Every tech article about California focuses on the same two cities. San Francisco is the startup mecca. Los Angeles is the creative-tech hybrid. And San Diego? San Diego is "nice weather and the zoo." I've lived here my entire life, and I've watched this narrative persist even as the reality on the ground has become wildly different.
The truth is that San Diego's tech ecosystem has been building something genuinely impressive over the past few years — and it's done it so quietly that most of the national tech press hasn't noticed. Biotech corridors in Torrey Pines. Defense tech contractors in Sorrento Valley. AI startups sprouting up in East Village. A web development and digital marketing community that's grown from scattered freelancers to a legitimate ecosystem. I work in this scene every day, and I want to tell you what's actually happening here.
The Numbers Tell a Story
San Diego County now has over 3,800 tech companies employing roughly 180,000 people in technology-related roles. VC funding into San Diego startups has nearly tripled since 2021, hitting $5.8 billion in 2025. The city has been ranked among the top 10 emerging tech hubs in the US by multiple outlets, and for once, the rankings actually match what I'm seeing on the ground.
But raw numbers don't capture the vibe. What's different about San Diego's tech growth is that it feels organic. It's not the result of some top-down economic development plan or a single massive company setting up shop. It's thousands of small and medium companies, independent developers, creative agencies, and research-to-startup pipelines that have been building quietly for years.
The Pillars: What San Diego Is Actually Good At
Biotech Is the Foundation
San Diego has been a biotech powerhouse for decades, and this hasn't slowed down — if anything, it's accelerated. The Torrey Pines mesa is home to the Salk Institute, Scripps Research, UCSD's biomedical programs, and hundreds of biotech companies ranging from pre-revenue startups to major players like Illumina and Dexcom.
What's changed recently is the convergence of biotech with AI and data science. Computational biology startups are popping up that combine San Diego's deep life sciences expertise with machine learning — drug discovery, genomic analysis, diagnostic AI. This intersection is creating roles and companies that didn't exist five years ago, and San Diego is uniquely positioned to lead here because we have both the biology talent and the growing AI talent in the same zip codes.
Defense Tech: The Quiet Giant
San Diego is the largest military city in the world. Naval Base San Diego, Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar — the military presence here is massive. And where there's military, there's defense technology.
Sorrento Valley and the UTC corridor are dense with defense contractors — from behemoths like General Atomics and Northrop Grumman to nimble startups building autonomous systems, cybersecurity tools, and satellite communications. The defense tech sector in San Diego isn't sexy in the way consumer tech is, but it's enormous, well-funded, and increasingly overlapping with commercial tech. Autonomous drone technology developed for the Navy is spinning out into commercial logistics. Military cybersecurity expertise is feeding into enterprise security startups.
AI and Machine Learning
This is where things get exciting for me personally. San Diego's AI scene has gone from "a few UCSD professors doing research" to a legitimate startup ecosystem in just a few years. The catalyst was partly COVID (remote work brought SF engineers to San Diego's better quality of life) and partly UCSD's expansion of its AI and data science programs.
Downtown and East Village have become the hub for AI startups — there's something poetic about bleeding-edge AI companies operating out of converted warehouse spaces in the Gaslamp Quarter's periphery. I've been to meetups and demo days where the density of AI talent in the room rivals what I've seen visiting SF events. The difference is that San Diego AI founders tend to be more applied, more focused on specific industry problems (healthcare, defense, logistics) than on building the next foundation model.
Digital Marketing and Creative Tech
This is my world, so I'll admit some bias, but San Diego's digital marketing and creative technology scene is thriving. The city has always had a strong agency presence — marketing for the tourism, hospitality, and real estate industries that are huge here. But it's evolved beyond that.
There's a growing community of SEO specialists, content strategists, web developers, and digital creators who are building tools and practices that compete with anything coming out of bigger markets. The web development community in particular has embraced modern approaches — static sites, edge computing, performance-first design — in ways that feel ahead of the curve.
The San Diego Advantages
Cost of Living (Relative to Other Tech Hubs)
Look, San Diego isn't cheap. Let's not pretend it is. But compared to San Francisco? It's a different universe. A one-bedroom in a nice part of San Diego runs $2,000-2,500/month. In SF, you're looking at $3,500-4,500 for the same thing. That cost difference is even more dramatic for startups trying to lease office space — Downtown San Diego office space is roughly 40% less per square foot than comparable space in San Francisco or West LA.
For early-stage startups, this cost difference means runway. A seed-funded startup in San Diego can operate 30-40% longer on the same capital compared to a San Francisco counterpart. That's not trivial — it's often the difference between reaching product-market fit and running out of money.
