Ecosystem
The hardware coast, mapped.
Santa Cruz County's hard tech economy is denser than its reputation. This is an open map of the companies, institutions, and infrastructure that make it work.
Companies
Building here now
Member companies maintain their own profiles. Other listings are compiled from public sources, if you run one of them, you can claim and edit it.
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Also in the county
Ambient Photonics
Scotts Valley
Low-light dye-sensitized solar cells that eliminate disposable batteries in connected devices.
Capstan Medical
Santa Cruz
Catheter-based robotics for minimally invasive heart valve repair.
Cruz Foam
Santa Cruz
Compostable packaging foam made from chitin, replacing expanded polystyrene.
Future Motion
Santa Cruz
Maker of Onewheel self-balancing electric boards, designed and engineered in Santa Cruz.
Joby Aviation
Santa Cruz
Electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, developed and built on the Central Coast.
Santa Cruz Bicycles
Santa Cruz
Mountain bike design and manufacturing, with carbon frame production and a factory in the Wrigley Building.
Zero Motorcycles
Scotts Valley
Electric motorcycles and powertrains, designed and manufactured in Scotts Valley.
Astrea Forensics
Santa Cruz
Ancient-DNA recovery techniques applied to forensic identification from degraded samples.
Cito Medical
Santa Cruz
Engineering, prototyping, and regulatory support turning medtech concepts into approved devices.
Claret Bioscience
Santa Cruz
Library preparation chemistry for sequencing short, damaged, single-stranded DNA.
Fullpower Technologies
Santa Cruz
AI-powered sensor and wearable technology, including the Sleeptracker biometric platform.
Neatleaf
Scotts Valley
Autonomous sensing robots that build a digital twin of every plant in a growing facility.
Ocean Presence Technologies
Santa Cruz
Ultra-high-definition underwater cameras and ROV video systems for long-term observation.
Ohalo Genetics
Santa Cruz
Boosted Breeding, enabling true seed for crops historically propagated by cloning.
Parallel Flight Technologies
La Selva Beach
Hybrid-electric heavy-lift drones for wildfire response and industrial logistics.
Peregrine Hydrogen
Santa Cruz
Clean hydrogen co-produced with commodity chemicals to decouple cost from electricity price.
Prometheus Fuels
Santa Cruz
Carbon nanotube membranes converting atmospheric CO2 into zero-net-carbon fuels.
Quantar Technology
Santa Cruz
Single-event-counting imaging detectors for spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.
RealSeq Biosciences
Santa Cruz
Bias-free small RNA and miRNA library construction for gene regulation research.
Scoot Science
Santa Cruz
Ocean data and risk modelling that makes aquaculture operations insurable.
Sofar Ocean
Santa Cruz
The Spotter buoy network, low-cost distributed sensing across the open ocean.
SomaGenics
Santa Cruz
RNA-centered therapeutics and detection tools, operating on the Westside since 1997.
Swellcycle
Santa Cruz
Large-format 3D printing and biopolymers producing fully recyclable surfboards.
Unnatural Products
Santa Cruz
Synthetic biology and machine learning applied to macrocyclic peptide drug discovery.
Versa Vascular
Santa Cruz
Transcatheter device for tricuspid valve repair, built out of the Occam Labs incubator.
Claim, correct, or remove a listing
Listings not marked as member companies were compiled from publicly available information about businesses operating in the county. If one is yours, create a member account to claim and edit it. If you would rather not be listed at all, email us and we will remove it.
Elsewhere in the SBDC network
Two more programmes worth applying to
Santa Cruz HardTech is one part of the Northern California SBDC network. Two other programmes in that network go deeper than we can on our own, one for technology startups, one for manufacturers. Both are free and take no equity. Both have their own application: being a member here does not enrol you.
Tech Futures Group
The network's venture platform for technology startups, market mapping, customer discovery, commercialization, IP and financial strategy, and help pursuing grants. Founders are matched to an advisor by sector and stage. Since 2012 it has worked with more than 700 California startups. No cost, no equity.
Separate application
Selective rather than open enrolment, you apply and are paired with an advisor if accepted. Worth doing early; the advising is unlimited once you are in.
California Roadmap for Small Manufacturers
No-fee advising and hands-on training built specifically for California manufacturers. One-to-one advising covers lean operations, quality systems, cybersecurity, HR, financial strategy, food market development, and leadership, alongside group courses. Supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration and the California Office of the Small Business Advocate.
