I have a much longer list as well, but it's not well organized. The primary way that I find companies is by watching conference/meetup talks from highly techni

I have a much longer list as well, but it's not well organized. The primary way that I find companies is by watching conference/meetup talks from highly technical conferences that overlap with my interests. If the talk is on something that I find particularly interesting then I add the speakers company to my list. And then use tools like LinkedIn to find similar companies and assess them if I want to grow my list. For the type of hard works that you're describing, the most common funding model I've seen is through sbir and sttr government grants. There are a lot of small companies that are funded this way, by necessity of those grants only being available to small companies. Eastern Foundry is an incubator for these sorts of companies They're also groups like Microsoft Research and Pixar, that are internally funded, and some startups like Amira Learning, drone seed, and saildrone that look more funded by backers. Finally Lincoln Labs, UW APL, and JPL act as industry-focused research labs associated with a university. Galois is an Oregon Graduate Institute spin out, and Grammatech is a Cornell University spin-out