Quality of Life as a Recruiting Tool
This is San Diego's secret weapon, and I don't think it's talked about enough in tech contexts. When you're recruiting engineers and designers, you're competing against companies in SF, Seattle, New York, and Austin. San Diego can't always compete on compensation (though the gap is narrowing). But it absolutely competes on lifestyle.
Year-round 70-degree weather. World-class beaches within 20 minutes of every major tech hub in the city. A food scene that punches way above its weight — the taco shops alone are worth relocating for. Outdoor recreation that ranges from surfing to hiking to mountain biking, all within a short drive. I've talked to engineers who relocated from the Bay Area, and the most common thing I hear is: "I should have done this years ago."
The University Pipeline
UCSD is a top-20 research university with particularly strong programs in computer science, data science, bioengineering, and cognitive science. The Jacobs School of Engineering produces thousands of graduates annually, many of whom want to stay in San Diego. This creates a reliable talent pipeline that didn't exist a decade ago when most UCSD CS graduates left for Silicon Valley.
Beyond UCSD, San Diego State University has expanded its tech-focused programs significantly, and there's a growing network of coding bootcamps and professional development programs. The educational infrastructure to support a tech ecosystem is now firmly in place.
The Neighborhoods: Where Tech Happens in SD
UTC / University City
The area around UCSD and the Westfield UTC mall has become San Diego's most concentrated tech corridor. Qualcomm's headquarters anchors the area, but it's surrounded by hundreds of smaller tech companies, research labs, and startups. The new trolley line connecting UTC to Downtown has made this corridor even more accessible. If San Diego has a "tech campus" vibe anywhere, it's here.
Sorrento Valley
Just north of UTC, Sorrento Valley is the traditional home of San Diego's tech industry. It's denser, more industrial, less glamorous — and that's part of its appeal for companies that want functional office space at reasonable prices. Defense tech, biotech manufacturing, and established software companies dominate here. It's not where the buzziest startups are, but it's where a huge amount of the actual tech work happens.
Downtown / East Village
This is where the energy is right now. East Village in particular has undergone a transformation from "sketchy neighborhood near Petco Park" to "the place where startups want to be." Co-working spaces have multiplied, and there's a concentration of AI, fintech, and creative tech startups. The vibe is walkable, urban, and young — it feels like a scaled-down version of SOMA circa 2015, but with better weather and better tacos.
Del Mar / Carmel Valley
The coastal stretch north of downtown has attracted a different kind of tech presence — more established companies, satellite offices of larger firms, and well-funded startups with founders who want ocean views. It's less scrappy than East Village, more polished, and increasingly home to fintech and healthtech companies.
What's Missing (Honest Assessment)
I love San Diego, but I'm not going to pretend the tech scene doesn't have gaps. The biggest issues I see:
Venture capital presence is still thin. Most VC firms that invest in San Diego companies are based in SF or LA. There are a handful of local funds, but the depth of capital available locally doesn't match the quality of companies being built. This means San Diego founders spend a lot of time traveling to pitch meetings, which adds friction to the fundraising process.
The networking infrastructure is still developing. SF has a mature ecosystem of tech events, meetups, accelerators, and informal networks built over decades. San Diego's version is growing but still feels fragmented. There's no single "hub" where the whole scene converges, and it can be harder for newcomers to plug in.
Brand perception lags reality. When I tell people outside California that I work in tech in San Diego, I still get the "oh, that's nice" response — the assumption being that real tech happens elsewhere and I'm just doing it from a beach. This perception gap makes recruiting harder and means San Diego companies often have to try harder to be taken seriously by national press and investors.
Why I'm Bullish on SD Tech
Despite the gaps, I'm more excited about San Diego's tech trajectory than I've ever been. The convergence of biotech, defense tech, and AI — three sectors where San Diego has genuine, deep expertise — is creating something unique. No other city in the US has this exact combination of strengths.
The quality-of-life advantage is becoming more valuable, not less, as remote and hybrid work normalize. The cost advantage is real. The university pipeline is strong and getting stronger. And the culture here — collaborative, unpretentious, focused on building rather than performing — creates a different kind of tech ecosystem than the one in SF. Not better or worse, just different. And I think that difference is increasingly attractive to the kind of people who build lasting companies.
I'm building my own career in this ecosystem — doing SEO, digital marketing, and web development for businesses that are part of this growth. Every week I meet someone new who's moved here from a bigger tech market and is building something interesting. The momentum is real, even if the rest of the tech world hasn't fully caught on yet.
Give it two more years. They'll catch on.