Group courses
- Strategic Planning for Manufacturers, Vivian Campbell
- Supply Chain Procurement Training, Barbara Weg
Separate application
Apply through the Roadmap portal. This is a separate application from Santa Cruz HardTech, even though both sit inside the SBDC network.
Not sure which fits? Ask your Santa Cruz SBDC advisor, they work inside the same network and can make the referral. Advisor profiles for these programmes are on the advisors page.
Infrastructure
Where the work actually happens
Hardware needs benches, power, loading docks, and fume hoods before it needs a growth plan. These are the places in the county that have them.
Idea Fab Labs(opens in a new tab)
Community makerspace in the Wrigley Building with fabrication equipment, and home of the monthly founders meetup.
AirSpace Integration(opens in a new tab)
An FAA-authorised drone test range and incubator at Monterey Bay Academy Airport, with a 2,200ft runway, dedicated flight-test areas, hangar and workspace. Used by aerospace manufacturers, defence R&D, the Naval Postgraduate School and commercial operators in agriculture and infrastructure inspection.
Monterey Bay DART(opens in a new tab)
A non-profit for drone, automation and advanced air mobility work across Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, founded in 2019 and headquartered on Cooper Street. It runs apprenticeship and workforce programmes, commissions regional infrastructure studies, and convenes the annual LIFT Summit. It is a convener rather than a facility, it does not operate a test site of its own.
Reservoir Farms(opens in a new tab)
A 40-acre working farm in Salinas run as an agtech and robotics incubator, where startups test machines in commercial crop fields rather than a lab. Opened in 2025 with around a dozen companies on site, backed by Western Growers, Hartnell College, the city of Salinas and growers including Taylor Farms and Tanimura & Antle. Outside the county, but the nearest place of its kind to Watsonville's agtech companies.
CSUMB Institute for Innovation and Economic Development(opens in a new tab)
The iiED, in Cal State Monterey Bay's College of Business, runs the Business Forge incubator and the Startup Challenge Monterey Bay. Its remit explicitly covers Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, so founders here are eligible.
UCSC Westside Research Park(opens in a new tab)
A former semiconductor facility on Delaware Avenue, now managed by the Baskin School of Engineering, with the power and water infrastructure hard tech R&D requires.
The Wrigley Building
A repurposed manufacturing plant on Mission Street housing hardware and medtech companies, with freight access and loading docks.
Occam Labs
A medical device incubator in the Wrigley Building, founded in 2020 and focused on structural heart. Both Capstan Medical and Versa Vascular were founded out of it, which is most of why two companies working on catheter-based heart valve repair sit at the same Mission Street address.
USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center(opens in a new tab)
A US Geological Survey centre at 2885 Mission Street, next door to the Wrigley Building, working on coastal and marine geohazards, tsunami and earthquake research, and coastal storm modelling. It runs its own marine facility and research vessels.
UC Santa Cruz(opens in a new tab)
The Baskin School of Engineering and the Genomics Institute supply the talent, the intellectual property, and much of the region's spinout pipeline.
Cabrillo College(opens in a new tab)
Technical and workforce training pathways into manufacturing, engineering technology, and life sciences roles.
Geography
Where the work happens
Hard tech in the county concentrates in a few distinct places, each shaped by what the work needs, bench space near the university, a production floor with a loading dock, or open ground to fly over.
The Westside corridor
Nine companies
Delaware Avenue, Mission Street, Natural Bridges Drive, Swift Street and Encinal Street hold nine of the county's hard tech companies within about a square mile, minutes from UC Santa Cruz. Biotech and genomics sit alongside advanced materials, clean energy, medical devices and precision instruments, a working R&D district rather than a single-sector park.
Scotts Valley
Manufacturing at volume
Ambient Photonics and Zero Motorcycles both build at production scale here, in larger footprints than the Westside offers, and sit directly on Highway 17, the road over the hill into Silicon Valley.
Watsonville
Agricultural robotics
farm-ng builds its modular electric tractors on Hangar Way, at the edge of the Pajaro Valley growing region. The fields its customers farm are minutes from the shop floor.
The south county coast
Field and flight R&D
Parallel Flight Technologies develops hybrid heavy-lift drones for wildfire response and industrial logistics from La Selva Beach, with open ground and coastline for flight testing.