Vernius Systems, Inc.
Hiring
What they do:
Mass-deployable radars for air defense
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
Top Space & Defense Startups
This list has 149 startups and was last updated on Oct 15, 2026. 46 of them are hiring right now. Biggest hubs: San Francisco (47), Los Angeles (23), and New York (6). Largest teams: Relativity Space, Astranis, and Stoke Space. Latest round: Onebrief raised $151M (Oct 14, 2026).
149 startupsPage 3 of 5
Enhanced Radar
Hiring
What they do:
AI for air traffic control
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
Synapse Semiconductor
Hiring
What they do:
New semiconductors that merge compute and vision
Quick facts:
HQ: Durham, NC, United States
IMPACT Drones
Hiring
What they do:
Air Defense as a Service for Civilian Infrastructure.
Quick facts:
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
Quick facts:
HQ: Livermore, CA, United States
What they do:
Building persistent, high-performance infrastructure in the sky
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HQ: Seattle, WA, United States
What they do:
Tracking methane emissions with satellites
Quick facts:
HQ: Remote
Consus
Hiring
What they do:
The fastest and cheapest way to use AI with ITAR or CUI data.
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Rocket cargo delivery to contested environments
Quick facts:
HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
Autonomous street sweeping as a service by retro-fitting vehicles
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Search and automation for engineer-to-order companies
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Hypersonic space plane that can take-off from any location and weather
Quick facts:
HQ: Dayton, OH, United States
What they do:
Unified flight software and hardware for the mission of tomorrow
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
Spaceium Inc
Hiring
What they do:
In-Space Refueling
Quick facts:
What they do:
Building lunar landers
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HQ: London, United Kingdom
What they do:
The GD&T Analysis Platform for Engineering Drawings
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
Zymbly
Hiring
What they do:
The decision-support layer for aviation ops teams to know what to do…
Quick facts:
HQ: London, United Kingdom
YC W26Early stage
What they do:
A new kind of camera that can see through walls.
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
We make the world's most efficient aircraft
Quick facts:
What they do:
Emission free hydrogen electric aircraft
Quick facts:
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:
Reusable heavy-lift rockets
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HQ: Dresden, Germany
What they do:
We visually monitor space objects for governments and defense
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What they do:
The new American reinsurance company.
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HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
USA-made magnetics for robotics and defense.
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HQ: Boston, MA, United States
What they do:
Building a neutral, sovereign alternative to Starlink
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States
What they do:
Discover novel defense related materials/molecules.
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HQ: Haifa, Israel
What they do:
Kill the drone, keep the jet. Reusable unmanned interceptors.
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HQ: Denver, CO, United States
What they do:
The highest-accuracy global weather data from low-cost flat satellites
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HQ: Orem, UT, 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
Quick facts:
HQ: Los Angeles, CA, United States
What they do:
End-to-end Simulation for Defense Autonomy
Quick facts:
HQ: San Francisco, CA, United States