A skateboarder turned founder, Gabriel Garciasolis racked up 50 million views, one dead pickleball brand, and a viral AI food app called BadHealth—all before he graduated. His real product was never the app. It was nerve.

The Santa Cruz job market is quietly heating up, and these four companies are leading the charge.

Roadmap 4 Innovation (R4I) has been awarded Employment Training Panel (ETP) funding to help qualifying California manufacturers offset workforce training costs and invest in employee development.

Santa Cruz Ventures has made a follow-on investment in Dispatch Goods, its tenth portfolio company — a vote of confidence in the reusable-packaging pioneer just as California's landmark plastics law takes hold.

Santa Cruz-based Reservoir VC has had a landmark week: it acquired agriculture finance platform Contain, Inc. and welcomed its founder as a new General Partner.

Beloved Monterey Bay radio station 94.7FM KRML has a new owner that you may recognize.

Silicon Valley is still winning — record VC dollars, surging AI job postings, tech employment finally growing again. But a new economic report warns the region's strength is masking real cracks: a statewide jobs slump, falling immigration, and a federal debt bill that's quietly draining future growth.

The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History is preparing for a major Bright Future expansion and renovation that will strengthen its historic Seabright building, expand galleries, improve accessibility, and create new community spaces. With a 50-year lease secured, accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums achieved, and 86% of its $20 million campaign goal raised, the Museum is building toward a stronger future for nature, science, and community learning in Santa Cruz.

Swellcycle achieves full client retention, including Duke Aipa and sees accelerating demand across major entertainment, surf, and action sports partnerships.

A new UC Santa Cruz thesis pairs wave-pool experiments with cloud CFD to prove what shapers have felt for decades: bottom contour quietly governs how a surfboard turns — and “feel” is measurable.

The Western Flyer—the 1937 boat that carried Steinbeck and Ricketts through the Gulf of California in 1940—has been restored as a modern marine research and education vessel. The Western Flyer will present at Santa Cruz Works New Tech on July 1, 2026.

Six months after Santa Cruz Works first introduced BrandCapsule, the AI discovery company has launched, signed paying customers across both B2B and B2C, and is proving out a thesis that’s only gotten more urgent: AI doesn’t just help buyers find brands anymore — it decides which ones they see.

A solo Santa Cruz engineer is building Lucid, an "organizational intelligence operating system" that scans a whole company like an MRI — and he's unveiling it at New Tech on July 1.

There is a startup in town that has been quietly building AI infrastructure since September 2025 — no venture money, no press tour, just a small team shipping fast as AINative Studio.

NASA is offering up to $500K and a ride to orbit. Their Robotically Manipulated Payload Challenge is open to startups and entrepreneurs ready to send their tech to space. Phase 1 closes August 12.

From climate protest to climate awardee: Alba Forns Named a 2026 Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow.

Future Motion founder Kyle Doerksen opened his Santa Cruz factory to a sold-out crowd of 40, tracing the Onewheel's path from garage prototype to a category he invented — and still dominates.

Rope Partner, the rope-access wind specialist with deep Santa Cruz roots, has been acquired by Danish wind giant FairWind — a milestone exit for a company that turned climbing culture into clean-energy infrastructure.

On the eve of a trillion-dollar IPO, Anthropic published proof its AI is building itself — and asked the world for a brake pedal. Is this the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the best-timed press release in history?

Builder Night welcomes builders to Pleasure Pizza on Monday night to build the Oracle!