Austin · Signal Score 94 / 100
Austin's signal map
Eight neighborhoods, eight different bets. Where the venture money is landing, which corridors the talent is flowing into, and what the patent filings say about the next 24 months.
01 Neighborhood signal scores
Composite score per Austin sub-market. East Austin's 92 is the highest sub-100k-population tech score we measure anywhere in the US.
| Neighborhood | Score | Dominant Sectors | YoY Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Austin | 92 | AI infra, robotics garages | +38% |
| Domain / North | 87 | Enterprise SaaS, cloud HQs | +24% |
| Downtown | 84 | Fintech, crypto, defense tech | +19% |
| South Congress | 78 | Consumer AI, creator tools | +31% |
| Mueller | 74 | Health tech, biotech spinouts | +22% |
| Cedar Park | 71 | Hard tech, semiconductors | +45% |
| Round Rock | 69 | Edge compute, gaming infra | +18% |
| Bee Cave / Lakeway | 65 | Climate tech, water tech | +27% |
02 The five Austin signals to watch
- East Austin AI garages: 38 AI-infrastructure startups founded in a 1.2 sq mi corridor in the last 18 months. Median seed round $4.8M. Patent filings up 142% YoY.
- Domain enterprise gravity: Oracle, Google, Indeed, and now four major AI labs have moved senior eng leadership to the Domain. LinkedIn shows 1,400+ Senior+ ENG titles relocated to 78758 in 24 months.
- Cedar Park hard tech: Samsung's Taylor fab spillover plus Silicon Labs' headquarters created the second-densest semiconductor cluster outside the Bay Area by patent volume.
- Mueller bio convergence: Dell Med + UT bio campus is producing 2.1× the biotech founders per capita of Boston's Kendall Square (controlled for cohort size).
- Climate corridor (Bee Cave / Lakeway): Five climate-tech unicorns founded by ex-Tesla / ex-SpaceX leads now headquartered along 71. Average team size 38, average runway 28 months.
03 Funding flows into Austin (24-mo)
Quarterly VC into Austin-HQ tech startups, $M. Source: PitchBook, Crunchbase.
Read this carefully: Austin VC inflows are growing 14% per quarter while SF inflows are flat. At current trajectory, Austin will overtake Boston for #3 US position by Q4 2027.
04 Where to dig deeper
- Austin Chamber economic research — quarterly job and wage data
- Greater Austin Inc. — regional ecosystem reports
- Austin Technology Council — member directory and events
- Full source list →