Tech companies in San Francisco: fewer firms, much bigger ones, and where to find them by name

This page is for people who need San Francisco's tech companies as names and numbers: job seekers, companies choosing a software vendor or development partner, investors, and B2B sellers whose customers are tech firms. It covers the Census count for the city, the public companies headquartered here, the city's own registry and how to work through it.

The numbers

County Business Patterns (CBP), the Census Bureau's annual count of businesses with employees, counted 3,174 tech establishments in San Francisco County, California in 2023. Tech covers four NAICS industry groups: software publishers (5112), computer systems design and related services (5415), data processing, hosting and related services (518) and other information services (5191).

The city and county are the same place, so these figures are San Francisco proper. Oakland, the Peninsula and Silicon Valley are separate counties; see tech companies in San Jose for Santa Clara County.

Large, product-led companies

In bands: 2,433 establishments with 1 to 19 employees, 416 with 20 to 99 and 325 with 100 or more. One in ten San Francisco tech sites has 100 or more employees; in Dallas-Fort Worth it's one in thirty.

Product companies dominate. Software publishers, hosting and data firms, and internet publishers (227 of the 244 information services sites, employing 27,366) together hold 70% of the city's tech jobs. Systems design firms, the integrators and managed service providers that lead most metros, number only 410. If you're looking for an IT services partner, the city has fewer than you'd expect; the wider San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metro has 5,029 IT services establishments.

Public tech companies headquartered in San Francisco

Ranked by revenue in each company's latest 10-K, all with San Francisco principal executive offices:

Two companies that EDGAR files under San Francisco addresses are left out on purpose. GitLab ($955.2 million for the year to January 2026) and Elastic ($1,739.3 million for the year to April 2026) both state on their 10-K covers that they have no principal executive office: GitLab calls itself "a remote-only company" and Elastic "a distributed company". For Salesforce's workforce, see Salesforce's employee count. Private companies, including the largest AI labs, don't publish audited revenue and aren't ranked here.

Finding San Francisco tech companies by name

The DataSF file is the strongest source here and one most lists ignore. Filter open locations by NAICS (5415, 5112, 5132, 518 and 5182 cover both code vintages), then group by business name to collapse multi-site companies.

Choosing a San Francisco tech vendor

1. Decide between product and service. With 805 software publishers and only 410 systems design firms, the city is better for buying software than for hiring an integrator.
2. Check the registration. A vendor operating in the city should appear in the DataSF file under its legal or trade name.
3. Ask where the team is. Remote-first companies may have a San Francisco address and no local staff; ask who supports you and from where.
4. Get the security pack up front: the vendor's latest security report, its subprocessors and its data processing terms.
5. Talk to a customer your size. Large vendors build for large customers; make sure the product fits yours.

Prospecting San Francisco tech companies

This market rewards account-based selling. The 325 sites with 100 or more employees include the headquarters of the companies above, where purchases go through procurement, security and legal, and several people weigh in (see how buying committees form). The 416 with 20 to 99 are often venture-backed and buy on a funding cycle: the weeks after a round are the best time to reach them. The 2,433 smaller sites are founders, many of them pre-revenue.

Worked example: a research credit study firm

Illustrative example. The company, people and fees are fictional, to show the method.

Embarcadero Credit Studies (embarcaderocredit.example) prepares the documentation software companies need to claim federal and California research credits. Its best clients are product companies with engineering teams large enough to generate real credit but too small for an in-house tax team.

• San Francisco establishments with 20 to 99 employees: 264 + 152 = 416.
• Software publishers and custom programmers are 1,961 of 3,174 establishments (62%), so about 255 of those 416.
• Embarcadero assumes 60% are building their own product rather than doing client work: about 150 accounts.
• Credit studies are annual, so a client won this year is likely to renew; ten wins is a durable book.

Telling product companies from client-service shops takes a read of every website. Bebop takes "San Francisco software companies with 20 to 99 employees that build their own product and raised a round in the last year" and returns matches with the reasoning for each.

Subject: [Company]'s research credit for this year

Hi [first name],

With [number] engineers on [product], [Company] is likely doing work that qualifies for research credits, and the documentation is easiest to build while the year's projects are still fresh.

We prepare the study and the support files your auditors and tax preparer need, with about two hours of your engineering leads' time. Would a short estimate based on your headcount be useful?

[Your name], Embarcadero Credit Studies

What the count covers

CBP counts establishments, single locations with at least one paid employee, for the week of March 12, 2023. Owner-only firms aren't counted, and tech teams inside banks, retailers and hospitals count under their employers' industries.

Next step: research each account before you reach out with account research.