These 15 Sunnyvale Startups Are Taking on Tech's Toughest Challenges

Written by Olivia McClure
Published on Feb. 12, 2020

Sunnyvale seems like the right place to establish a startup, with its prime Silicon Valley location and palpable work-life-balance vibes. As its namesake suggests, Sunnyvale boasts year-round mild weather, as well as a quaint downtown district that beckons to young families and professionals. In this sense, the town could be called the quintessential Silicon Valley city, with its California sunshine and strong tech community feel. So unsurprisingly, many startups have decided to carve out spaces for themselves within Sunnyvale’s growing tech community

But for some of Sunnyvale’s brightest startups, it’s not just about kombucha and indoor foosball — although many of their offices offer both of these perks. These fledgling organizations are tackling some of the tech world’s biggest concerns. While some are breaking ground within cybersecurity, others are finding new ways to optimize healthcare. Although it may seem that the pressure is on in this Silicon Valley city, these 15 Sunnyvale startups are certainly stepping up to the challenge. 

Sunnyvale Startups To Know

  • Arctic Wolf Networks
  • BlueCart
  • BorderX Lab
  • Clari
  • CrowdStrike
  • drchrono
  • Health Gorilla
  • LeanData
Clari Sunnyvale startups
Clari

Founded: 2012

Focus: Sales + Analytics

What they do: Clari is dedicated to helping companies reach their fullest potential by transforming their revenue operations to be connected, efficient and predictable. The organization uses automation and AI to unlock data activity in key business systems, which includes marketing automation, CRM, email, content management and conversations. Clari aligns this data to accounts and opportunities to provide visibility, apply predictive analytics and simplify forecasting. The company’s ultimate goal is to provide B2B companies with higher win rates, better conversions, reduced churn, shorter sales cycles and accurate forecasts.

Who they work with: Gainsight, Zoom, Equinix, Lenovo, Adobe, Sumo Logic, Dropbox, Symantec and Cohesity

 

CrowdStrike Sunnyvale startups
CrowdStrike

Founded: 2011

Focus: Computer + Network Security

What they do: CrowdStrike offers a cloud-native endpoint protection platform designed to stop breaches. The company aims to redefine endpoint protection, becoming the first and only organization to unify next-generation anti-virus (AV), endpoint detection and response (EDR), as well as a 24/7 managed hunting service, which is all delivered through a single, lightweight agent. CrowdStrike works with companies from a wide range of industries such as healthcare, finances and energy.

Who they work with: Financial institutions, healthcare providers, energy companies and other global organizations. 

 

Arctic Wolf Networks Sunnyvale startups
Arctic Wolf Networks

Founded: 2012

Focus: Cybersecurity

What they do: Arctic Wolf Networks provides scalable managed cybersecurity protection to help companies keep their critical data, networks, web-based applications and devices safe. Their team of security experts deliver cloud-based monitoring, risk management, threat detection and response services that protect companies from cyber attacks. The company’s proprietary security operations centers are designed to customize workflows and create around-the-clock frictionless security outcomes. Arctic Wolf’s hybrid AI outperforms analyst-driven or unsupervised machine learning solutions, reduces false positives and identifies more attacks.

Who they work with: Roper Pump, Kern Schools Federal Credit Union, Jackson Parish School, First United Bank & Trust. 

 

BlueCart Sunnyvale startups
BlueCart

Founded: 2014

Focus: Procurement Software

What they do: BlueCart is a web and mobile platform that organizes and simplifies the ordering process so restaurants and their suppliers can save time and money. The company streamlines and organizes the ordering process, allowing restaurants to place orders with all of their suppliers at once, and vendors can receive orders in simple, real-time forms. BlueCart helps clients with a variety of tasks including monitoring product catalogs and sales, managing and fulfilling incoming orders, and responding to customer questions using a built-in messaging platform. Additionally, the company provides real-time statistics and graphs that enable businesses to easily analyze their spending.

