Hard Tech Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2025

January 2025

Browse 75 of the top Hard Tech startups funded by Y Combinator.

We also have a Startup Directory where you can search through over 5,000 companies.

  • Proxy
    Proxy (s2016)Acquired • 20 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We're building a mobile and wearable digital wallet that makes interacting with payments, identity, and authentication seamless, fun, and empowering. Acquired by OURA in 2023
    hard-tech
    hardware
    consumer
    identity
  • Zelos Cloud
    Zelos Cloud (s2023)Active • 3 employees
    Zelos Cloud is accelerating electronics product development with powerful tools for emulation, tracing, and automated testing on real microcontrollers in the cloud. As firmware engineers, we spent years developing and shipping products at scale. Between batteries, bootloaders and brain implants, we've seen it all. Our mission is to build the tools we wish we had to enable teams to ship higher quality products, faster.
    hard-tech
    manufacturing
    data-visualization
  • Piramidal
    Piramidal (w2024)Active • 2 employees • 777 Tennessee St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
    Get instant diagnosis for the vast majority of neurological conditions using our Foundational AI.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    neurotechnology
    health-tech
    diagnostics
  • Sinovia Technologies
    Sinovia Technologies (w2017)Active • 7 employees • San Carlos, CA, USA
    We use the printing methods used for newspapers, packaging, posters, and other graphic media to make beautiful, emissive electronic displays with high-end OLED technology aimed at low-cost applications. Our displays are paper-thin, flexible, and can be easily custom printed in a variety of shapes and sizes, allowing hardware designers to use displays and indicators on curved surfaces and in new ways.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    iot
  • Yummy Future
    Yummy Future (s2019)Active • 7 employees • Champaign, IL, USA
    We amplify worker produtivity by10X. Restaurants and food retail businesses require high volume and consistency, yet many business owners struggle to achieve this. Employees also dislike working in repetitive and labor-intensive environments, where even a slight mistake can lead to customer complaints. This results in high turnover rates in the restaurant industry. Our goal is to let robots and machines handle the boring, laborious tasks so that humans can focus on engaging with customers and collecting product feedback.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    hardware
    robotics
    ai
  • SiPhox Health
    SiPhox Health (s2020)Active • 30 employees • Burlington, MA, USA
    We are developing a new paradigm for consumer health tech wearables by replacing a 100lb optical instrument with an area of silicon smaller than a postage stamp.
    hard-tech
    biometrics
    nanosensors
    health-tech
    health-&-wellness
  • Atomic Industries
    Atomic Industries (w2021)Active • 25 employees • Detroit, MI, USA
    Atomic's mission is to replicate high-skill trade knowledge of tool and die makers into AI that powers new manufacturing systems which are orders of magnitude more productive.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    manufacturing
  • Polymath Robotics
    Polymath Robotics (s2022)Active • 11 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Polymath is building a general autonomy stack for cautious vehicles. Our software allows any industrial vehicle - whether it's a tractor in a field or a bulldozer in a mine, drive itself. We bundle together AI, ML, Controls, ROS, Safety and best-in-class deployment practices to enable our customers to tell automated vehicles to do via a REST API. We're on more robots than we have engineers, are seeing our revenue (and robotic fleet) grow rapidly, and are looking for folks who want to help automate the world.
    hard-tech
    machine-learning
    robotics
    unmanned-vehicle
    ai
  • Alba Orbital
    Alba Orbital (w2021)Active • 16 employees • Glasgow, UK
    Alba Orbital is building the world's largest earth observation constellation, imaging everywhere on earth, every 15 minutes. We can see events within minutes such as wildfires in real time and have signed >$85m of LOIs, with both government and commercial customers paying pre-orders for imagery. To date we have launched 41 satellites into orbit (more than any other seed stage company in history), with more launching in 2024 onwards. We have launched a number of technology demonstration imaging satellites called Unicorns, which are the world's most advanced satellite under 1kg ever flown in orbit.
    hard-tech
    satellites
  • Vena Vitals
    Vena Vitals (s2020)Active • 9 employees • Irvine, CA, USA
    Vena Vitals makes a small sticker that monitors blood pressure continuously. We've shown that it works in the operating room and is as accurate as the best tools doctors have today, at a fraction of the cost. We're a team of health tech scientists with multiple past startups and exits, and we've built products that have scaled to over 2M users.
    hard-tech
    nanosensors
    health-tech
    medical-devices
    digital-health
  • Elodin
    Elodin (w2024)Active • 5 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Elodin creates flight software, simulations, and hardware for drones, satellites, and defense.
