This Week in San Diego Tech – July 19, 2025

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got it.

Hey.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech, you know we got it. Hey.

Foreign, welcome back to this week in San Diego Tech News with your hosts, Neil and Fred. Hey, Fred, how you doing?

Hey, Neil, Doing pretty good. Good to see you again. You too.

I'm coming at you live from the Lucada Club, which sometimes happens, I guess once a month on these recordings because third Thursday of every month is founder build day. So multiple locations, founders are out building alongside each other. We just had a Mike Sims sighting who just walked through just before we started recording. The defense tech leader himself in the house in north county who I think you just had coffee with recently as well too, or lunch. He took you to tacos, right? You guys did city tacos together.

Tacos and Encinitas. The post did really well on my X account. Got like 7, 000 views, 3 people reached out to intro to Mike and you know, also had an intro email thing about how it's so important to be visible and out there because you know, you never know who's doing what in San Diego and how you can help. And, and that's what we do day in, day out is connecting other founders and investors and yeah, it's such a small ecosystem. San Diego is the biggest small town in California and I think that's one of our biggest advantages to be able to connect quality people. For sure.

It's true, yeah, 100%. We get so much behind the scenes from the things that we're doing behind the scenes and so much so that I'm actually taking a few events that we do here on the road. So actually next week I'm doing a GPLP gathering up in SF with Rose Bolas, who is another connector here in town. Also an LP in my first fund. So yes, the, the things work and the things scale, even though it doesn't seem like it when it's just you and me being the connecting bottlenecks. There is scale to this and there is long term potential here. It's not just run around being busy. So if you're a gpr, LP and SF listening to this, hit me up and love to have include you. In July 23rd we got a little Gathering in Berlin.

Game.

So just shout out there. But we got plenty of stories, so let's dive into the week. We actually have been off for like two weeks, so we've got some extra stories around. There's kind of all over. There's been some raises in the biotech world, in the defense tech world. Why don't we loop in, lump in a few of these raises together here. Let's dive right into field medical. They are growing fast. In fact, so fast. I think it's been only like three, four months since the last race between Series A and Series B. So we probably, you probably heard us mention them just last quarter about their raise. What do you know about, about field medical here, Fred?

Yeah, so Phil Medical, I believe they're based in north county and they're kind of under the radar. They're in the medical equipment manufacturing space. They raised I believe a 40 million Series A in the, in Q1 this year and they're back with another Series B funding. And I think you also found that someone commented on LinkedIn that this might be the shortest round of capital raises in Medtech. And you know, who knows how true that is, but it is, that is in this environment, it's definitely this year one of the faster races I've seen. And yeah, I was just curious how much they're growing. They have about 20 employees here in San Diego. Seems like they have some employees throughout California as well as India. So they're saying like they're outsourcing some of their manufacturing. Definitely a company on my radar in the medtech space. Field medical, they've only been founded a few years ago, so yeah, definitely going to keep my eyes on this company.

Yeah. 100. I think, I think you're right. Are they Carl's Babies or Encinitas maybe. Maybe Cardiff. Yeah, think Encinitas. Cardiff area growing fast. And yeah, we'll keep our on them for sure. CEO Steve and Mickelson and we'll let you know where they're headed. Another company that just raised is. Well, we want to talk about common AI or are we going to wait till maybe. Let's wait till the AI section for that. We've got a little AI section to bring you guys today, but did see a friend of ours, Dan Magi of Firestorm. Series A did come together here and this company is doing modular printed drones. 3D printed drones. So they literally have these giant HP3D printers that they put inside of shipping containers and can ship anywhere in the world and then boom, start printing out parts for drones. Really the whole drone but it's, it's modular so you can design and snap in whether it's got camera, radar, satellite connection and then warhead or non warhead, jet powered or propeller, turbojet propeller like you can super modular in that regard. So they, I know we announced their big $100 million Air Force contract a few months ago and that makes sense that they then landed a, a large Series A here. So I'm sure there'll be a big PR press release. We may be jumping the gun on this, even reached out to Dan ahead of time. Be like cool that we're saying this the but congrats to the Firestorm team leader in the defense tech world here in San Diego for sure.

Yeah, it's pretty massive. I think it's 47 million Series A. I just saw a press release go up yesterday. Firestorm and defense tech at large has really just taken off and huge congrats to the leadership team at Firestorm. They're definitely over becoming a household name in defense tech in San Diego and beyond and off to the races from here.

Yeah. And, and this team is, is serial defense tech leaders. You know Dan builds actually an anti drone company called Citadel Defense Prior which was light speed funded and then acquired. And so you know team going back at it is always a really strong signal in that regard. And they, if you have, they, they have a really cool factory drone factory of where they're just prototyping and how they can condense down their mobile drone printing whole thing. So pretty cool to see. And congrats to Dan and the team.

