Bakersfield Startups to Watch in 2027: Verified Energy, Agtech and Aerospace Companies, Local Investors and Where Founders Get Support
Bakersfield is the largest city in Kern County, California, and the county runs on oil and gas, farming, aerospace testing and, more and more, carbon management. It is not a venture capital hub like San Francisco or Los Angeles, and only a few startups here publish funding rounds. The 2026 version of this article listed ten Bakersfield startups. When we checked them, four could not be found anywhere, and most of the real ones are based in other cities, have changed or were described wrongly. For this 2027 edition we started again. In November 2026 we checked each company on its own website to confirm that it exists, that it is based in Bakersfield or Kern County and that it is still active. We did not pad the list. What happened to the old names is explained near the end.
Quick answer: the Bakersfield startups and projects to watch in 2027 are Renewell Energy (gravity energy storage in idle oil wells) and M8 Systems (AI irrigation automation), both headquartered in Bakersfield, plus Carbon TerraVault I, California's first carbon storage project to inject CO2, at Elk Hills, and Stratolaunch, the hypersonic flight test company in Mojave. For money and help, start with Kern Venture Group, B3K Prosperity, the Bakersfield College Launchpad and the CSU Bakersfield Small Business Development Center.
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Why Bakersfield Matters for Founders in 2027
Three things shape startups in Bakersfield. The first is energy: oil and gas fields, oilfield services and now California's first carbon storage injection site create customers and test sites for energy transition startups. The second is agriculture: growers in the southern San Joaquin Valley buy irrigation, water reporting and farm automation tools. The third is aerospace in East Kern, where, according to B3K Prosperity, innovators can work with US Air Force, Navy and NASA test and research assets. The Kern Economic Development Corporation, a public-private partnership based in Bakersfield, lists the county's main industries as advanced manufacturing, aerospace and defense, energy and natural resources, healthcare, transportation and logistics, and value-added agriculture.
There is also a social reason to build here. According to B3K Prosperity, a regional collaborative of business, government and civic groups, a 2020 market assessment found that more than half of residents in the Bakersfield and Kern County region struggle to make ends meet. Its goal is to create 100,000 more quality jobs by 2031, and it backs entrepreneurship, energy and carbon management, and aerospace to get there.
Bakersfield is a small ecosystem, like the ones in our guides to Corpus Christi startups and Omaha startups. Compare it with larger Sun Belt hubs in our lists of San Diego startups to watch and Tucson startups to watch. Further north in the Central Valley, our list of Stockton startups to watch covers San Joaquin County.
Bakersfield Startups and Projects to Watch in 2027 Compared
Sources: each company's official website and California Resources Corporation's Carbon TerraVault storage sites page, checked 2 November 2026. None of the startups publishes the size of a venture round on its own site.
The Bakersfield Startups and Projects to Watch in 2027
1. Renewell Energy: energy storage in idle oil wells
Renewell Energy turns idle oil and gas wells into energy storage. Its patented Gravity Well system hangs a long weight, made of used oilfield tubing or casing with a high-density filling, on a wire rope inside a well that has first been sealed with a cement plug. The system stores electricity by lifting the weight and sends power back to the grid by lowering it through a motor-generator. The company says it reuses the well, the old pumpjack power connection and the roads, which it puts at a capital cost of $5 per kWh, and that it shares storage revenue with the well owner over a 30-year system life. Its website says it is headquartered in Bakersfield and points to more than 2.6 million idle oil and gas wells in the US and Canada as its market. Its chief technology officer presented the technology at the EnerCom Denver conference in 2025. It does not publish funding figures on its site.
Lesson for founders: Renewell turns the oil industry's biggest liability, wells that must be plugged at great cost, into a revenue source for the well owner. In an oil county, the best energy transition ideas often start with assets that already exist.
Best for: founders in energy storage, oilfield services and climate tech.
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2. M8 Systems: AI irrigation automation
M8 Systems builds AI-powered irrigation automation for farms, golf courses, parks and water managers. Its products control irrigation and fertigation, log sensor data, monitor wells, pumps, reservoirs and tanks, and automatically record pumped water volumes for California's groundwater law (SGMA) reporting; it also sells a remote fire protection system. Its About page says the company was born in 2020 in California's Central Valley, builds its own hardware and software, runs its own testing facilities and is headquartered in Bakersfield with a satellite office in Orange County. The company says its customers report water savings of more than 30%. M8 Systems is in the portfolio of Kern Venture Group, which also lists its founder and chief executive, Max Safai, as an adviser and says he previously led hardware engineering, manufacturing and operations on the Amazon Go project.
Lesson for founders: M8 sells to a problem every local grower has, scarce water and new reporting rules, and builds and tests next to its customers. Local regulation can be a startup's best sales argument.
Best for: founders in agtech, water technology and industrial IoT.
