Brian Lee, who co-founded The Honest Company with Jessica Alba, packed up his Los Angeles life in 2025 and moved his family to Summerlin.
Lee is one of a growing number of tech entrepreneurs trading California for Southern Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which reported that lifestyle, family-friendly neighborhoods and a growing business community are pulling founders east across the desert.
The timing lines up with a broader migration pattern.
A Summit Built to Sell the Move
The summit was founded by Teddy Liaw, CEO of NextRep and a founding member of former Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak's startup and venture council, according to 8newsnow.com. Liaw founded the event after moving from San Francisco to Las Vegas himself, as reported by the Las Vegas Sun.
The gathering is small and intimate. According to 8newsnow.com, Liaw's stated goal is to diversify Las Vegas's economy, establish the city as a tech hub, insulate residents from economic swings and create better jobs.
Why Founders Say They're Staying
Liaw moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to 8 News Now. He has cited tax benefits as one advantage of moving to Nevada.
Piotr Tomasik, a UNLV computer science alumnus, co-founded TensorWave, an AI and high-performance computing company, and is also a Tech Summit founder, according to UNLV. Tomasik has said Las Vegas is entrepreneurial and that Nevada's political balance holds value for founders, per the Review-Journal. Nevada has no state income tax, the paper also noted.
TensorWave's Rapid Growth
TensorWave offers a concrete example of the ecosystem the summit is trying to build. The company announced on June 10, 2026, that it had secured $350 million in Series B funding, according to UNLV. TensorWave has said it plans to partner with UNLV and hire locally as part of its Las Vegas expansion, according to FOX5 Vegas. UNLV reported that TensorWave had more than 30 employees and planned to scale to 100 by the end of 2025.
UNLV is also building the talent pipeline that companies like TensorWave are drawing from. In fall 2024 alone, 107 UNLV students interned at 35 local tech startups or small businesses through the StepUp & StartUp program, the university reported.
Other founders cited in the Review-Journal's reporting followed similar paths. Sleeper founder Nan Wang relocated from San Diego, according to News 3 Las Vegas, while Evisort founder and CEO Jerry Ting relocated to Las Vegas from the Bay Area about six months before that outlet's report. Liaw has described building Las Vegas into a tech hub as a goal.
UNLV's own numbers point to a region reshaping its workforce around that ambition. The university's engineering enrollment has grown from 173 students a little more than a decade ago to 454 today, according to News 3 Las Vegas.
Liaw and Tomasik are among the founders working to build Las Vegas's tech community.