There, that's for sure.

Let's jump to an acquisition here. We picked up an interesting story I saw in the SF gate about Tang Capital who I think was a customer of mine actually 10 years ago@hired.com Interesting group. They're kind of a, an under the radar private wealth capital group who's been buying up either distressed biotech or just orphaned biotech companies who lose funding or lose a little momentum. So it's been interesting. They just picked up two biotech companies that include, I believe they're both in San Diego.

I'm sure.

Is this one just hitting your desk here, Fred? You know, a little bit behind it.

This one is just hitting my desk and I'm not surprised. We're seeing a lot of bots at companies not being, being able to raise additional capital, especially if they're on the early stage side of things. If you're late stage, you know, hopefully you, you can get a bridge around or you Know, keep, keep some investor momentum. But I'm seeing it's completely stalled at the early stages and as a result we're now seeing either companies shut down or be acquired. And so, yeah, the headline was huge. Biotech investor buys four Bay Area companies on the brink of collapse. Down and out. Biotech companies are targeted for money. Tang Capital Management and its firm Concentra Biosciences, we will see this trend throughout this year. Unfortunately, there will be in the biotech market and you know, it is not positive, but it is an effect of just a downturn market and it can't be this way all, all, all the time. In 2021, we saw a big boom after Covid, after there was a kind of a stall there. And so I think there will be another bump. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think capital just kind of flows. It doesn't necessarily stop flowing. It just starts flowing in some other direction. Right. And like, like you just said during COVID a lot of capital flu flew everywhere, including into biotech. Right. But it was also because of the very specific need of biotech at that time too, around vaccines and everything there. And then we're seeing this drop off in diagnostic and vaccine because the customer base isn't there anymore. Right. But the money's flowing in other areas. Right. So the big, big pharma is finding a way to catch up by buying, you know, some R and D stuff, whether it's in the drug space where that's what we've seen over the last year in San Diego. All these billion to $10 billion acquisitions are really a way pharma to catch up and not have to start from scratch. So yes, we, like, like Fred said, it's not necessarily going away forever. It's just flowing in a different direction here. Let's pick up another acquisition we, we picked up on here in the Santa Business Journal, Soft Eye. I didn't actually know this company, but they do smart glasses, which, you know, it almost feels like Google Glass 2.0. They got picked up in an acquisition here as well too. Did you catch this one, Fred?

Yeah, the Business Journey did a good job. Basically. Softeye, they were headquartered in San Diego. It seemed like their team was actually based in South Korea and Tijuana. They had about 20 employees. And yeah, this was the acquisition to acquire the hardware business. They make AI enabled smart glasses. This sounds like something Qualcomm would be involved with or something. Or meta, you know, meta also Does a lot of smart glass eyewear. I'm not surprised to see this. I'm curious on how much the acquisition was. Usually if it's $100 million plus acquisition, usually they announce how much it is. This can be a smaller one, it could be a medium sized. But nonetheless this is a, a win for, you know, for a San Diego based company to get acquired and we'll see more acquisitions in the AI space and I think smart glass is definitely a hot area for that, for that sector, I think.

Yeah. The hardware/applied AI is interesting, right? Even so, OpenAI acquired Johnny Ives, hardware AI company, right. Just in the last few months. So I envision a lot more of that. We saw Human, which was a device that just captured everything. I think huge bright light and then crash and burn maybe. So yeah, I think we are going to see a lot more of AI applied to the hardware world in this regard. On the, on the acquisition side, man, we're already seeing the crazy acquisitions in AI world, right? The people are calling them Aqua Hires, Aqua acquirers. The, you know, the wave surf and scale AI. These are scale AI was such $15 billion for 49% or $30 billion acquisition for just the team. And then you had wave surf which was like a $3 billion and then three days later it got reduced down to $2 billion. There's some drama in the Aqua Higher space for AI talent right now, big time. So it'll be interesting because a lot of this is like, yeah, is it the talent? Is it the, is it the product will be interesting to watch that along. We saw Gretel AI, right? This is a serial AI team that just got acquired. We saw Naveen Rao's company get acquired by databricks. So we're seeing the AI world effect. Even San Diego get acquisitions already. Right? So looking forward to seeing more of that.

