Updates
What's happening around the county.
Company milestones, funding, awards, and research from across Santa Cruz County hard tech. We link to the original reporting — the credit belongs to the publications doing the work.
- jobyaviation.comSep 4, 2026
Joby and Toyota form a manufacturing joint venture
The Santa Cruz aircraft maker and Toyota have established a joint venture, moving a decade-old relationship onto a formal manufacturing footing.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026Versa Vascular closes $42M Series C and names a new chief executive
The Santa Cruz medtech company topped up its Series C to $42 million and appointed a former Medtronic structural heart executive to lead it.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026UC Santa Cruz students put their first satellite in orbit
A ten-student team built a CubeSat that is now in orbit and transmitting, after eighteen months of work, vibration testing at NASA Johnson, and a launch on a resupply mission.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026Santa Cruz Ventures backs Farmblox, a local company fighting farm copper theft
Farmblox builds solar-powered monitors that catch copper wire thieves at irrigation pumps. It is headquartered in Santa Cruz and now covers growers farming about a tenth of California's irrigated acreage.
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mbdart.orgAug 20, 2026Monterey Bay DART signs with DEFENSEWERX, opening a defence procurement route locally
A new agreement connects Central Coast companies to the national network of defence innovation hubs, including the one attached to the Naval Postgraduate School.
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mbdart.orgAug 20, 2026DART runs its first drone pilot boot camp, with UCSC among the partners
Fifteen people aged 16 to 56 finished a week of commercial drone training, and nine in ten cleared the FAA Part 107 practice threshold.
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reservoir.coAug 20, 2026Reservoir buys Contain, adding farm equipment finance to its robotics incubator
The Salinas on-farm robotics incubator has acquired an agricultural finance and data platform, and its founder joins as general partner to chair the investment committee.
Read- reservoir.coAug 20, 2026
Western Growers puts $1.5M into Reservoir Farms, the robotics site nearest Watsonville
Three years of funding for the Salinas on-farm incubator, buying growers a direct say in which automation technologies get developed.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026Kai Lenny is riding a compostable surfboard printed in Santa Cruz
SwellCycle's 3D-printed, plant-based board passed a test most sustainable materials never face: one of the most demanding surfers in the world, in serious water.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026Joby opens a 45,000 sq ft operations hub in Fort Worth
The Santa Cruz company has established a base at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport to support air taxi flights across the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex.
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agribusinessglobal.comAug 20, 2026Peregrine Hydrogen wins the first IFA Cultivate Challenge
The Westside company beat more than 150 applicants from over 40 countries with an electrolyser that co-produces hydrogen and sulfuric acid on about half the energy.
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santacruzworks.orgAug 20, 2026Joby partners with Atoms to build out a national vertiport network
Joby has brought in Travis Kalanick's infrastructure company to acquire and develop landing sites across Florida, New York, Texas and California.
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