The autonomous vehicle sector in California is a dynamic and rapidly evolving industry, characterized by an array of companies leveraging cutting-edge technology to redefine transportation. These firms concentrate on creating self-driving vehicles aimed at enhancing mobility, improving safety, reducing congestion, and curbing pollution. With solutions ranging from autonomous passenger cars to electric fleets and autonomous delivery services, these innovators are not only redefining the industry's landscape, but they are also shaping the future of transportation mobility.


Top 19 self driving car companies in California

1. Zoox

  • Website: zoox.com
  • Headquarters: Foster City, California, United States
  • Founded: 2014
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Acquired
  • LinkedIn

Zoox is a company focused on providing autonomous transportation solutions. They offer a shared fleet of all-electric vehicles designed for riders, not drivers, aiming to reduce congestion and pollution in cities.


2. Nuro

  • Website: nuro.ai
  • Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
  • Founded: 2016
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Series D
  • LinkedIn

Nuro.ai is a robotics company focused on improving everyday life through autonomous vehicle technology. Their mission is to make everyday tasks easier and more efficient, starting with autonomous delivery services.


3. Aurora

  • Website: aurora.tech
  • Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
  • Founded: 2017
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Post Ipo Equity
  • LinkedIn

Aurora.tech is a company focused on developing autonomous vehicle technology to reduce crashes and save lives on America's roads. They use simulation testing to drive the development of their Aurora Driver, which is designed to operate both trucks and passenger vehicles. Their custom-designed sensor suite allows their vehicles to travel safely at highway speeds. Aurora.tech partners with leading automakers, suppliers, and freight companies to put autonomous trucks and cars on the map.


4. Waymo

  • Website: waymo.com
  • Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
  • Founded: 2009
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Private Equity
  • LinkedIn

Waymo is a leading autonomous technology company that offers autonomous ride-hailing services and autonomous trucking solutions. They are focused on transforming transportation by providing safe and efficient autonomous solutions for both passengers and goods. With over 20 billion miles driven, Waymo is a pioneer in the industry.


5. Cruise

  • Website: getcruise.com
  • Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
  • Founded: 2013
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Secondary Market
  • LinkedIn

Cruise is a self-driving car company that offers autonomous vehicles and driverless rides. They provide a safe and inclusive transportation service, with all-electric and emission-free vehicles. Customers can enjoy the freedom of exploring their way, knowing that safety is a top priority.


6. AutoX

  • Website: autox.ai
  • Headquarters: San Jose, California, United States
  • Founded: 2016
  • Headcount: 1001-5000
  • Latest funding type: Series B
  • LinkedIn

AutoX is an autonomous car company that specializes in providing driverless taxi services. With a focus on accessibility, AutoX aims to make self-driving technology available to everyone. The company has a large engineering team with multiple R&D centers globally. AutoX has successfully removed safety drivers from its fleet of RoboTaxis, making it a pioneer in the field.


7. Ouster

  • Website: ouster.com
  • Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
  • Founded: 2015
  • Headcount: 201-500
  • Latest funding type: Debt Financing
  • LinkedIn

Ouster.com offers high-performance digital lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and industrial applications. Their lidar sensors provide 3D vision with 360-degree coverage and a range of 120 meters. They serve a wide range of industries and have a global presence.


8. Inceptio Technology

  • Website: inceptio.ai
  • Headquarters: Fremont, California, United States
  • Founded: 2018
  • Headcount: 501-1000
  • Latest funding type: Series B
  • LinkedIn

Inceptio.ai is a technology company specializing in autonomous driving systems and solutions. They offer a full-stack proprietary and mass-production oriented technology for autonomous trucks. Inceptio has achieved strategic partnerships with industry leaders, such as Budweiser, to enable green logistics with their autonomous driving solutions.


9. Blaize

  • Website: blaize.com
  • Headquarters: El Dorado Hills, California, United States
  • Founded: 2010
  • Headcount: 201-500
  • Latest funding type: Series D
  • LinkedIn

Blaize.com is a technology company that specializes in AIoT (Artificial Intelligence of Things) edge technology for autonomous driving, robotics, and mobility. They provide AI vision surveillance management solutions for industrial and enterprise customers.


10. Plus

  • Website: plus.ai
  • Headquarters: Santa Clara, California, United States
  • Founded: 2016
  • Headcount: 201-500
  • Latest funding type: Series D
  • LinkedIn

Plus.ai is a self-driving truck company that offers autonomous driving solutions for the trucking industry. Their PlusDrive technology aims to enhance road safety and elevate driver experience, with the goal of achieving full autonomy in the future.


11. Stradvision

  • Website: stradvision.com
  • Headquarters: San Jose, California, United States
  • Founded: 2014
  • Headcount: 201-500
  • Latest funding type: Series C
  • LinkedIn

StradVision is an AI-based vision processing technology company specializing in Autonomous Vehicles and ADAS systems. They offer advanced camera perception software for vehicle safety and performance enhancement. With their innovative solutions, they aim to make AI technology accessible and reliable to everyone.


12. comma.ai

  • Website: comma.ai
  • Headquarters: San Diego, California, United States
  • Founded: 2016
  • Headcount: 11-50
  • Latest funding type: Series Unknown
  • LinkedIn

comma.ai is a company that develops open-source software for self-driving cars. Their software, openpilot, allows users to add autonomous driving features to their vehicles. They offer documentation, support, and a community for users to contribute and improve the software.