    hard-tech
    drones
    satellites
    rocketry
    aerospace
  • Tessa
    Tessa (w2025)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Tessa is an AI coworker that can autonomously learn and master the usage of web-based tools, just like a human does. To accomplish this, we are building a novel neural architecture that enables autonomous self-improvement in AI agents. So far, we've achieved a state-of-the-art success rate of 93% on the WebVoyager benchmark. We are working to automate workflows in several verticals, including property management & real estate, financial services, and consulting.
    hard-tech
    reinforcement-learning
    automation
    ai
    ai-assistant
  • Holy Grail
    Holy Grail (s2019)Active • 7 employees • San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
    Holy Grail removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to contribute to the long-term sustainability of humans and other species on Earth
    carbon-capture-and-removal
    hard-tech
    hardware
    climate
    climatetech
  • Albedo
    Albedo (w2021)Active • 55 employees • Denver, CO, USA
    Albedo is the first space company to commercialize the new orbit regime of VLEO (very low earth orbit). VLEO enables enhanced data quality for numerous earth observation modalities. Our first VLEO satellite, named Clarity and built in-house, is launching in 2025 and will capture visible & thermal images at a resolution that can only be obtained today from drones/planes (commercially) or classified National Security systems. The world is rapidly changing and a new level of visibility and transparency is required to solve some of our largest problems. Albedo’s 10cm visible and 2m thermal imagery will fuel insights for industries such as mapping, insurance, utilities, solar, agriculture, carbon offsets, infrastructure sustainability, national security, and much more.
    hard-tech
    satellites
    climate
    aerospace
  • Andromeda Surgical
    Andromeda Surgical (s2023)Active • 10 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We're building autonomous robots to make surgery safe, easier and more efficient. Robots currently perform about 1/4 of surgeries but only help with the physical aspects. We use AI to make surgery cognitively easier. This has far greater potential to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Founded by 3x founders from medtech and autonomous vehicles, we're on track to be the fastest surgical robot to market of all time. First indication is prostate enucleation.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    machine-learning
    medical-robotics
    medical-devices
  • Sorcerer
    Sorcerer (s2024)Active • 3 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Sorcerer builds weather balloons that collect 1000x more data than traditional systems. We have $5.5+ of signed LOIs with the US National Weather Service, the Department of Defense, and the government of El Salvador.
    hard-tech
    climate
    aerospace
    ai
  • Volta Labs, Inc.
    Volta Labs, Inc. (w2019)Active • 50 employees • Cambridge, MA, USA
    Volta Labs is a genomics applications company that has developed a cutting-edge digital fluidics platform to maximize performance and scalability of sample preparation in genomics while providing unparalleled consistency. Volta is transforming the way biological research and analyses are performed, allowing scientists to focus on what they do best -- pushing the boundaries of biology. As a collective of scientists and builders working at the intersection of engineering and biology, we imagine a world where extracting vital information from biological samples is as simple as pressing a button. That's our vision, and we're turning it into reality. Our HQ is in Boston’s Seaport, where we develop and manufacture our technology. We believe in cross-functional collaboration and continuous learning – whether your interest is in biology, MechEng, CompEng, or simply joining a fast-growing startup striving to make the world a better place, we'd love to welcome you to our team. Check out some of our blog posts to learn more about work life at Volta.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    robotics
    genomics
    biotechnology
  • NetworkOcean
    NetworkOcean (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We build underwater data centers to cut power usage by up to 30%, operating GPUs cheaper and more sustainably. Our 1 MW capsule is being tested underwater in the SF Bay
    hard-tech
    hardware
    cloud-computing
    climatetech
    ai
  • Ultra
    Ultra (s2024)Active • 4 employees • New York, NY, USA
    Ultra builds AI-powered robots that automate the dull, repetitive labor still done by people in American warehouses. We’re starting with e-commerce order packaging in fulfillment centers — where a worker puts items in a box, seals it, and labels it. Traditional automation isn't working for warehouses because it's costly, rigid, and often underutilized. Ultra’s robots are different: they’re easy to deploy, adaptable, and powered by AI that’s trained through examples.
    hard-tech
    robotics
    logistics
    ai
  • Advano
    Advano (s2017)Active • 25 employees • New Orleans, LA, USA
    Combining nanotechnology with fundamental chemical engineering principles to accelerate the renewable energy revolution.
