Hardware Startups: The Index, Explained (219 Companies, 10 Categories)

Hardware startups in the HardwareMap index number 219 as of REV 26.09, spread across 10 categories and 21 countries, from Series A robot makers to listed rocket companies. Each one is catalogued like a part: a number, a category band, a hub, a funding stage, disclosed capital raised and a status. This page explains how the index works and links to every list built from it.

HardwareMap (hardwaremap.com) is a hand-sorted directory of hardware startups building robots, rockets, reactors, chips and the tools to make them, catalogued like parts on a datasheet.

The idea is simple. Engineers trust datasheets because they are terse, specified, dated and revisable. Startup coverage is usually none of those things. So each company in the index gets a datasheet page with the same fields in the same order, a revision stamp that says when it was last checked, and nothing it cannot back with a public source.

How the index catalogues hardware startups

Every entry follows the same rules. The full method is in how the HardwareMap index works; the short version follows.

Part numbers. Each company gets a part number made of its category code and a serial: ROB-001, SIL-014, NRG-007. The number is stable. It does not change when a company raises money or renames itself, so links and citations keep working.

Category bands. Ten categories, each with a colour taken from the resistor colour code, black for silicon through white for fabrication. The band appears on every card and datasheet, so a reader can scan a list and see its mix at a glance.

Fields. Name, product, what it does in two sentences, city and metro hub, country, year founded, status (private, public, acquired or subsidiary), last disclosed round, disclosed capital raised, team size and named investors.

Raised means disclosed. The raised figure is the sum of publicly disclosed equity rounds. Where nothing is disclosed, the field says undisclosed. The index does not estimate missing rounds and never infers a valuation.

Revisions. The index is revised monthly, and each revision gets a stamp in the form YY.MM. REV 26.09 is the September 2026 revision. List pages carry the stamp so a reader knows how fresh the numbers are, and the index changelog records what moved between revisions.

Inclusion. A company enters the index when it has a product (shipping, in pilots, or a working prototype), a public source, and an operating team. Slide decks and stealth teams wait. Adult products and toy variants are excluded from robot lists.

The ten categories of hardware startups

The table counts each category live from the index. The lists linked below each go deeper.

Silicon and compute is the largest category. It is dominated by AI accelerators built to run models more cheaply than general-purpose GPUs: Tenstorrent sells accelerators and licenses RISC-V designs, Etched builds an ASIC that runs only transformer models, and Cerebras Systems builds a processor the size of a whole wafer and listed in 2026. PsiQuantum is building a photonic quantum computer. The AI chip startups list covers the field.

Robotics splits between humanoids, which take most of the capital, and warehouse, farm and inspection robots, which take most of the paying customers. Figure AI has the largest disclosed raise in the category; Locus Robotics reports one of the largest deployed fleets. The top robotics companies ranking orders the category by what each company has shipped, and the humanoid robots list follows the bipedal subset.

Space and aerospace runs from small launch to lunar landers. Rocket Lab flies Electron and is developing the reusable Neutron. Firefly Aerospace landed its Blue Ghost lander on the Moon in March 2025 and listed on Nasdaq that August. Stoke Space is building a rocket designed to reuse both stages. See space startups.

Defense has the largest single disclosed raise in the index: Anduril Industries, which builds autonomous aircraft, undersea vehicles and counter-drone systems tied together by its Lattice software. Helsing in Munich moved from AI software into building strike drones. The defense tech startups list covers the rest, and drone companies cuts across defense, mobility and robotics.

Energy and climate holds the longest timelines in the index. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is building its SPARC tokamak in Devens, Massachusetts, and says it will reach net energy in 2027 (CFS, SPARC↗). Helion Energy signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft in May 2023 for a plant it says will come online by 2028 (Helion announcement↗). The index records both dates as company claims, dated, not as forecasts. Fervo Energy began delivering geothermal power from Cape Station in Utah in 2026. See fusion companies and climate tech startups.

Mobility includes the two largest disclosed totals in the index, Waymo and Rivian, along with air taxi makers and delivery drone operator Zipline. Health and bio spans Oura's sleep ring to Neuralink's brain implant. Industrial covers software-driven factories such as Hadrian and lidar makers. Consumer devices includes phone maker Nothing and repairable laptop maker Framework. Fabrication is the smallest category and the oldest in spirit: Formlabs, Prusa Research and Raspberry Pi make the tools other hardware startups prototype with.

Some companies fit more than one category. The index assigns each to the category of its main product and uses tags for the rest. Several lists, including the deep tech startups list, pull across categories by tag.

Where hardware startups are built

Hardware clusters where suppliers, machine shops, test sites and experienced engineers already are. REV 26.09 counts entries by metro hub, merging cities into one hub where they share a labour market.

The United States accounts for 116 entries, India for 22, China for 15 and Germany for 12. The rest are spread across 17 more countries, with Britain and France the largest European contributors after Germany.

