Though the region known as Silicon Valley covers dozens of municipalities, a few cities get outsized attention in tech circles. Everyone knows Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose and San Francisco as hotbeds for startup innovation.
But they’re not the only ones.
Less-talked-about cities in the region are also raking in funding, beating out major cities in other states for total venture investment.
A few days ago, we looked at cities in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay area with a high concentration of funded startups. Today, we turn our attention to the Peninsula and South Bay regions, looking for who’s attracting well-funded startups. Here are some of the cities that topped our list.
South San Francisco
This city of 60,000 is well-known as the last place you drive through when going from San Francisco to the airport. Coming back, it’s also hard to miss the famous South San Francisco hillside sign that reads “South San Francisco, The Industrial City.” The motto is outdated, though, as South San Francisco, a city founded by the meatpacking industry in the 1880s, has since transformed into a biotech powerhouse.
The transformation began in 1976, when Genentech opened there, and it has been on a roll ever since. More than 40 South San Francisco biotech and healthcare companies have raised funding in the past five years, and at least 12 brought in $40 million or more in their last rounds.
The biggest funding recipient, cancer therapy developer Stemcentrx, also delivered one of the largest biotech exits ever last year when pharma giant AbbVie agreed to buy it for $5.8 billion up front and up to $4 billion in milestone payments. Other heavily funded biotechs include NGM Biopharmaceuticals, a developer of drugs to treat cardio-metabolic and liver diseases, and Freenome, a developer of non-invasive cancer-screening tools.
In total, South San Francisco companies have raised more than $1.1 billion in venture funding over the past three years. That’s more than the entire state of Connecticut and about eight times as much as Rhode Island.
Sunnyvale
While Sunnyvale is known as the home of Yahoo, its real estate market is sometimes viewed as more dependent on nearby Apple than the former internet darling. “Million-dollar homes with fewer rooms than your first apartment” could be the motto of this quiet ‘burb.
But aside from high housing costs, Sunnyvale boasts a sophisticated startup ecosystem that pulled in more than $1.4 billion over the past three…