    energy-storage
    hard-tech
    climate
  • AutoPallet Robotics
    AutoPallet Robotics (s2024)Active • 3 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We’re building the next generation of warehouse robotics. In the US today, retailers spend approximately $10B per year paying human laborers to pick up and move cardboard boxes in warehouses. Existing solutions for automating this are expensive and difficult to install, which is why manual operation is still so prevalent. Our solution is different. We make swarms of small mobile robots that install into existing warehouses to provide a low-cost and robust automation solution for case picking and mixed-SKU palletization. Our novel technology allows these robots to be installed and operate at significantly lower cost than existing solutions while being both flexible and robust.
    hard-tech
    machine-learning
    warehouse-management-tech
    swarm-robotics
    automation
  • Orbital Operations
    Orbital Operations (w2025)Active • 2 employees • Huntington Beach, CA, USA
    Orbital Operations is developing a high thrust space vehicle that is refuellable and stays in orbit to ferry customers beyond low earth orbit (LEO). This allows satellite customers to take advantage of the low cost, low lead time, and low effort launches to LEO and have us rendezvous with them in space to transport them to their final destination. Our high thrust and high efficiency is made possible by a unique cryogenic fuel management system being implemented on the vehicle to keep propellants cold so they don't boil. This allows us to use the same propulsion systems that have been developed by launch vehicles over the last few decades (NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, ect.). Ben and Ross met while working together at Relativity Space, where they qualified the cryogenic flight termination valves for the Terran 1 rocket and continued working together on the heat exchangers and turbomachinery for the AeonR engine. We are currently working on the first demo of our unique cryo management system and intend to launch an operational vehicle by 2027.
    hard-tech
    space-exploration
    aerospace
  • AstroForge
    AstroForge (w2022)Active • 10 employees • Huntington Beach, CA, USA
    AstroForge is an asteroid mining company. Instead of bringing back the entire asteroid, we break it up, refine, and return only what’s valuable.
    hard-tech
    robotics
    space-exploration
    satellites
  • Synnax
    Synnax (s2024)Active • 3 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We build software that helps hardware teams quickly and clearly evaluate how a component (engine, battery, valve, etc.) or process (assembly line, manufacturing plant) performs. We prevent mistakes, reduce costs, and accelerate time-to-market. Our platform unifies industrial control with sensor data storage and automated post-processing, delivering an end-to-end operations and observability stack. To put it comparatively, take LabVIEW, InfluxDB, and Grafana, wrap them into a single package, add a bit of magic, and you get Synnax.
    hard-tech
    data-visualization
    time-series
    industrial
    databases
  • Helion Energy
    Helion Energy (s2014)Active • 150 employees • Everett, WA, USA
    Helion is creating the world’s first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited zero-carbon electricity.
    fusion-energy
    hard-tech
    climate
    energy
  • Forge Automation
    Forge Automation (w2025)Active • 7 employees • Toronto, ON, Canada
    Forge Automation runs software enabled factories that deliver custom metal parts in four days or less. Instead of mechanical engineers having to wait two to three weeks for their low volume CNC parts, they can simply upload a CAD model on our platform and we will ship it out in four days or less. We aim to give mechanical engineers the "Amazon experience" for custom metal parts.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    robotics
    manufacturing
    industrial
  • 1849 bio
    1849 bio (s2024)Active • 3 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    1849 bio designs microbes enabling cheap metal extraction allowing miners to unlock value from low quality copper and gold ores. Surprisingly, the mining industry is one of the largest scale users of biotech in the world with biomining processes accounting for ~1% of global copper production. Biomining is ultra-low cost, running around ~$1/ton of ore vs ~$7/ton for conventional processes. Unfortunately, while biomining is cheap, it can’t be applied to over 80% of copper ores, leaving vast resources without profitable extraction methods. An estimated ~$800B of copper sit today in waste materials and stockpiles with negative unit economics. While a great deal of effort has been spent on optimizing microbial metal extraction processes, very little effort has been spent on optimizing the microbes themselves. To change that, we’re creating new biotech tools and platforms applied directly to the types of biology most relevant to miners. This enables us to develop new microbes and tackle some of the most difficult problems in biomining, unlocking billions in value from unprofitable resources while being more environmentally friendly than conventional processes. We’re world class microbial engineers. We met while doing our PhDs in synthetic biology, where we spent our time applying and developing the most advanced bioengineering technologies to engineer living cells. 
