Top Tech Startups in South Bay in 2027

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.

Oklo is a California-based company developing clean energy plants to provide emission-free, reliable, and affordable energy using advanced fission. Oklo is a fast-growing startup with a history of reliable funding and milestones for more than 5 years. Oklo’s first product is a microgrid scale powerhouse. The powerhouse can produce clean energy for decades without needing to refuel, and also has the capability to turn nuclear waste into clean energy. Oklo received a Site Use Permit from the U.S Department of Energy, demonstrated fabrication of its fuel, was awarded fuel from the Idaho National Laboratory, and submitted the first accepted advanced fission license application to the regulator. Oklo has been featured in Popular Mechanics, Wired, Architectural Digest, Hyperallergic, POWER Magazine, and has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case, and was featured in the documentary The New Fire, among many other features.

For many organizations, the most valuable asset is their data. Whether source code, product designs, customer records, financial results, or pricing models, every organization has information they don’t want to get in the hands of competitors, sold on darknet marketplaces, or exposed publicly. Keeping that data safe has been a challenge, until now. Cyberhaven gives organizations the tools to safeguard their data from theft or misuse. In the process, we’ve become the standard for Data Detection and Response (DDR), the category we helped create.

The software used to manage networks hasn’t kept up with the dramatic expansion of networks themselves. The Forward Networks solution is designed to help network teams eliminate network outages and reduce time to remediate errors. Its platform enables engineers and operators to visualize and search complex networks, debug configuration problems, verify network-wide policy implementations, and predict network behavior prior to deploying changes. Forward Networks builds a software replica of an entire network to analyze its behavior. Using the network copy, the software traces, indexes, and stores the collected data, monitoring things like end-to-end behavior, verification of the network’s forwarding behavior and security posture, and close monitoring of configuration changes.

Q Bio is revolutionizing primary care with the first clinical digital twin platform, powered by breakthrough whole-body scanning technology, that highlights the most important changes in a person’s physiology for sharing with physicians and specialists anywhere in the world. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Carlos, California. Q Bio was founded by Jeffrey Kaditz, serial entrepreneur and Founder of Affirm, Dr Michael Snyder, Chair of Genetics and Director of Personalized Medicine and Stanford University, and Dr Garry Choy, physician, radiologist, and former Chief Medical Information Officer at Mass General Hospital. We are fortunate to be backed by some of the best venture groups in the world including: A16Z, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, SciFi VC, and Kevin Durant.

We are solving a huge problem in financial services that has been lying unsolved for decades. All major payment systems (including wallets ) require two sided onboarding i.e. Payor and Payee need to onboard before they can transact. We have built a way to generate and transmit Digital Payments without onboarding the Payee/Recipient. This is huge in terms of bringing traditional paper and cash payments online. Add to that, we've figured out a clever way to monetize from both sides thereby changing the financial equation from Customers paying us to us paying our customers cash back from card fees! Our investors, whom we call our "believers," include Tim Draper, Adam Draper (Tim Draper's family), Naval Ravikabt through his AngelList Maiden Fund, co-founder of Intuit and more! Institutional investors include a top 4 bank and top 5 insurance company. Checkbook lets businesses move away from paper to deliver Digital Checks directly to a recipients email. This allows businesses to keep all their existing Accounts Payable (or Accounts Receivable processes) in place while moving to a completely online solution. All you need to send a check is the name and email of the recipient along with the amount you are sending. Recipients do not need to sign up for any service, download any app or pay any fees to receive payments. Digital Checks can be deposited and cashed online after instantly verifying banking credentials. No more paying high % based transaction fees on credit and debit cards or sharing sensitive bank account and routing numbers to payor.

LitByLeia Our core IP uses a nanostructured light guide plate in a standard edge-lit configuration to produce a custom lightfield illumination of the LCD front-plane. From smartphones to TV screens, the possibilities for the LitByLeia™ experience are endless. Supporting standard applications processors and standard display interfaces. LeiaLoft Engage, immerse and experience. LeiaLoft™ is an exciting platform that offers bespoke content designed for Leia-enabled devices. Experience games and apps like never before and open up a world of alluring beauty. Watch your favorite movies on your device in new depth. With no need for glasses, these movies are made for sharing. Find new ways to experience familiar things: see apps come to life and create images you can move around. Virtual reality becomes real as you mix the two in richer, more immersive ways.

Arch works with top-tier global manufacturers to extract data from any machine and drive uniform metrics for enhanced productivity and predictive analytics. We focus on the electronics manufacturing supply chains, digitizing both greenfield and brownfield factories. Using the Arch Utilization Suite, manufacturers are achieving real, state-of-the-art 20-40% machine utilization improvements. Arch provides one of the largest surface mount technology (SMT) machine connector libraries in the world and has partnerships with the leading PCB manufacturing machine vendors. We are deployed on 5 continents and connected to thousands of machines inside the facilities of 4 of the world's top 10 electronics manufacturers. Arch began by monitoring wells in Tanzania, Africa where cutting-edge IIOT technology was developed to make older machines smart. A core part of our mission is to continue making these and other building blocks of technology available for sustainable development, including monitoring wells for access to clean drinking water and projects promoting sustainable industrialization for all nations.

Madison Reed (madison-reed.com) is an e-commerce start-up with a team of 180+ rock stars in San Francisco. We’re revolutionizing the $50B hair care market using technology (web, mobile, tablet, social) to radically innovate the user experience and business model. Madison Reed is headquartered in SF and backed by top-tier venture capital firms Norwest VP, True Ventures, Maveron and Shea Ventures.

IrisAgent is AI for customer support. We plug into the helpdesks teams already run (Zendesk, Salesforce Service, Intercom, Freshdesk) and put AI to work across the whole support operation: AI agents for chat, email, voice, and SMS, automated ticket tagging and routing, QA scoring of every support conversation, and support analytics that show leaders what is actually happening. Our buyers are VPs and Heads of Support and CX Ops. Customers like Tekion have seen about 50% chat resolution and about 5x agent productivity across 300K+ queries. We also build Iris Control, an LLM control plane for engineering leaders: irisagent.com/llm-control-plane We raised a $4.1M seed led by Neotribe Ventures with Engineering Capital. We are a small team, HQ in Mountain View, CA, with the team distributed across the US. Learn more at irisagent.com