2025 Sacramento Inno Awards: Sacramento’s Builders, Breakthroughs, and Bold Bets
If you ever catch yourself saying, “Nothing big ever happens in Sacramento,” the 2025 Sacramento Business Journal Inno Awards politely disagree.
This year’s honorees are a snapshot of what we love about this region: founders solving real problems, researchers commercializing the “impossible,” and community leaders doing the unglamorous work of making innovation stick.
The Business Journal’s judges panel for the Inno Awards included Monique Brown (Wexford Science + Technology), Laura Good (StartupSac), Cameron Law (Carlsen Center at Sac State), and Gary Simon (CleanStart)—aka people who have actually been in the arena with founders and know what real traction looks like.
Below is the full list of 2025 Inno Awards winners (honorees), organized by category.
Emerging Companies (One to Watch… and One to Fund)
These are the companies scaling fast, building real momentum, and earning the “don’t blink” label:
Companies (Building Products That Don’t Feel Like Science Projects)
Real tech. Real markets. Real “how did they do that?” energy:
Innovators (The Humans Behind the Momentum)
These are the people shaping the ecosystem—capital, community, universities, and founder gravity:
Mark Haney (Growth Factory / HaneyBiz / The Mark Haney Show)
Gary S. May (Chancellor, UC Davis)
Molly and Brandon Weber (Co-founders, The Urban Hive)
Innovation (The Breakthrough Itself)
This category is for the thing—the product, process, or partnership that moves the needle:
HuMOLYTE (IGH Naturals)
Value Based Care Partnership (Health Net, Dignity Health, and Vivant Health)
Why This Matters (and Why Startup Folsom Cheers So Loudly)
Awards are nice. But what matters more is what they represent: proof that Sacramento is building companies worth paying attention to—across health, food, energy, AI, biotech, and the infrastructure that keeps founders going when it gets messy (because it always gets messy).
If you’re a founder, operator, investor, student, or just someone who loves seeing our region win: plug in. Come to a Startup Folsom workshop. Bring a friend who’s building something. Or nominate someone next cycle who deserves a spotlight.
Sacramento doesn’t need permission to innovate—just more people willing to build.