    hard-tech
    synthetic-biology
    biotech
    climate
    mining
  • CircuitHub
    CircuitHub (w2012)Active • 58 employees • London, UK
    CircuitHub is on a mission to fix rapid electronics prototyping. We are the first automated electronics factory built around a modern tech stack. We help hardware companies producing self-driving cars, satellites, 3D printers, robotics, & more to rapidly prototype electronics and get to market faster.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    robotics
  • Spaceium Inc
    Spaceium Inc (s2024)Active • Long Beach, CA, USA
    Spaceium builds fully automated space stations to refuel and repair spacecraft. We have secured $86.1 million in binding commercial contracts and have an additional $230 million in the pipeline. Additionally, we have 1 billion dollars in letters of intent. We have successfully tested our hardware, which will launch to space next year. Our fully automated space stations will efficiently store and transfer both cryogenic (extremely cold) and non-cryogenic fuels with zero loss during storage and transfer. And they can transfer fuel seamlessly to any spacecraft design using our proprietary modular robotic arm. Our customers include launch vehicles, orbital transfer vehicles, moon landers, and spacecraft that benefit from increased payload capacity and extended travel capabilities. Our long-term vision is to build service hubs along the space superhighway to connect Earth to Moon and Mars and help humanity to become multi multi-planetary species
    hard-tech
    robotics
    space-exploration
    aerospace
  • Biocartesian
    Biocartesian (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Finding new cures requires seeing what and where the abnormal molecules are in a diseased tissue, but current tools see less than 1% of those molecules. Biocartesian combines microscopy and new chemistries to see 50X more, offering unprecedented insights into disease biology and new therapies.
    hard-tech
    b2b
    biotech
    diagnostics
    drug-discovery
  • Flux Auto
    Flux Auto (w2021)Active • 56 employees • Houston, TX, USA
    Flux Auto is building autonomous mobility technology to fully automate the movement and operation of vehicles in controlled spaces. Using Flux's solutions customers can reduce their dependency on human drivers, while also increasing productivity and reducing operating costs. Flux is currently deploying in warehouses, farms and mines.
    artificial-intelligence
    autonomous-trucking
    hard-tech
    robotics
    logistics
  • GBatteries
    GBatteries (w2014)Active • 25 employees • Ottawa, ON, Canada
    Our technology enables li-ion batteries to charge extremely fast while retaining long cycle life using smart control algorithms.
    energy-storage
    hard-tech
    climate
  • Conductor Quantum
    Conductor Quantum (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Quantum computers will allow humanity to understand the world at its most fundamental level, enabling the acceleration of drug discovery and the development of new materials. Currently, quantum engineers spend days, sometimes weeks, manually getting their silicon chips to operational conditions to realize two qubits. A qubit is the information-carrying unit of a quantum computer, analogous to a bit in a classical computer. We need billions of qubits to make a useful quantum computer. Therefore, automation software will be vital to realizing this goal. Conductor Quantum will develop AI software to remove the human from the loop, enable the scaling of silicon quantum technology and build a silicon-based quantum computer.
    hard-tech
    machine-learning
    quantum-computing
    semiconductors
    ai
  • Airthium
    Airthium (s2017)Active • 12 employees • Paris, France
    We build engines that have the potential to slash 33% or worldwide CO2 emissions - cost-effectively. First, we help food and mining companies cut both their heat costs *and* CO2 emissions by replacing gas-fired steam boilers with our proprietary high temperature heat pumps. Our heat pumps make up to 3x more heat with the same amount of electricity, even at up to 1000°F. Once the heat pump market is mature, we will address the seasonal energy storage market. Our storage units are based on the exact same proprietary engine we use for our heat pumps. They work with solar and wind, and replace lithium-ion batteries, fossil-fired power plants, CO2 capture and storage, and fuel procurement, with a cheaper, sustainable and more reliable alternative, which can be sited anywhere. The first opportunity is a high-margin market worth 3% of worldwide CO2. The second is a much bigger market worth 30% of worldwide CO2. By the time all cars become electric, it will be even more. Our key is we are building the first Stirling engine to reach 86% of the Carnot efficiency, compared to 64% for the state of the art. We do all that while significantly decreasing costs, and increasing reliability. Please see Airthium's website for more information.
    energy-storage
    hard-tech
    hardware
    climate
    energy
  • SRTX
    SRTX (w2018)Active • 150 employees • Montreal, QC, Canada
    SRTX builds new materials and software to enable better textiles. SRTX is best known for its first technology, Sheertex, a knit made from one of the world's strongest polymers which has disrupted hosiery through impossibly strong pantyhose.