13. Solo AVT

  • Website: soloavt.com
  • Headquarters: Fremont, California, United States
  • Founded: 2021
  • Headcount: 11-50
  • LinkedIn

Solo Advanced Vehicles Technologies (Solo AVT) is revolutionizing the freight transportation industry by building the first ground-up, long-haul battery electric Class 8 truck designed specifically for autonomous driving.


14. ArqBravo Group, Inc.

ArqBravo Group, a high impact company registered in California as Bravo Motor Company, LLC, created to be an innovative Transport Systems/Clean Energies maker to supply the world with new ways of moving people and goods. Innovating and integrating complex value chains. We have the formal support of the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, Merced County (Central Valley) ● Our Vision is to create and provide services that minimize daily transit time, integrating them to existing public transportation services, using renewable energy sources and developing smart ways of generating, storing and using energy creating more independence and freedom to individuals, empowering them to transform the society into a human- environmental focused ecosystem. ● In a world trying to address emissions reduction and avoid traffic Problem, the growth of car sharing companies and ride services like Uber, ZipCar, GetAround, Lyft and others is exponential. But no vehicles where designed to provide this service in an efficient and cost effective way. ● This industry lacks a system of interconnected electric vehicles that: can drive themselves from the end of a ride to the beginning of the next one, can make around 350 miles per day maintaining performance for a 5 year period, are able to be fully charged in a short period of time, are easy to be repaired in a crash situation and are easy to clean. Business Model ● Supply electric vehicle integrated systems to service providers in the market like Uber, Get Around, Lyft, zip Car and others like university and corporate campuses, as well as military bases and underserved communities. ● Be responsible for maintenance and system updates. ●Create system pilot projects around the country in order to proof the concept and be able to expand sales. https://www.youtube.com/user/arqbravogroup https://www.youtube.com/user/arqbravo https://www.flickr.com/photos/arquibravo/sets/72157635153039755/


15. Auto.AI USA

  • Website: auto-ai.com
  • Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
  • Headcount: 1-10

Top speakers, trendsetters, evangelists, and experts in the field share their personal experience. Be part of several thematic conversation rounds with changing topics and team constellations. Parallel roundtable discussions offer the delegates the possibility to talk about their own challenges. Selected brand new case studies from the industry offering insights into strategic approaches, project planning, and operative realization. Learn from the most successful practices and use these real business results for benchmarking with the competition. Pre-qualified One2One Meetings with matched partners and from delegate to delegate. Use the Business Matchmaking function in your Event App hubs101 in advance to arrange your meetings. we.CONECTs unique Event App & Matchfinder Use our unique matching platform to make new connections, arrange meetings and find tailored solutions to your needs. Discover who else is participating at the Auto.AI. Our unique Polaroid Picture Wall will help you identify who you want to meet at the conference. Get the show on the road. Discover who is joining the conference and why. To warm you up for the conference we invite you to get to know your conference peers. Have your business cards ready. Roundtables on the evening before the first conference day. The Icebreaker is a first informal networking. Wind down, enjoy great food and drink in a relaxed atmosphere to absorb all the new stimulations from the day. Start the conference with coffee, scrambled egg and NETWORKING! Join the we.CONECT Breakfast Club an exclusive area in your hotel and get into a conversation with other delegates already while having your first coffee. The unique interactive live feedback system! Note down your thoughts on comment cards which will be pinned on walls in the networking area for further discussion. we.CONECT gives you the opportunity to showcase your work and ideas and provides an excellent opportunity for start-up level companies to showcase their best in-car technologies, software and smart mobility ...


16. Fifth Level

  • Website: fifthlevel.ai
  • Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, United States
  • Founded: 2018
  • Headcount: 1-10
  • LinkedIn

Fifth Level is that single pane of glass that tracks everything of relevance in the race towards full autonomy in driving cars.


17. Mobility Weekly

Mobility Weekly is a weekly newsletter covering the mobility industry, read by VCs, founders, investors, and insiders.


18. Apex.AI

  • Website: apex.ai
  • Headquarters: Palo Alto, California, United States
  • Founded: 2017
  • Headcount: 51-200
  • Latest funding type: Corporate Round
  • LinkedIn

Apex.AI is a vehicle OS company that specializes in providing software solutions for the mobility industry. They offer Apex.OS and Apex.Middleware, which are high-performance data transport software for autonomous systems. The company is focused on ensuring functional safety and is recognized as an industry leader in this field. They have strategic investments from Daimler Truck and are supported by Open Robotics, ROS, and Silicon Valley Robotics.


19. Akridata

  • Website: akridata.ai
  • Headquarters: Los Altos, California, United States
  • Founded: 2018
  • Headcount: 51-200
  • LinkedIn

Akridata.ai is a data-centric MLOps platform that enables data scientists to explore, curate, and utilize visual data at scale. It reduces the time spent on data selection and curation, accelerating the path to model accuracy. With smart ingestion and exploration capabilities, it cuts costs and complexity while delivering business value.


Want to find more self driving car companies?


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...and a lot more!