By Jorge Mercado Monday, March 10th, 2025

Santa Barbara is known for lots of things.

Beautiful weather, the beach, the mountains, wine, Spanish architecture, UC Santa Barbara and so much more.

But one of the lesser-known things that is quickly gaining more traction is the diversified tech scene that exists throughout the county, though mainly in the city of Santa Barbara.

It’s something that although our paper discusses rather frequently, outside of a few national spots on companies like Sonos and AppFolio never really gets the attention it deserves.

However, that might have changed last week with Amazon’s latest announcement.

On Feb. 26, Amazon announced Alexa+, the next generation of Alexa that was rebuilt from the ground up with generative AI being a key part of the product.

And where was a fair amount of that work done? Right here in sunny Santa Barbara.

For the uninitiated, Amazon has had a presence in Santa Barbara since 2017 when the company purchased Graphiq, an AI company that rapidly creates interactive data-driven infographics, for a reported $50 million.

The goal when they acquired Graphiq was to use that Santa Barbara team to help improve its Alexa virtual assistant and other services.

And all that work helped lead to the Feb. 26 announcement of a newly built Alexa virtual assistant — one that Amazon has huge hopes for.

Kevin Davis, the Amazon Santa Barbara site lead and a director of artificial general intelligence said in a Feb. 26 LinkedIn post, “Great work by many in Santa Barbara and beyond to help build this amazing product. Can’t wait to get it in customers’ hands.”

The work was not easy. 

Inventing Alexa+ required a series of technical breakthroughs, from getting large language models to orchestrate application programming interfaces reliably to creating all-new agentic capabilities.

According to Amazon, “Alexa+ isn’t just another AI chatbot. It’s our next-generation AI assistant that is much more conversational, smarter, personalized, and capable of getting even more things done for customers.”

Now whether or not you are a fan of Amazon or Alexa is not really the point.

The point is that Alexa+ being unveiled is a win for Santa Barbara.

It is yet another example that people can point to when people make the case that technology is vibrant in this area.

This is not just a place for retired people with a boatload of money and tourists to come drink chardonnay on the weekend, it is also a viable place for smart and passionate people in the world of technology to come and do some meaningful work.

The Amazon Alexa/AI team here in Santa Barbara is just a fraction of the amount of tech companies in the area; but no other tech company in the area has the presence that Amazon has.

No other company could host an entire event about one product and draw so much attention. 

Within minutes to hours of Amazon’s announcement, every national paper with a technology section was writing about how Alexa+ came together.

And hopefully, a few of those searches also led to the Santa Barbara office and the key work being done there.

Santa Barbara will likely always be known for its beauty and cheery atmosphere, but perhaps one day, it will also be known as the birthplace of a lot of interesting technology that is looking to shape our lives for the next few decades if not more.

Also, for those interested, Amazon Santa Barbara appears to be hiring. 

IN OTHER NEWS

Before closing this month’s tech column, I also wanted to bring attention to the amazing work being done in Quantum Computing at UC Santa Barbara.

For those who missed it, a Microsoft team led by UCSB physicists unveiled an eight-qubit topological quantum processor on Feb. 19, the first of its kind.

Now, I will be honest, it took me a few days to read the actual paper published in the journal Nature, but boy was it worth it.

For those who want to know all about the eight-qubit topological quantum processor, check out my story at pacbiztimes.com/2025/03/03/microsofts-newest-quantum-processor-has-ucsb-roots/.

Quantum has the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems, and possibly come up with cures for things previously thought impossible.

And I find it incredibly cool that a lot of that work is being done by people here in Santa Barbara, people that I see walking around my community every day. 

It makes me thrilled to call this place home.

Jorge Mercado covers the technology scene around the Central Coast for the Business Times. He can be reached at [email protected].