The hubs specialise. The Bay Area's lead comes from chips and robotics, where proximity to AI labs and semiconductor talent matters. Los Angeles, especially the South Bay around El Segundo, Hawthorne and Torrance, is where space and defense companies hire engineers trained at the large aerospace primes. Bengaluru's entries skew toward electric scooters and motorcycles built for the domestic market, with health devices next. Shenzhen's skew toward 3D printers and robots, products that benefit from having motors, boards and enclosures sourced within a short drive.

The hub also shapes cost. A team in Shenzhen can turn a revised enclosure in days; a team in the Bay Area often waits weeks for the same part from overseas, and pays for the shipping. That gap shows up in how fast consumer and robotics teams iterate, and it is one reason several US companies in the index run their own factories rather than outsource. The prototype to production guide covers that choice.

The hardware startups by hub note breaks every hub down, and the Bay Area hardware startups list covers the largest one on its own.

How hardware startups are funded

Hardware takes more capital to reach revenue than software, and the index shows it. REV 26.09 counts 38 entries with more than a billion dollars in disclosed capital, and 18 with no disclosed figure at all.

Stage. Series C is the most common last disclosed round in the index, followed by Series B and Series A. Few entries are recorded at seed, because the inclusion rule asks for a working product and a public source, which most hardware teams reach only after a priced round. Many older and larger companies have no named round on record; their stage shows as undisclosed.

Status. 189 entries are private, 23 are listed, 5 have been acquired and 2 operate as subsidiaries. Listings in 2026 alone include Unitree in Shanghai, Cerebras and Exyn Technologies on Nasdaq, and Fervo Energy on Nasdaq, each recorded on its datasheet.

Age. Most entries were founded between 2015 and 2019, which matches how long a hardware company takes to go from founding to a product with a public record. REV 26.09 counts 46 entries founded in 2020 or later.

Investors. Named investors are recorded on each datasheet. Some names recur across categories, which is useful when mapping who funds what. NVIDIA, for example, appears among the investors of robot makers such as Figure AI and Neura Robotics as well as drone maker Skydio, driving-model developer Wayve and electronics-assembly startup Bright Machines, which says something about where a chip company expects its next customers.

What the money buys. In software, a large round mostly buys people. In hardware it also buys tooling, test equipment, inventory, certification and often a factory. Figure and Agility each build robots in their own factories, BotQ and RoboFab; Rivian built a vehicle plant; fusion companies build the reactor before they can sell a watt. That is why disclosed raises in this index run larger at each stage than software founders expect, and why the time from founding to revenue runs longer. The hardware startups by funding stage note sorts the index by round, and hardware startup funding explains how hardware rounds differ from software ones.

How to use this index

Three ways in, depending on what you are doing.

Researching a field. Start from a category page or one of the lists above. Each list states its ranking rule in the first paragraph, links every company to its datasheet, and carries a REV stamp. Where a list ranks companies, it ranks by evidence a buyer or investor can check, such as shipped product or named customers, before money raised.

Building a hardware company. The build guides cover the money terms of making things: how to start a hardware company is the starting point, and it links down to bills of materials, design for manufacturing, PCB assembly and contract manufacturers. Every price in those guides is marked as a range to verify, because component, tooling and assembly costs move with volume and tariffs.

Citing a number. Use the datasheet page, quote the REV stamp, and treat "raised" as disclosed equity only. If a number on a datasheet is wrong, the editors want to know; corrections go into the next revision with a line in the changelog.

What the index does not do: it does not rank companies as investments, it does not estimate valuations, and it does not repeat timelines as facts. A claimed first-power date for a fusion plant or a delivery date for a home humanoid is recorded as the company's claim, with the date it was made.

Frequently asked questions

What is a hardware startup?

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A young company whose main product is a physical device: a robot, a rocket, a reactor, a chip, a vehicle, a medical device or a tool for making other hardware. Software usually ships with it, but the company carries the cost of designing, sourcing, building and supporting atoms. That shapes how it raises money, how long it takes to reach revenue and how it fails.

How many hardware startups are in the HardwareMap index?

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219 as of REV 26.09, across 10 categories and 21 countries. Silicon and compute is the largest category, followed by robotics and consumer devices. The count changes with each monthly revision as companies are added, listed, acquired or closed. Every entry has its own datasheet page with a part number, hub, stage, disclosed capital and status.

Which hardware startups have raised the most money?

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By disclosed capital in the index, the largest are Waymo and Rivian in mobility, followed by Anduril in defense and Cerebras in silicon. Several of these are no longer startups in the usual sense: Rivian and Cerebras are public and Waymo is an Alphabet subsidiary. The index keeps them because they set the reference points that younger companies are measured against.

Where are most hardware startups based?

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The SF Bay Area holds the largest cluster in the index, about a fifth of all entries, followed by Los Angeles and Bengaluru. The United States accounts for just over half the index. Los Angeles leads in space and defense, Bengaluru in electric two-wheelers, and Shenzhen in 3D printers and robots built close to their supply chain.

How do I get my hardware startup listed?

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Submit it through the HardwareMap submit page with a link to the product, a public source such as a launch post or funding announcement, and the city where the team is based. The editors check that the product exists and the team is operating, assign a category and part number, and add the company in the next monthly revision.

HardwareMap catalogues hardware startups the way engineers catalogue parts. Start with the robotics category and work outward from there.