    hard-tech
    smart-clothing
    consumer
    manufacturing
  • Atomic Alchemy
    Atomic Alchemy (w2019)Active • 5 employees • Idaho Falls, ID, USA
    Atomic Alchemy is building a bank of reactors to produce the nuclear material that goes into nuclear medicine. Radiopharmaceuticals are vitally important in biological tracers, diagnostic imaging, and cancer treatments. Currently, the world's supply of Molybdenum-99, the cornerstone of 80% of all nuclear medicine procedures, is sourced from just six government-run, scientific research reactors abroad. Five of these reactors are 45-65 years old and are quickly coming to the end of their operational life. This has cultivated a fragile and lengthy supply chain, at odds with the nature of radioactive material. This issue and its implications do not just effect molybdenum, but any other reactor-based isotope. Many promising cancer therapies are stuck in clinical trials, unable to secure enough material in a timely manner. Research doesn’t even happen because of the difficulty of sourcing any new isotopes. It doesn't have to be this way. Atomic Alchemy is working to solve this by building the world's first scalable radioisotope production facility. This facility will contain the world’s first privately-owned nuclear reactors dedicated to radioisotope production.
    hard-tech
    small-modular-reactors
    medical-devices
  • Exa Laboratories
    Exa Laboratories (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Exa is making reconfigurable chips for AI, offering superior speed and energy efficiency compared to traditional GPUs/TPUs/LPUs. Our chips automatically adapt themselves to each specific AI model, overcoming the von Neumann bottleneck, (a common limitation in standard systems). By optimizing for each AI architecture, we significantly boost both inference and training speeds while reducing energy consumption. Imagine having hardware tailored to your AI model, whilst still maintaining the flexibility of a GPU. This way, you won't need to re-manufacture your hardware each time you change your model architecture, all while still benefiting from the speed and efficiency of specialized hardware, saving data centers and compute clusters hundreds of millions of dollars every year!
    hard-tech
    hardware
    machine-learning
    semiconductors
    ai
  • Cerulion
    Cerulion (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Cerulion is an open source operating system for robots built by 2 MIT robotics PhDs. Companies like Amazon Robotics and Boston Dynamics AI Institute are using us to develop faster and ship more reliable robots than with ROS. With up to 1000x improvements in communications performance over state of the art, Cerulion is enabling the next generation of embodied AI.
    developer-tools
    hard-tech
    robotics
    b2b
    open-source
  • Guardian RF
    Guardian RF (s2024)Active • 3 employees • Washington, DC, USA
    The rise of weaponized drones has fundamentally transformed security threats both in warfare and civilian contexts. In Ukraine, $500 modified commercial drones regularly neutralize million-dollar military assets. At our southern border, cartels use drones to smuggle fentanyl and survey law enforcement positions. Critical infrastructure, military bases, and correctional facilities face unprecedented vulnerability to unauthorized surveillance and drone-based attacks. Founded in 2024, GuardianRF develops advanced RF spectrum sensors to protect against this evolving threat landscape. Our technology has been battle-tested in Ukraine, where consumer drones converted into precise guided missiles have become a daily reality. Unlike traditional systems that rely on regulatory compliance, our sensors can detect modified and non-Remote ID compliant drones from up to 3 km away, accurately pinpointing both drone and operator locations. What sets us apart is our distributed mesh network of sensors combining advanced Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology with AI-driven signal classification. Trained on extensive combat zone datasets, our system processes RF signatures in real-time across multiple frequency bands, catching even sophisticated stealth drones using frequency-hopping protocols. When a threat is detected, the system delivers precise targeting data while maintaining continuous tracking. Our product line includes: - Scout Detector: A handheld drone detector for rapid deployment and portability - Mosaic Sensor Network: A scalable mesh network of RF sensors for detecting, tracking, and mapping drone activity across expansive areas The stakes are severe: along our borders, cartel drones facilitate trafficking that costs thousands of lives annually. In prisons, a single successful drone contraband delivery can trigger facility-wide violence. For critical infrastructure, a coordinated drone strike could cause billions in business interruption losses. Traditional drone defense systems, often priced in the millions, are cost-prohibitive for most organizations. GuardianRF bridges this critical gap with accessible, effective protection. Our AI classification engine recognizes various control protocols including modified ExpressLRS, Crossfire, and DJI variants, providing early warning of threats that traditional systems miss entirely. The system's fully automated detection, tracking, and response mechanisms ensure continuous protection with minimal operational overhead. Built and manufactured in the United States, GuardianRF combines field-proven technology with real-world deployment experience to counter modern drone threats. Whether safeguarding critical infrastructure, securing borders, or supporting defense operations, our systems deliver the comprehensive drone detection capabilities needed for today's security challenges.