Well, I think there's a lot investment going in the AI space because there has been some activity there. It's M and A activity, it's companies raising capital. We're just seeing a lot of investors flock in that, in that vicinity. But yeah, to your point, there's been AI poaching wars. It seems like Big Tech is finding a way around the antitrust rule by acquiring startups up front or recruiting the talent versus just buying a small startup for X amount of dollars. You were seeing it all today and I think we're going to see the next year or two new laws come into play because Big tech is getting smart and they're changing the way they do business and stay competitive and you know it's Meta leading the way, it's Nvidia leading the way and you know the startups are helping drive that, that, that initial interest for new technology innovation.

Yeah and to be honest it's a little bit of old is new again because acquisitions always came from buying either team or product know distribution and so to see these AI acquisitions happening is a good sign. Right? This is who we want buying our companies. We want the big tech who everyone says and has been scared of. Oh well big tech's always just going to build it. Come on, how long have we always said Google just could build that themselves? And look, they're not, they're, they're not able to, they're big businesses are not able to be nimble and so the startup businesses that are pivoting and building and understanding towards AI products are figuring out are being nimble. And that was always a concern was that SaaS companies over the last five years, do they still like, do they still have a purpose or is net new AI products going to overtake them? I had that conversation this morning with a former head of Slack Investments group. We were talking about kind of these zombie corns like if something is, was pre gen AI is it still relevant? Well we've got the next few headlines are actually to show yes how some of these older, older seven to you know, six year old companies who have always known as SaaS and software aren't just rebranding to AI but are actually launching AI products. And so this next few companies we want to share just kind of share some of their AI products that are coming to market. One that hit our desk is Trust and Will launching a new AI platform specifically to help the Advisor, wealth advisor and banking community to utilize their set of wealth management tools in helping their customers. So it's kind of a B2B2C in that regard and pretty cool to see Wealth AI come out live here. Did you catch that one too Fred?

Yeah, it was a great story by you and Tribune headline was haven't made a will yet. Have you made a will yet? San Diego startup company has a new AI tool to help trust and Will's AI upgrade makes it easier to create an update and estate plan. Yeah, really trusting wheels making a name for itself not only in San Diego but across the nation. I think Cody was actually speaking on TV segment recently saying that they recently crossed a million users creating a wheel using trust and will. They've been trucking along and just getting started. It's great to See them jumping in the AI space and implementing that in their, in their business model.

Yeah, Big, big fan. Early investor Go Cody and Trust and Will team another wealth tech company based here in San Diego. Also an investor in Copia AI. So this is a platform that originally was designed to kind of be competitive to add aar, which is a software that powers wealth managers in helping them organize their customers total assets with both real time data and you know, capturing any legacy notifications and paperwork and even the tax filings. Well, they went big into the AI side of automating and chatting with your wealth in a certain regard and then doing the auto pull into all the documentation and building a whole AI platform around that as well too. So Copia Wealth Studios I think is their full name Carlsbad based and they've raised I think a seed or seed plus to date, but had a big AI launch here as well too.

Yeah, they have about 34 employees and you know San Diego has a lot of wealth management companies in, in this region and I'm not surprised to see the intersection of wealth management and now technology. You know, definitely a tailwind in this space. And congrats to Copia wealth on you know, just the progress that they've made. Short period of time.

Yeah, 100. Another company here who's been making moves behind the scenes is Comma AI. This is one of the OG autopilot companies that their whole claim was that with a little bit of hardware and a lot of software they could turn any car into an autonomous car. Their CEO is loud and boisterous and super smart. And so he was promoting a new valuation for the company. I think that you picked on here, Fred. Right? Yeah.

So Comma AI, they're actually based in Little Italy. They were a competitor directly to actually Tesla from the self driving technology. Also Cruise, which was acquired by Google, you know, he kind of referenced that he started Comma AI around the same time as Cruise. At his peak Cruise had a 10 billion, not 10, 30 billion valuation. And he said today it's no longer valued at that. I think he points to zero and he says, AI is continuing to move forward even 10 years in and they've have a new valuation at $1 billion. I don't know how true that is, but that if it was accurate then we'll make them the next unicorn company in San Diego. They have a couple dozen engineers here in San Diego and they have a pretty strong brand presence on Twitter and X I believe they have hundreds of thousands of people, fans that support their mission and yeah, it's great to see them, you know, continue to going. Continue going. A16Z was an early investor. They only raised I think a series A or a seed round and they have not raised outside capital additional. So I would assume they're profitable and or anytime soon.

