18 Top Silicon Valley Startups to Watch in 2023

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation, tech, and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the hottest startups in Silicon Valley of 2023 that startup lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow.

Disclaimer: With so many exciting Silicon Valley startups launching and growing, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

• Location: Palo Alto
• Industry: Drone
• Founders: Audrey Gelman
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: N/A
• Investors Include: N/A

Wing has a great opportunity to succeed because they are a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. With a large amount of funding available to them already, they've been able to make and distribute their drone planes for product deliveries on three continents.

• Location: Sacramento
• Industry: Agriculture Technology
• Founders: Alberto Becares, Adrian Ferrero
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $25 Million
• Investors Include: JME Ventures, Seaya Ventures

Agriculture has been in dire need of a technological update for many years and Biome Makers is leading the way. Their microbiome analysis software allows farmers to manage their crops more sustainably with optimized crop production and soil microbiome data. They've raised over $20 million in funding from top investors and are continuing to grow.

Explore more environmental startups.

• Location: Mountain View
• Industry: Autonomous Vehicles
• Founders: Dave Ferguson, Jiajun Zhu
• Founded In: 2016
• Funding: $2.1 Billion
• Investors Include: Google, Softbank Vision Fund

In the same way Wing used drones for product deliveries, Nuro uses self-driving vehicles that can deliver assorted local goods. There is no room for a driver but plenty of storage space that acts like mobile Amazon lockers people can take their purchased products.

• Location: Santa Clara
• Industry: Big Data
• Founders: Jacques Nadeau, Tomer Shiran
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $410 Million
• Investors Include: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures

For companies that use and love SQL, Dremio is providing a lakehouse platform that allows easy access to open data. One of the benefits to Dremio is that companies can use community-driven standards like Apache Iceberg and Apache Arrow for their processing engines.

• Location: Redwood City
• Industry: Plant-Based Foods 
• Founders: Monte Casino, Patrick Brown
• Founded In: 2011
• Funding: $1.9 billion
• Investors Include: Bill Gates, Mirae Asset Global Investments

Perhaps one of the biggest leaders in the sustainable foods category, Impossible Foods is on a mission to completely replace animal products with their delicious plant-based meats. Their flagship product, the Impossible Burger, is now available in over 17,000 restaurants and grocery stores across the country. Consumers can find meat, dairy, and fish product alternatives that help the environment with every bite.

Check out our list of the top food startups serving up innovation.

• Location: Palo Alto
• Industry: Health
• Founders: James Sas, Michelle Longmire, Perry Robinson, Tim Smith
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $506.6 Million
• Investors Include: Sapphire Ventures, Blackstone Accelerates Growth

Medable is a healthcare startup opening up clinical research for both medical institutions and patients by allowing easier access for both. They've created a platform that is powered by patient-generated data through clinical trials. It's one of the few platforms that offer this type of service and has everything in one centralized location.

Feeling inspired? Learn how to launch your company with our guide on how to start a startup.

• Location: Palo Alto
• Industry: Fintech
• Founders: Alexey Kalinichenko, CJ MacDonald
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: $491.3 Million
• Investors Include: General Catalyst, Franklin Templeton Investments

Banking systems have largely ignored anyone under the legal age of 18, but with Step, there is now a solution. They've created a mobile-first bank account that helps families manage money and teach financial literacy to children. Step also offers a debit card with parental controls for spending limits and transaction notifications.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Artificial Intelligence
• Founders: Oleg Rogynskyy
• Founded In: 2016
• Funding: $200 Million
• Investors Include: Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator

People.ai is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help sales teams be more productive. Their platform helps sales reps by providing them with data-driven suggestions on who to talk to, what to say, and when. With People.ai, companies can increase their close rate and shorten their sales cycles leading to increased revenues and reduced marketing costs.