    hard-tech
    drones
    security
  • Sensei
    Sensei (s2024)Active • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Sensei helps robotics companies scale and outsource their training data collection. Our hardware platform enables the collection of human-demonstration data at a tenth of the cost and twice the speed of current teleop approaches. Our software platform acts like Scale AI for robotics data: a large network of paid human operators use our low-cost collection platform to fulfill data-generation requests.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    marketplace
    robotics
    data-engineering
  • Lumen Orbit
    Lumen Orbit (s2024)Active • 4 employees • Redmond, WA, USA
    Lumen Orbit is building a network of megawatt-scale data centers in space, scaleable to gigawatt capacity, to be able to train large models like GPT6. Falling launch costs give us access to abundant energy, passive cooling, and the ability to rapidly scale in space. In Partnership with NVIDIA's Inception Program, we are launching our demonstrator satellite in May 2025, which will have 100x more powerful GPUs than have ever been operated in space.
    hard-tech
    satellites
    climate
    cloud-computing
    ai
  • Greywing
    Greywing (w2021)Active • 3 employees • Singapore
    Greywing is a platform for ship operators to automate their business, through actionable intelligence, better data and communication. Greywing today serves three product lines to customers: *Flotilla* is a monitoring tool for vessels, enabling vessel managers to identify fleet-level patterns and optimizations and to identify risk and liability vectors in advance. *CRY4* is an operational tool for individual vessels that allows crew managers, security officers and masters to gather intelligence about a vessels current or proposed route, making decisions about the safest and the cheapest ports of call that a vessel can be directed to. *Landfall* is a crew management and analysis system to provide risk reporting and detailed editing capabilities about the crew on-board a vessel. *Semaphore* is a port-agent communications tool meant to simplify the process of interfacing with large numbers of port agents while planning a port call.
    hard-tech
    saas
    maritime
  • Javelin Robotics
    Javelin Robotics (w2021)Active • 5 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We help truckers cut delivery times, increasing productivity and adding much needed capacity to the freight industry. We do this by building autonomy software that tag-teams with human drivers. Conventional trucks drive ~120K miles/ year. Trucks with our tech can hit more than 190K miles/ year.
    autonomous-trucking
    hard-tech
    robotics
    transportation
    ai
  • Observant
    Observant (w2018)Active • 5 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Observant is an iPhone-based driver monitoring system for commercial fleets. It uses machine learning + iPhone's depth sensors to detect unsafe driver behavior, prevent accidents, and save lives.
    autonomous-trucking
    hard-tech
    machine-learning
    saas
  • spotLESS Materials
    spotLESS Materials (s2019)Active • 6 employees • State College, PA, USA
    Surface fouling is a costly challenge across industries, impacting medical consumables, diagnostic devices, and automotive components. Contamination from substances like mud, ice, and sludge can compromise performance and lead to frequent cleaning, repairs, and replacements. Our PFAS-free coating, which we first launched as a consumer product, has quickly expanded into industrial partnerships. It dramatically reduces contamination on critical surfaces such as glass, metal, ceramic, and now plastics too. Whether for medical devices or automotive components, our coating protects against surface fouling Currently our coatings work best on glass, metal, and ceramic surfaces.
    hard-tech
    nanotechnology
    advanced-materials
  • Teleo
    Teleo (w2020)Active • 30 employees • Palo Alto, CA, USA
    Teleo converts heavy equipment, like dozers, trucks, and loaders, into supervised autonomous robots. This enables a single operator to remotely operate multiple machines while sitting at a remote control center, unlocking productivity gains for the General Contractor.
    autonomous-trucking
    hard-tech
    robotics
  • Wyvern
    Wyvern (w2022)Active • 26 employees • Edmonton, AB, Canada
    Wyvern is a space data company that will capture the highest resolution hyperspectral images from satellites that cost 100X less than satellites using traditional telescopes.
    hard-tech
    satellites
    climate
  • Seabound
    Seabound (w2022)Active • 9 employees • London, UK
    Seabound builds carbon capture equipment for ships. We're the only way for existing ships to reduce up to 95% of CO2 emissions and meet new global regulations.
    hard-tech
    climate
    transportation
  • Odys Aviation
    Odys Aviation (s2021)Active • 11 employees • Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Odys Aviation (formerly Craft Aero) builds vertical take-off and landing aircraft for major airlines. We cut travel time in half on the world’s busiest routes by using city helipads and local airports. The company founders are electric propulsion and automotive manufacturing experts who have spent their careers electrifying transportation systems at Virgin Hyperloop, GoogleX, Volvo, and Fisker Automotive. We’ve won two USAF Agility Prime contracts, have pre-orders and options for more than 1,000 aircraft.
