
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Building drone swarms that hunt hidden enemies.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Unmanned cargo airplanes
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
The new American reinsurance company.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Building a neutral, sovereign alternative to Starlink
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Building low-cost cruise missiles
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Quick-turn bent tube shop for aerospace, energy, industrials
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
End-to-end Simulation for Defense Autonomy
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Delivering AI-powered situational awareness in tactical environments.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Powering tomorrow's industrial revolution in space
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HQ: San Diego, CA, United States
What they do:
Foundation models for 24/7 Earth Observation
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
The hardware-agnostic operating system for drone defense
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
We make silicon on the Moon, to power everything in space.
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Deploying robots to replace workers in hazardous spaces
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Precision navigation for UAVs operating without GPS.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Prime Lightworks Inc. manufactures electric propulsion systems for…
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HQ: Culver City, CA, United States
What they do:
Building and Protecting an Exciting Future
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Tankless Dive Gear - Breath Autonomy at Sea, Land & Space
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Autopilot for Flight Operations
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
YC S26Early stage
What they do:
Hyperscaling space manufacturing
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HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
YC F26Early stage
What they do:
AI-guided ballistic missiles, cheap enough to field in numbers that…
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
YC F26Early stage
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HQ: San Bruno, CA, United States
Incorporated: 2024
Funding:
$33.2M · Equity · Feb 2026
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HQ: Fullerton, CA, United States
Incorporated: 2024
Funding:
$6.28M · SAFE · Mar 2026
Talyn Air
Acquired
What they do:
Long range, battery electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
Quick facts:
HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States