• Location: Santa Clara
• Industry: Artificial Intelligence
• Founders: James Hom, Keyvan Mohajer, Majid Emami
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $351 Million
• Investors Include: Koch Industries, Qatar First Bank

A world where all of our technological devices are enabled by verbal cues alone isn't too far off thanks to SoundHound. They use AI to enable voice-activated tech where you can have a conversation with your devices instead of needing to manually input commands. This natural user interface is already being used for smaller devices but SoundHound is looking to integrate your entire lifestyle using this technology.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Content Marketing
• Founders: Ed Kearney, Matt Schiller
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: $13 Million
• Investors Include: Y Combinator, Alumni Ventures

It didn't take long for Snappr to become one of the premier apps for visual content creation. Users can request anything from an on-demand photo shoot to on-demand editing for their videos or photos. It is the world's largest network of content creators and gives easy access to brands that need these skills but don't want to hire full-time employees.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Hiring and Recruitment
• Founders: AJ Brustein, Jeremy Burton, Yong Kim
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $190.9 Million
• Investors Include: Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures

Normally, businesses have to go through a time-consuming hiring process if they want to bring on new employees. Wonolo helps businesses by connecting them with a network of pre-screened, qualified workers for one-time or short-term gigs. With Wonolo, businesses can get the staffing they need without any long-term commitment.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Skincare
• Founders: Natalise Kalea, Nathan Brown
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: $2 Million
• Investors Include: Rhythm VC, Illumina Accelerator

Skincare is always being innovated with new ingredients and technology, and Parallel Health is taking things to the microbiome level. By gathering data on your microbiome, they are able to offer individualized skincare programs that will help optimize your skin health.

See also our list of the top beauty and wellness startups.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Artificial Intelligence
• Founders: Akash Singh, Sharath Keshava Narayana, Swapnil Jain
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: $214 Million
• Investors Include: Y Combinator, Menlo Ventures, Softbank Vision Fund

Customer service is a significant part of the modern business world, and Observe.AI is looking to change the way it's done. They are using AI to automate the customer service process by integrating it with tasks like customer conversations, agent performance and repeatable workflows.

• Location: Palo Alto
• Industry: Cybersecurity
• Founders: Abhijit Ghosh, Bipul Sinha, Niloy Mukherjee
• Founded In: 2018
• Funding: $29 Million
• Investors Include: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Icon Ventures

Focused on the world of cybersecurity, Confluera helps protect against cyberattacks and creates a safer cloud for companies. It also helps automate investigations across the workload, control plane, and data plane layers.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Fitness
• Founders: Aly Orady, Nate Bosshard
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $450 Million
• Investors Include: Mayfield Fund, Shasta Ventures

An in-home gym is only as good as the equipment you have, and Tonal is an innovative fitness startup looking to change the game. By using AI, they are able to provide real-time guidance and coaching for their users. They also offer a subscription service that gives you access to new workout programs, content, and challenges.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Fintech Security
• Founders: Adam Ludwin, Devon Gundry
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $43.7 Million
• Investors Include: 500 Startups, SV Angel

Providing infrastructure for Web3 and the blockchain, Chain is helping people gain more secure access to these platforms. It creates a decentralized infrastructure protocol that is specifically designed for developers.

• Location: Marina del Rey
• Industry: Online Security
• Founders: Adam Jiwan, Anna Fridman, John Sun
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: $68.8 Million
• Investors Include: 500 Startups, RRE Ventures

Spring Labs is looking to change the world of transferring secure data by using patented tokenization and matching technologies. Institutions will be able to securely control and exchange their data without the risk of it being leaked or sold.

• Location: San Francisco
• Industry: Fintech
• Founders: Ethan Bloch
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: $66.3 Million
• Investors Include: General Catalyst, GV

Oportun takes the emotional component out of saving and does the work for you. It uses software that can analyze your spending habits to come up with a savings amount that you can comfortably put away every month.

Recommended: Check out our full list of the top startups to watch in 2023!