    hard-tech
    airplanes
    climate
  • Care Weather
    Care Weather (w2021)Active • 2 employees • Orem, UT, USA
    Care Weather collects the highest-accuracy global weather data to help governments and shipping companies adapt to extreme weather. The data is collected by Care Weather’s unique flat-panel radar satellite, which is 1000X more cost effective because it’s vertically integrated, gets more solar power, and sails on top of the atmosphere for a closer view of the surface. Our team includes CEO Patrick Walton (NASA Earth science fellow) and CTO Alex Laraway (mach 4 rockets). In the last 4 months, we built and launched the smallest radar satellite ever. We have $35M worth of LOIs, including one from the Air Force and others from cargo shippers. Care Weather is backed by Boost VC, Kickstart Seed Fund, Y Combinator, and more.
    hard-tech
    space-exploration
    satellites
    weather
    agriculture
  • Innate
    Innate (f2024)Active • 2 employees • Palo Alto, CA, USA
    Innate is developing innately intelligent teachable general-purpose robots. Our platforms are simple, accessible, so as to lower the barrier to entry into robotics for everyone.
    generative-ai
    hard-tech
    robotics
    consumer
    ai-assistant
  • Stralis Aircraft
    Stralis Aircraft (w2023)Active • 4 employees • Brisbane QLD, Australia
    Our planes fly 10 times further than battery electric alternatives, with a lower operating cost than fossil fuel powered aircraft. Our first product is a 15 seat aircraft with a range of 800 km that enters service in 2026 with launch customer Skytrans. Our team has over 85 years of aerospace experience and have developed, flight tested and certified aircraft at Google X, magniX, Heart Aerospace, Ampaire, Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Gulfstream. We have $145M in aircraft LOIs from 7 airlines in the US, Europe and Australia.
    hard-tech
    hydrogen-energy
    airplanes
    climate
    electric-vehicles
  • Auricle
    Auricle (w2021)Active • 2 employees • Mountain View, CA, USA
    Auricle is a medical device company building a breakthrough neurostimulation implant to restore hearing in millions of patients who no longer benefit from hearing aids, get less than 60% on a word recognition test, but aren't prepared to make the jump to a cochlear implant. Our approach preserves remaining natural hearing through a reversible and less invasive surgery, addressing the key concerns that hold most patients back from getting a cochlear implant (currently the only treatment option for these patients). The company spun out of Stanford Biodesign having completed two acute human clinical studies demonstrating the approach will work. The team is now focused on developing their full implant system for their first clinical trial. Auricle addresses a currently unserved profile of hearing loss that affects a growing population of 3.5 million patients in the US and represents an immediately accessible $1.2B market opportunity with existing reimbursement.
    hard-tech
    neurotechnology
    health-tech
    medical-devices
    healthcare
  • Kilobaser
    Kilobaser (w2021)Active • 10 employees • Graz, Austria
    We combined microfluidic chip technology and a reagent cartridge to create the first personal DNA synthesizer. Until now most life scientists had to rely on out-sourced DNA synthesis, causing stagnating research. Kilobaser empowers every life scientist to synthesize DNA on their benchtop.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    medical-devices
  • Ultralight
    Ultralight (w2019)Active • 1 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Ultralight is a GPU-accelerated toolkit to embed modern HTML in games and native apps. Available for C and C++ on Windows, macOS, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation, ARM64 devices, and more. Developed in collaboration with leading game studios, built GPU-first on a new, lightweight fork of WebKit.
    developer-tools
    hard-tech
    b2b
    gaming
    api
  • Meticulous
    Meticulous (s2021)Active • 5 employees • London, UK
    Meticulous is a tool to automatically catch UI bugs in your web application with zero-effort. Install our JavaScript snippet onto production or staging and dev environments, which records user sessions by collecting clickstream and network data. When you post a pull request, Meticulous selects a subset of sessions which are relevant and simulates these against the frontend of your application. Meticulous takes screenshots at key points and detects any visual differences. It posts those diffs in a comment for you to inspect in a few seconds. This eliminates the setup and maintenance burden of UI testing.
