Top Tech Startups in California, US in 2027

Haystack News is the leading local & world news service on Connected TVs reaching millions of users and empowering them with a personalized newscast. We are one of the fastest-growing TV News companies in the world, and are already preloaded on 37% of all TVs shipped in the US! Haystack News already has direct relationships with all major TV companies (Samsung, Sony, Vizio, LG, etc) as well as hundreds of premium TV news channels including ABC News, CBSi, Bloomberg, and local TV stations for 90% of the country. Haystack News is redefining the future of TV news and we pride ourselves on our ability to move faster and execute better than anyone else in our industry. We accomplish this by working with the smartest people and staying on the cutting-edge. We measure ourselves by the impact we are having on individuals’ daily lives and on the television industry as a whole.

Voicera is building the data layer for trust analytics, empowering People to score sincerity in human communication objectively at scale. Why now? Trust is the new currency. • Problem: All video meetings are recorded and processed by LLMs. How people communicate is lost in transcription, causing misinterpretation, and bad decisions. • Solution : Sincerity™ by Voicera analyzes people's behavior to assess how truthful they are from non-verbal cues with 80% accuracy. • Use Cases: Sales (customer insights, revenue forecasts), Training, HR (recruitment), Internal Fraud Investigations… • Outcomes: Voicera empowers customers to make more informed, ethical decisions in situations where trust is critical.

Moloco is an AI-native performance advertising company, bringing the power of AI advertising to the open internet. From the growing world of apps, connected TV, retail media, and wherever attention goes next we deliver the measurable impact businesses need in the places where users are engaging the most. At Moloco, we combine advanced technology with hands-on expertise, from driving user acquisition and re-engagement for some of the world’s leading apps to powering the ad businesses of global retail giants. Customers share their business goals, and our compound AI system opens up new frontiers for performance.

Hi! I'm Benji, the Co-Founder and CEO at Ashby. At Ashby, we're improving the productivity of working professionals with intelligent and powerful software. We put a lot of effort into designing products that are approachable to beginners but mastered & extended by power users. In many ways, spreadsheets set the bar here. Our first products provide talent teams with clever automation, powerful analytics tools, and customizable workflows packaged in great UX. We haven't launched publicly, but we have many paying customers who love us and use us every day like Opendoor, Airtable, Duolingo, and Notion. Notion's Head of Talent said Ashby is "probably the tool we are in the most and rely on the most, as a recruiting team." Our culture is motivated by Abhik's (my co-founder and Head of Engineering) and my belief that a small talented team, given the right environment, can build a great product and service fast (and work regular hours!). We hire exceptional people and provide an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We are well funded and backed by great investors, including Y Combinator, Elad Gil, and Lachy Groom. We'll share more once we meet!

Nova Credit is a credit infrastructure and analytics company that enables businesses to grow responsibly through alternative credit data. As a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA), Nova Credit leverages its unique data infrastructure, compliance framework, and credit expertise to help lenders fill critical gaps in traditional credit analytics. The company transforms the fragmented universe of consumer financial data into compliant, actionable risk insights through a comprehensive platform designed to increase conversion through expanded coverage, speed, and reliability. Leading organizations, including HSBC, RBC, SoFi, Scotiabank, Appfolio, and Yardi, work with Nova Credit to make smarter credit decisions through cash flow underwriting with Cash Atlas™, quickly verify income with Income Navigator, and reach new-to-country consumers with Credit Passport®. Learn more at novacredit.com or reach out to [email protected]

Stripe is a software platform for starting and running internet businesses. Millions of businesses rely on Stripe’s software tools to accept payments, expand globally, and manage their businesses online. Stripe has been at the forefront of expanding internet commerce, powering new business models, and supporting the latest platforms, from marketplaces to mobile commerce sites. We believe that growing the GDP of the internet is a problem rooted in code and design, not finance. Stripe is built for developers, makers, and creators. We work on solving the hard technical problems necessary to build global economic infrastructure—from designing highly reliable systems to developing advanced machine learning algorithms to prevent fraud.

FarmRaise is the first ever one-stop-shop for farm funding that empowers farmers with knowledge and access to capital to grow their farms into thriving and sustainable operations.

At Veo, we're bringing the next generation of mobility sharing to cities and universities globally through our dockless pedal bike, e-bike and e-scooter systems. We also offer fat-tire bikes, cargo bikes and ADA-compliant bikes – making us the only shared mobility provider with this breadth of options. We design and engineer our own vehicles, hardware and software systems to provide a greener, healthier mode of transportation to make the communities we serve more sustainable and livable. Our mission is to offer the best combination of multi-modal sharing technology and seamless customer service, so users can unlock joy in their day. We are looking for exceptionally talented individuals who are ready to take on exciting challenges and own solutions. We are headquartered in Chicago, IL, but we are hiring across the U.S. Join us!

Sardine helps fintech, crypto, and web3 companies "move money confidently" by developing fraud, compliance, and payment infrastructure. With Sardine, builders can focus on growing their business instead of spending time, fighting against fraudsters. We're growing incredibly fast and powering over 100 customers around the world like Brex, MoonPay, Bakkt, Luno, Transak, Chippercash, Candy Digital, Metamask, Brave, and RelayFi.

Chalk is building machine learning infrastructure to answer the world’s hardest questions. Our platform is built to power credit, risk, insurance, medical, and recommendation decisions for the world’s most innovative companies. Answering these complex questions requires sourcing data from a wide range of providers and rapidly iterating on feature definitions. Chalk makes it easy for machine learning teams to build high-performance pipelines that deliver data to models at the right time. We orchestrate infrastructure and automatically track data lineage so developers can work confidently and focus on their unique products and insights. Chalk is based in San Francisco, California. Meet Our Founders Elliot (linkedin.com/in/elliotmarx) started his career at Affirm where he built the early risk and credit data infrastructure system (the inspiration for Chalk). He then started Haven Money (with Andy) which Credit Karma acquired to power its banking products. Andy (linkedin.com/in/amoreland) met Elliot at Stanford admit weekend – Elliot was his room host and they’ve been best friends ever since. After school, Andy worked at Palantir on large government data infrastructure projects. He then founded Haven Money (with Elliot) which now powers Credit Karma Money. Marc (linkedin.com/in/marcff) spent many years at Google where he helped to launch the first version of Google Wallet. He went on to start Index which Stripe acquired as its in-store payment solution – it’s now called Stripe Terminal.