It’s tech week season on the US West Coast. Between the end of September and October, San Francisco, Los Angeles and a growing list of local tech weeks all happen within a few weeks of each other. This year I started in New York, SF is next week and LA the week after.
In between, I spent time at Glendale Tech Week and at the kickoff of Long Beach Tech Week. Local tech weeks like these have been around for years. What feels different now is the momentum: more capital, more technology and the push of AI are making them stronger every year.
The map is wider than the Bay Area and New York
A lot of the conversations we have with clients start in the same place. If it’s tech, it’s the Bay Area. If it’s finance, it’s New York. That is not wrong, but it is incomplete. There is a lot more out there, and the companies that only look at the obvious hubs miss much of it.
Last year I wrote about Long Beach as an emerging aerospace and space tech hub, blending academia, startups and industry. A year later, the Long Beach Accelerator has opened a new space, right as the city’s tech week kicks off. That is the kind of growth that is easy to miss if you only watch the headline cities.
We still go to the big events for the latest ideas. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking around too.
Glendale: when the city does the planning
Glendale Tech Week just held its 10th edition, and it opened with Building The Future, a celebration of ten years since the City of Glendale adopted its Tech Strategy. That strategy is a big part of why Glendale has grown into a real hub for innovation, entrepreneurship and technology.
The evening included remarks from city leaders and a fireside chat with Celeste Grade, Head of Research and Tech & Society Partnerships at Google, moderated by Omkar P. Kulkarni, Chief Transformation & Innovation Officer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
What stood out to me was how involved the city is. This is not a private event that happens to take place in Glendale. The city plans for it, commits to it year after year, and uses it to build an entrepreneurial community around the larger LA hub. That kind of long-term involvement is what turns a week of events into an ecosystem.
A city that commits to a tech strategy for ten years ends up with an ecosystem, not just an event.
The AI-ready city
The other session that stood out was The AI-Ready City: Innovation and Community, a special edition of Sunstone Venture & Innovation Center’s Sunstone Stage Connects series, in collaboration with the Alliance for SoCal Innovation. The panel brought together Elena Bolbolian, Chief Innovation Officer of the City of Glendale; Dave de Csepel, CEO of the Alliance for SoCal Innovation; and Jethro Rothe-Kushel, Founder & Creative Engine Officer of Ritual Ads, moderated by Jennifer Huang.
A lot of the conversation came back to AI sovereignty and the need for cities to be ready. AI will change the economics of a city and the ways business gets done. Cities have to think about how to use it to optimize their own operations, how to prepare the city and its population for the shift, and how to weigh the good against the bad.
It is the same question I keep seeing inside companies, applied to a whole city. AI creates value when it is tied to real operations and real people, and it needs someone thinking about the risks, not just the upside.
Long Beach: a new home for emerging tech
On September 28, the Long Beach Accelerator kicked off Long Beach Tech Week 2026 with the inaugural opening of its new Tech Hub Center at 240 Long Beach Boulevard in downtown Long Beach. The Accelerator gives emerging tech companies the resources and runway they need to grow.
The room brought together founders, investors, entrepreneurs, civic leaders and technology partners from across California and Southern California. The program included recognition from the U.S. Small Business Administration and a panel of CEOs from three key verticals, moderated by the City of Long Beach. Again, the city was part of the program itself.
What this means for companies entering the US
For founders and companies coming to the US, the instinct is to think about one or two famous cities. Weeks like these are a reminder that the map is much wider. Cities like Glendale and Long Beach have innovation officers, accelerators with physical space, public-private partnerships and communities that actively want new companies.
That can mean better access to decision-makers, faster relationships and a local ecosystem that helps you get started. Go to the big hubs for the ideas. Then look around, because the right city for your company might be one you haven’t considered yet.