3. Carbon TerraVault I: California's first carbon storage injection
Carbon TerraVault is the carbon management business of California Resources Corporation (CRC), an oil and gas producer. According to its storage sites page, its first site, Carbon TerraVault I, uses two depleted reservoirs at the Elk Hills Field in Kern County. It received EPA Class VI permits in December 2024 and injected its first CO2 in May 2026, which the company calls California's first Class VI carbon storage injection. The site has an estimated capacity of up to 46 million metric tons and is permitted to store up to 1.6 million metric tons of CO2 a year. A joint venture with Brookfield, announced in January 2025, will store up to 100,000 metric tons a year from the Elk Hills gas plant. The company applied for another Kern County storage permit, CTV VII, in February 2026, and its subsidiary Aera Energy has a separate carbon storage project, CarbonFrontier, at the Belridge field.
Lesson for founders: carbon storage is not a startup, but it creates years of demand for monitoring, sensors, data, permitting and capture technology. Founders who can sell to these projects should build near them.
Best for: founders in carbon management, environmental monitoring and energy software.
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4. Stratolaunch: hypersonic flight testing in Mojave
Stratolaunch is headquartered in Mojave, in East Kern County. It describes itself as a reusable hypersonic flight test company that flies test missions at Mach 5 and faster for U.S. government and commercial customers. Its systems include the Talon-A reusable hypersonic test vehicle and Roc, the carrier aircraft that launches it, and its news page reports the acquisition of a Boeing 777 as an additional carrier aircraft. It is a private aerospace company, not a young startup, and it does not publish funding figures. It belongs on a Kern County list because it shows what the region's test ranges attract.
Lesson for founders: Kern County's aerospace strength is testing. Startups that build sensors, materials, autonomy or software for flight tests can find customers, partners and test assets in East Kern.
Best for: founders in aerospace, defense technology and advanced materials.
Where Bakersfield Startups Get Money and Support
Kern Venture Group is the city's own venture fund. Its website says it was founded in 2018, is industry agnostic, invests from the early stage up to Series B and prefers startups that have a positive impact on the community. Its portfolio includes M8 Systems and companies from far outside Kern County, and founders apply by sending a pitch deck or business plan through its Founders page. For more investors, see our guide to angel investors in North America.
Unbound: Kern Capital Summit, run by B3K Prosperity, was scheduled for 8 to 10 November 2026 at the Dignity Health Arena and Convention Center in Bakersfield, bringing institutional investors, civic leaders and entrepreneurs together for three days. B3K also co-runs the Mojave Aerospace Accelerator Fund with the Griffiss Institute and Starburst: its first class of five aerospace and defense startups shared $400,000 in investments, announced in June 2025, to work with test assets in East Kern and the Antelope Valley.
- Bakersfield College Launchpad: no-cost business advising, workshops, webinars, networking and tuition-free noncredit courses for entrepreneurs across Kern County. Its City of Bakersfield grant programme, which gave grants of up to $20,000 and free technical assistance to local small businesses, concluded on 30 September 2026.
- CSU Bakersfield Small Business Development Center: one-on-one business advising, training events and help with access to capital for small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs in Kern, Inyo and Mono counties.
- CSUB Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation: runs a venture accelerator open to CSUB students, alumni, faculty and staff and to the wider Kern County community, with a focus on petroleum and renewable energy, aerospace, remote business services, advanced manufacturing and agricultural technology.
- California Renewable Energy Laboratory (CREL): launched in 2022 as a $50 million state-funded initiative at the Kern Community College District, it runs centres for clean energy and grid resilience, advanced transportation, high performance buildings and carbon management, with demonstration projects and industry partners. It trains workers rather than funding startups.
- Kern Inclusive Entrepreneurship Hub: a Bakersfield hub listed by the California Office of the Small Business Advocate under its Accelerate California programme, offering personalised support and financial readiness help to founders who have lacked access to business resources in Kern, Inyo and Mono counties.
For founders who are just starting, the Launchpad is the easiest door to walk through: it is in downtown Bakersfield and its advising is free.
Bakersfield Startups From the Old List That Could Not Be Verified
The 2026 version of this article listed ten startups. Here is what we found when we checked each one in November 2026:
- Renewell Energy: real and headquartered in Bakersfield, so it stays on the list.
- Califia Farms: a real plant-based milk brand founded in 2010, but its contact page gives its address in Los Angeles, and it is not a young startup.
- JimmyAsh: a real company, but it makes go free snack chips, not art-tech jewellery as the old article said. Its website says it built its first full-scale plant in Bakersfield in 2015, but its press releases are datelined Santa Monica, so we did not list it as a Bakersfield startup.
- HFD (Healthcare Finance Direct): a real patient financing company that a Bakersfield family bought in 2016, according to its own site. Its main office is now in Southlake, Texas; Bakersfield is only a mailing address.