Who they work with: Mollaga Indian Grill, Bellegarde Bakery, FLUID Coffeebar, Prestige Oyster and Cafe Kreyol. 

 

BorderX Lab Sunnyvale startups
BorderX Lab

Founded: 2014

Focus: Marketing + Ecommerce

What they do: BorderX Lab is dedicated to connecting global brands with Chinese consumers through its Beyond Fashion and Beauty Discovery app, which allows shoppers to buy directly from the official websites of designer brands. The company has developed a personalization and logistics platform to create the best possible cross-border shopping experience. The company also boasts a team of in-house influencers that create engaging online content for showcasing brands and products. Partnering directly with major U.S. and European fashion and beauty brands, BorderX Lab guarantees Chinese shoppers authentic products at authentic prices.

Who they work with: Alexander Wang, Kate Somerville, Barneys New York, Harrods, Saks Fifth Avenue and Nine West. 

 

drchrono Sunnyvale startups
drchrono

Founded: 2009

Focus: Healthtech

What they do: Founded by Michael Nusimow and Daniel Kivatinos, drchrono was created to remove the administrative burdens that drain time, energy and enthusiasm from today’s healthcare providers. The company’s aim is to revolutionize providers’ practices with their EHR/EMR, taking care of scheduling, medical billing and clinical needs so they can spend greater time with patients while optimizing practice and maximizing profits. With over 17 million patients served, drchrono is the only official Apple Mobility Partner for healthcare, offering a native app for the iPod and iPad.

Who they work with: Regenerative SportsCare Institute, SohoMD, Modern Foot & Ankle and Direct Ortho Care. 

 

Health Gorilla Sunnyvale startups
Health Gorilla

Founded: 2014

Focus: Healthcare IT + Data Analytics

What they do: Health Gorilla provides APIs to enable digital health developers to instantly access high-quality, complete patient data from thousands of vendors. Using its suite of FHIR-based APIs, master patient index and data platform, the company gives clients instant connectivity to a broad clinical network, so they can retrieve data for their products, extract insights and succeed in risk-based models. The benefits of using Health Gorilla include data aggregation, instant access to patients’ medical records, real-time identity verification and access to a national network of diagnostic vendors.

Who they work with: Virta Health, WellVia, Oscar, K Health, Heal, InVitae and Galileo. 

 

LeanData Sunnyvale startups
LeanData

Founded: 2012

Focus: Enterprise Software

What they do: LeanData delivers a more holistic and unified go-to-market approach to B2B enterprises seeking to accelerate growth. The organization is dedicated to helping companies improve the buyer experience, accelerate time-to-revenue and increase operational alignment. LeanData’s Revenue Ops platform ensures a common data thread runs through the entire revenue chain, breaking down the barriers between sales and marketing operations to drive greater revenue and improve the buyer experience. The company enables revenue teams to plan, execute and analyze their go-to-market processes from a single, centrally managed platform.

Who they work: SalesLoft, Neustar, BetterWorks, Cloudera, Marketo, Nutanix, Pivotal Labs and Okta

 

Petuum Inc. Sunnyvale startups
Petuum, Inc. 

Founded: 2016

Focus: AI + Machine Learning

What they do: Petuum, Inc. provides a software infrastructure and ecosystem that enables AI for enterprise. Providing users with a single platform, the organization’s operating system allows companies to build any machine learning or deep learning application and deploy it at scale on any hardware. Petuum’s development platform and gallery of AI building blocks work with any programming language and any type of data, allowing for the quick construction of AI applications. With the ability to be created and managed from a single laptop or terminal, Petuum drives higher productivity, lower costs, better service and faster delivery.

Who they work with: Enterprises from a wide range of industries. 