    developer-tools
    hard-tech
    saas
  • Humane Genomics
    Humane Genomics (s2021)Active • 5 employees • New York, NY, USA
    Humane Genomics has developed a platform to engineer cancer killing viruses. We have taken a first principles approach to design and make oncolytic viral therapies. Using a highly lytic RNA virus engineered with "2 factor authentication" (using selective infection and selective replication) they have an on-target to off-target kill ratio > 1000. We are working on our first indication, pediatric liver cancer (hepatoblastoma), with our partners at Texas Children's Hospital, who are world leading experts. We have in vivo (mouse) data showing safety and currently developing efficacy data and are showing 50% reduction in tumor volume.
    hard-tech
    synthetic-biology
  • Luminate Medical
    Luminate Medical (s2021)Active • 21 employees • Galway, Ireland
    We make devices that help cancer patients prevent the side effects of cancer treatment, including hair loss, neuropathy and infertility. Our first product, Lily, is a wearable cap that enables chemotherapy patients to prevent hair loss in a comfortable, portable way, while our second product, Lilac, is the world's first device to prevent the peripheral nerve damage caused by cancer treatment.
    hard-tech
    consumer-health-services
    medical-devices
  • VedaBio
    VedaBio (s2021)Active • 30 employees • San Diego, CA, USA
    Syndromic testing powered by engineered CRISPR enzymes. Get comprehensive results in every doctor visit. More at www.vedabio.com
    hard-tech
  • Hubble Network
    Hubble Network (w2022)Active • 20 employees • Seattle, WA, USA
    Hubble is building a global satellite network that any Bluetooth-enabled device can connect to, even without cellular reception. Our mission in life is to get a billion devices connected to the network and unlock a new era of human-machine collaboration.
    developer-tools
    hard-tech
    hardware
    iot
    satellites
  • Industrial Next
    Industrial Next (w2022)Active • 9 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    We bring Tesla autonomous manufacturing to every automaker and other producers. At Tesla, we were the core autonomous factory team and we’re now building the smart cameras and robotic guidance tools that provided the main advantages at Tesla
    hard-tech
    robotics
    manufacturing
    ai
  • Yondu
    Yondu (w2024)Active • 3 employees • Los Angeles, CA, USA
    Yondu is creating the robotic workforce of the future starting with logistics automation. We're deploying humanoid robots in the first flexible, drop-in picking automation solution designed for 3PLs.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    robotics
    logistics
  • Palitronica Inc
    Palitronica Inc (w2022)Active • 6 employees • Kitchener, ON, Canada
    Palitronica builds and deploys cutting-edge solutions to defend critical physical infrastructure and its supply chain. By using side-channel information from endpoints, Palitronica provides a safe attack detection capability retrofittable to critical systems.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    security
  • NearWave
    NearWave (w2022)Active • 3 employees • Austin, TX, USA
    NearWave makes a handheld imaging device that helps physicians select the right therapy for their breast cancer patients. This prevents patients from suffering through months of side effects caused by unsuccessful treatments.
    artificial-intelligence
    hard-tech
    hardware
    saas
    medical-devices
  • Enlightra
    Enlightra (w2022)Active • 10 employees • Ecublens, Switzerland
    Enlightra develops mass-manufacturable fingertip-size multicolor lasers enabling ultrafast data communication and optical computing while providing up to 10x improvement in energy efficiency and cost reduction.
    hard-tech
    hardware
  • Andson Biotech
    Andson Biotech (w2022)Active • 4 employees • Atlanta, GA, USA
    Andson Biotech helps pharmaceutical companies measure difficult to detect chemicals that they need to measure while developing and manufacturing drugs like cell-therapies or biologics. Drug companies want to use our technologies to get fast and accurate chemical measurements they do thousands of times per day for drug development and quality control.
    gene-therapy
    hard-tech
    biotech
    healthcare
    therapeutics
  • AirMyne
    AirMyne (w2022)Active • 11 employees • Berkeley, CA, USA
    AirMyne is building machines to capture & remove carbon dioxide from ambient atmospheric air so it can be utilized or sequestered downstream. Our team is based in Berkeley, CA.
    carbon-capture-and-removal
    hard-tech
    hardware
    climate
  • Integrated Reasoning
    Integrated Reasoning (s2022)Active • 1 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Integrated Reasoning builds efficient computer processors that are tailored to the memory access patterns of Karp's 21 NP-complete problems. We’re making it 100x - 10,000x faster to perform computations like scheduling airline pilots or optimizing packing layouts for shipping containers.
    artificial-intelligence
    developer-tools
    hard-tech
    hardware
    saas
  • Roin Technologies
    Roin Technologies (w2021)Acquired • 3 employees • San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
    We build automated robots for concrete floor construction. One person with our robots does the work of 6 construction workers.
    hard-tech
    hardware
    robotics