- ATC Managers: startup directories describe it as a Bakersfield private lender, not the logistics software company in the old article, and its website did not load when we checked.
- EnerVault Solutions: the EnerVault website is now a parked domain, and the old article gave no Bakersfield address.
- Verde Health IT, AgroTech Bakersfield, SoilCycle Innovations and Magic Tails VR: we found no official website, registry entry or news report for a Bakersfield company with any of these names. All four were removed, together with their claims.
We also checked newer names and left them out: ChurchAI, an AI platform for churches backed by Kern Venture Group, which directories place in Bakersfield but whose own website gives no location; Mote, which planned a wood-waste-to-hydrogen plant near Bakersfield but is described as a Los Angeles company and publishes no current project status; and Avnos, a Los Angeles carbon removal company that has tested its technology in Bakersfield. We also removed the old article's unsourced claims about tech job growth, salaries, living costs and total investment in the city.
Which Bakersfield Startup Should You Learn From?
- You build energy or climate technology: study Renewell Energy, which turns oilfield liabilities into a product.
- You build for farms: study M8 Systems, which sells water savings and regulatory reporting to growers.
- You build monitoring, data or capture technology: follow Carbon TerraVault and other Kern County storage projects as future customers.
- You build aerospace or defense technology: look at Stratolaunch and the Mojave Aerospace Accelerator Fund.
- You need your first investor: talk to Kern Venture Group and meet investors at B3K Prosperity's events.
- You are just starting: book free advising at the Bakersfield College Launchpad or the CSU Bakersfield SBDC.
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How Founders Use Bakersfield's Startup Scene
Notice where the money comes from: one local venture fund, regional programmes, college advising and city grants, and customers in energy, farming and aerospace. If you build in Bakersfield, plan for non-dilutive money and early revenue first: see our lists of grants for early-stage startups, grants for female entrepreneurs and deep tech grants in North America. When you are ready for investors, compare our guide to early-stage VC firms.
Many investors and industry events are in Los Angeles and other larger hubs. Meet them at the must-attend startup events in Los Angeles, the top startup events for energy tech and the top agritech startup events. If you are still choosing where to build, compare cities in our guides to the best cities for early-stage startups and the startup cities of North America.
Before you copy any of these business models, validate your startup idea with real customers. Small ecosystems reward visibility: publish your startup press release and write about your product with the F/MS AI SEO Tool so customers, investors and AI assistants can find you.
FAQ About Bakersfield Startups to Watch in 2027
Which Bakersfield startups should I watch in 2027?
Our verified list: Renewell Energy and M8 Systems, both headquartered in Bakersfield, plus two Kern County names that shape the startup scene: the Carbon TerraVault I carbon storage project at Elk Hills and Stratolaunch in Mojave. We checked each one in November 2026.
Why is this list so short?
Bakersfield has few venture-backed startups, and we only list companies whose own website confirms that they exist, are based in Bakersfield or Kern County and are active. Four names on the old list could not be found anywhere, and most of the rest are based in other cities.
Is Bakersfield a good place to start a startup?
It suits founders who sell to energy, oilfield, farming, water and aerospace customers, because those customers and their test sites are nearby. It is harder for consumer apps that need local venture capital, because very few rounds from the city are published.
Who invests in Bakersfield startups?
Kern Venture Group, founded in 2018, is the local venture fund and invests from the early stage up to Series B. B3K Prosperity's Unbound summit brings outside investors to Bakersfield, and the Mojave Aerospace Accelerator Fund invests in aerospace and defense startups that work with East Kern test assets.
Where can Bakersfield founders get free help?
The Bakersfield College Launchpad offers no-cost advising, workshops and noncredit courses downtown, and the CSU Bakersfield Small Business Development Center offers one-on-one advising across Kern, Inyo and Mono counties. CSUB's Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation runs a venture accelerator open to the community.
What is happening with carbon storage in Kern County?
California Resources Corporation's Carbon TerraVault I at the Elk Hills Field injected its first CO2 in May 2026, the first Class VI carbon storage injection in California, according to the company. It has applied for more storage sites, including one more in Kern County.
Are there agtech startups in Bakersfield?
Yes. M8 Systems, headquartered in Bakersfield, builds AI irrigation automation and groundwater reporting tools for farms, golf courses and water managers. CSUB's accelerator also names agricultural technology as a target industry.
What happened to the startups on the old list?
We kept Renewell Energy. We removed Verde Health IT, AgroTech Bakersfield, SoilCycle Innovations and Magic Tails VR because we found no trace of them, and Califia Farms, JimmyAsh, HFD, ATC Managers and EnerVault because they are based elsewhere, were described wrongly or no longer have a working website.
Where can I get a backlink by writing about my startup?
You can publish a guest post in one of the Fe/male Switch startup blogs, which rank in Google and in AI tools. Get a quality backlink.
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