 

SignifAI Sunnyvale startups
SignifAI

Founded: 2016

Focus: AI + Machine Intelligence

What they do: Recently acquired by NewRelic, SingifAI uses machine intelligence to help site reliability engineer teams quickly get accurate answers by finding correlations in real time from large volumes of events and metrics monitoring data. Powered by AI and machine learning, their correlation platform provides automatic correlation, aggregation and prioritization of alerts, quickly resolves issues with automated predictive insights and recommended solutions and offers efficient root cause analysis. SignifAI’s powerful correlations unlock predictive insights to issues that could threaten uptime in the future, allowing teams time to work on more complex problems.

Who they work with: LinkedIn, Barracuda Networks, NASDAQ and more. 

 

Software Motor Company Sunnyvale startups
Software MOtor COmpany

Founded: 2013

Focus: Industrial Automation

What they do: Software Motor Company is committed to setting a new standard of efficiency, reliability and intelligence with their SMC Smart Motor System. The company’s system combines modern computing and software control with switched reluctance motor technology to achieve optimal efficiency, only using energy when needed to reduce space conditioning and refrigeration energy costs. Designed to be easily integrated with HVAC, refrigeration and pumping systems, Software Motor Company’s patented system utilizes the benefits of IoT, big data and secure wireless networking.

Who they work with: Organizations involved with appliance installation, commercial real estate and food services. 

 

Tact.ai Sunnyvale startups
Tact.ai

Founded: 2012

Focus: Sales Operations + AI

What they do: Tact.ai has developed a human-friendly conversational AI sales platform to transform everyday sales activities for enterprises. Their platform is built on a new kind of architecture that allows companies’ IT teams to integrate their apps and create friction-free workflows, while maintaining complete control of data. The company’s AI Assistant accelerates sales and customer flow, with the ability to operate through touch, chat and voice. Tact.ai’s Intelligent Workspace compresses hierarchies and sales cycles, combining chat, voice and video messages, live meetings, document markups, approvals and e-signatures.

Who they work with: Salesforce, Oracle, Cisco, Honeywell, Panasonic and Kelly Services. 

 

TalentSeer Sunnyvale startups
TalentSeer

Founded: 2015

Focus: HR + AI

What they do: Established by investor Alex Ren, TalentSeer is an AI talent partner that provides integrated talent acquisition, market research and executive search services. The company has developed a community called Robin.ly, which connects AI professionals through high-profile interviews and community events. Using a rigorous matching process, the company digs deep into each focused AI domain and talent distribution to provide the best candidates for companies’ AI needs. TalentSeer assists clients from a wide range of industries including finance, retail, healthcare and autonomous driving.

Who they work with: LUCI, CloudMinds, Xcalar, Vicarious, and more. 

 

ThoughtSpot Sunnyvale startups
ThoughtSpot

Founded: 2012

Focus: AI + Data Analytics

What they do: ThoughtSpot enables enterprises to search and analyze their company data in order to gain hidden insights in a matter of seconds. The organization empowers non-technical people to answer their own data questions, while building a single source of truth with security and governance at scale. ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics platform also offers SearchIQ, a natural language search that allows clients to have a conversation with their data. The company works with clients from a wide range of industries including retail, finance, manufacturing, communications and healthcare, and life sciences.

Who they work with: Walmart, Hulu, ExxonMobil, OpenTable, Haggar, De Beers Group, Intermountain Healthcare and 7 Eleven. 

 

ThunderCore Sunnyvale startups
ThunderCore

Founded: 2017

Focus: Blockchain

What they do: ThunderCore is an EVM-compatible public blockchain with its own native currency that brings scale to decentralized applications, providing higher throughput, faster confirmation times and lower costs. The company’s simple, economically incentivized election scheme enables open participation, with fast fault recovery. Their products include a blockchain explorer called ThunderScan, as well as TokenBridge, which allows users to convert between Ethereum stablecoins and stablecoins on ThunderCore. The company also offers a developer portal that serves as a knowledge center and helps developers easily on-board and develop on ThunderCore.

Who they work with: Chainlink, Block Vigil, Huobi, Liquidity Network, MythX, Swift Blockchain and Exoplanets.

 

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock and social media.

Explore Job Matches.