Top Hardware Startups in 2026

Skip is on a mission to make life joyful through powered movement. Movement is a powerful way to build physical, mental and social health. Yet it is elusive for over 2 billion people due to age, injury, or disability. We are building a product that will restore mobility for millions and enable a new frontier of joyful movement experiences. We want to build a future where a grandparent can easily outrun their grandkids and no one is left behind at the trailhead.

Chip is building a new category of vehicle. Most cars are engineered for highway speeds and long-distance range. The reality is that 60% of daily trips are under 6 miles. Chip is built for those trips: fully electric, street-legal on roads up to 35mph, 100+ mile range, and built to fit the way people actually move through their neighborhoods.

Nex is on a mission to help families rediscover the joy of movement. Created by parents for parents, Nex combines technology and play to deliver fun, social, and interactive experiences powered by natural body motion, encouraging kids and adults to move more, play more, and have fun together. Nex Playground, the company’s award-winning active play system, is purpose-built to get families moving year-round, with safety and privacy as core considerations in its intentional design. It is certified kidSAFE+ COPPA compliant and built to support healthy, active play for all ages and abilities.

Autopilot is building the platform enterprises use to deploy, manage, and scale autonomous systems in the physical world. We are still in stealth, but we’ve closed our latest round and are adding key hires to round out our world-class team. From drones to autonomous vehicles, our founding team has built and sold more robots than most teams in the world. Our mission is to free people from repetitive, dangerous, and physically demanding work so they can spend more time doing the things people do best: creating, connecting, solving problems, and caring for one another. We believe the future of work should be more human, not less. Today, bringing robots and other intelligent machines into real business environments remains fragmented, complex, and difficult to scale. Autopilot connects hardware, software, workflows, and human support to turn autonomous technology into reliable operational outcomes. We are currently operating in stealth and working alongside leading enterprises, robotics companies, and infrastructure partners across mission-critical industries. Our team brings experience commercializing autonomous systems, enterprise software, and emerging technologies. We are backed by leading venture and industrial investors. Our philosophy is simple: do good, have fun, and make money. We want to build a consequential company, create meaningful value for our customers and communities, and enjoy the people and the process along the way. If you want to help shape how intelligence enters the physical world while building a future that gives people more freedom, agency, and time for the things that matter, we would love to meet you.

If you’re familiar with any of the DIY single-point smart home products that have appeared on store shelves in the past few years, you might be surprised to learn exactly how ambitious the Vivint Smart Home product suite is, and how both expansive and detailed our knowledge must be to build it. Delivering an industry leading smart home platform requires impressive coordination, as well as broad and deep technical expertise, neither of which is in short supply here. Here’s a sampling of our smart home development efforts: innovation.vivint.com/inside-the-vivint-innovation-center-building-a-smarter-…

Entrada Ventures is a seed-stage fund started by passionate, experienced operators and investors who have built multiple successful companies. We don’t just write checks. We work personally and intensely with a few companies each year helping them develop from a startup with product-market fit to a strong business ready for its first round of institutional financing. By investing in and working with strong founders who’ve demonstrated some traction, we can significantly improve those companies’ ability to understand, manage, and scale their business and raise a tier-one Series A on great terms. Entrada Ventures is based in Santa Barbara, CA, and invests across a broad range of innovative technologies. We are interested to hear from you, but please don't submit business plans or ideas to any of our partners via AngelList. Check out our website and, if you think you are a good fit for our strategy, connect with us through a mutual contact or via our site at entradaventures.com

Halma has a highly sustainable financial model. We are focused on maintaining our companies' growth and returns over the longer term, while delivering performance in the shorter term.