Costa Mesa CA. Defense tech platform company. Founded by Palmer Luckey (Oculus) + Trae Stephens + others. Lattice OS: AI-powered command-and-control platform integrating sensors, drones, autonomous systems. Products: Sentry Tower (border surveillance), Ghost (autonomous drone), Altius (loitering munition), Pulsar (electronic warfare), Roadrunner (reusable interceptor). IQT investment 2017. Series

Pasadena CA. One of world's premier science and engineering universities (~2,200 students). Manages JPL for NASA. $4.4B endowment (Jun 2024), ~$5B including trust assets. Highest endowment-per-student ratio globally. 52% alternatives (PE/VC, real estate, nat resources, absolute return). New CIO: Ken Lee (Feb 2025, from Children's Health Dallas); prior CIO Scott Richland grew endowment from $1.6B→$

Hypersonic weapons manufacturing company. Herndon VA. Lavrock early backer. Raised $350M Series B Dec 2025 led by Altimeter + Lightspeed. Lavrock unicorn #2. Blackbeard program + Project Ranger. Mass-production approach to hypersonics.

Irvine CA. AI-native endpoint security — prevention-first approach using ML to predict and prevent threats. IQT portfolio (George Hoyem board). Acquired by BlackBerry for $1.4B (2019). Pioneered ML-based malware prevention vs signature-based AV. Now BlackBerry Cylance.

Glendale animation studio (Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda) and a render-tech operation: built and open-sourced the MoonRay production renderer, runs large render farms. Part of LA's render/compute spine alongside Disney.

NASA's lead center for robotic space exploration — a federally funded R&D center managed by Caltech. Builds and operates the Mars rovers (Curiosity, Perseverance), the Voyager probes, and the Deep Space Network. Beyond the missions it is one of LA's largest compute/data operations: petabyte-scale mission data, deep-space signal processing, and mission supercomputing. The overlooked through-line fo

Santa Monica CA (+ Arlington VA, Pittsburgh, Boston, Brussels, Berlin, Canberra). Non-profit global policy research organization. FFRDC — managed for USAF and other sponsors. Founded 1948 (spinout of Douglas Aircraft/USAF wartime research). $400M+ annual revenue. Key research domains: national security, defense, AI policy, health policy, education, energy, cybersecurity, social policy. RAND Arroyo

Hawthorne CA. Space exploration company. Founded by Elon Musk 2002 using $100M from PayPal proceeds. Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, Starship, Starlink. Largest private space company globally. $350B+ valuation. Reusable rocket pioneer. S-1 IPO expected 2025-2026 window.

Salad chain founded in Washington DC (Georgetown University). Revolution portfolio. IPO 2021. Founders: Nicolas Jammet, Jonathan Neman, Nathaniel Ru — all Georgetown grads.

Burbank media conglomerate, and one of LA's deepest engineering operations. Walt Disney Animation Studios runs feature render pipelines (the Hyperion renderer); Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) is the R&D/engineering arm behind audio-animatronics (since 1963) and modern robotics — autonomous "stuntronics" acrobats, free-roaming BDX droids, ride systems. Overlooked read: Disney is render compute AND

LA CA. UCLA Health — largest health system in western US. Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Named for David Geffen ($200M gift). Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine. Strong translational research pipeline to LA biotech.

LA CA. Named for Henry Samueli (Broadcom co-founder, $100M gift). Birthplace of ARPANET Node 1 — first internet message sent Oct 29 1969. Defense/aerospace ties: Northrop, Raytheon, Boeing.

Los Angeles CA. Flagship UC campus for LA metro. $9.1B endowment. $1.8B+ annual research. Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. David Geffen School of Medicine. UCLA Health — largest health system in western US. Anderson School of Management (business). UCLA Tech Incubator — student/faculty startup accelerator. LA's proximity to entertainment, defense, aerospace, and biotech cre

Los Angeles CA. Largest private research university in US by enrollment. $8.1B endowment. USC Stevens Center for Innovation — tech transfer, licensing, startup formation. Strong film/media, engineering, business (Marshall), medicine (Keck). Well-connected LA/SoCal VC ecosystem. Annenberg, Viterbi (engineering), Marshall (business). Notable spinouts: Qualcomm (founded by USC alum Irwin Jacobs — als