Wow, incredible. Yeah, we actually preco did they were part of the startup crawl when they were downtown we came through and like toward their server room which is pretty cool. So it's cool to see them continue to do well. It's funny, I actually had an investment back from 2016, an angel investment into a group two friends who wanted to build the bolt on autonomous system for any car. And that was their dream, that was their goal and they both started and I think in the end it was about the same time as comedy. These guys made a huge pivot because they had to. The name company is called Coastline by the way. They put they had to go acquire millions of miles and millions of hours of driving data. Right. And so one of the founders became an Uber driver and one became a driving instructor so that they were constantly on the road, constantly acquiring data and you know, really brute force way. Like not in the same way that Tesla is, except Tesla has a million cars out there capturing the same data. In the end, the short answer, the TLDR here is that they found that the driving school market is way more lucrative and so they pivoted and are the largest driving school in the country now at this point. So nothing to do with autonomous but shout out to the Coastline team who's got to feel good about comma doing well because that was the original vision and comma stuck with it and is figuring it out. So. So pretty cool to see the development here. Last AI Shout out I wanted to mention was ClickUp they released, they've released actually a number of AI products over the year but they released an agent for the ClickUp AI platform which is I think came out two months ago. I saw a note from Zeb CEO here saying they got a super high ranking from G2 which is one of the biggest software rating ranker platforms. So yeah, another company, you know, staying relevant with their software and building agentic AI tools for their users. And I'm a customer of ClickUp here as well too, also a longtime support of Startup San Diego. I know they hosted I think First Mondays just last month which speaking of which, I think First Mondays is coming back up in August and I think I am speaking at it. So go check out startupsd.org look for both last Friday Which I think I'm also speaking at last Friday, their, their, their version of a cowork day. And then first Mondays I'll be moderating the panel, I believe coming up here as well too. So some few events coming up. We always link events at the bottom, so go check those out. But I think I skipped the story here. Sorry, Fred. We got one. Oh, we got a few more energy. Atrium Energy got a big contract in commercial properties. This is a little bit of your world. You've seen properties switch to new sources of energy.

Yeah. So the article you're referencing is a company called Atrium Energy. The San Diego Business Journal did a headline story, commercial Energy Monitoring startup Saving Businesses money. And I did some research on them. They were founded last year, so they're pretty new. They have about five employees and they have an AI software platform that helps businesses reduce utility expenses. And they are also named to connect school companies this year in April. And yeah, we're seeing, you know, more, more stuff in the real estate of adopting technology. Anything to cut down costs is always going to be something of value. And so yeah, I can see this being, you know, a growing opportunity for them, especially in San Diego where there's both multifamily opportunities, but then also the commercial building stuff in San Diego. It's one of our, our largest industries behind life sciences and government.

Well, why don't we stay on that real estate theme and talk about the Alexandria news here as well too?

Yeah, so there was obviously huge news this week. Alexandria announced signing a 466,000 square foot deal with a big pharma company. And actually we can announce it because it was released a few months ago that Novartis was looking to build its R D hub in San Diego. And so it was officially announced Alexandria is one of the biggest life science landlords in the region. They are a publicly traded reit, so they have to disclose who they are working with and when they are companies signing leases. And Novartis is the next big pharma company to expand in San Diego. I believe this is one of the largest leases in recent history. The other one would be Neurocrine Biosciences, which was the second largest lease in California two years ago. So yeah, we're seeing big pharma continue to grow in the region. And shout out to Greg Visconti who I believe represented that client. He's from Founders Corner and also works at JLo. So yeah, huge, huge news, huge news.

Love to see it. I love to see finally, you know, some traction here on some Big pharma coming. I know everyone's working hard to get downtown going because there's a lot of available space there. But in general, you know, we actually aren't known for having the big corporates here, whether it's on tech or biotech. So just to see a, one of the, you know, top 10 largest biotechs in the world to place a deeper root here and not just buy a company and take their, you know, 50,000 square foot facility but, but to go big is a really big sign of, of traction here. So kudos to everyone involved on that. Let's talk a little consumer news. Oku, which is a, a health for you Gummy with different energy products to it. I think they've got kind of like a morning, midday and afternoon versions of their energy product in a gummy form just launched into. So kudos to Carolyn and team for continuing to get out there on the Oku CPG side. You had one of these yet, Fred?

Yeah, I actually had tried these out and I love this Senegal brand. I saw they were in the Cardiff seaside market and they sold out. Sylvia Ma, who is involved with Stella foundation is an early investor. I actually had a chance to spend some time with Carolina and she told me the story of how she got into Sprouts. She is actually in the CPG accelerator ran by Jeff Church who was one of the co founders of Suja Juice, big name in the consumer world in San Diego. And so she was actually at a trade show with Jeff and she was introduced via Jeff to Sprout CEO and he loved the product so much they had several conversations with their team members and next, you know, they're now launching in sprouts starting August 1st. Congrats to Oku and look forward to seeing them continue to scale.

Yeah, we'd love to see it. We've got, we're a CPG powerhouse here. You know, we've had multiple successes. That's the big thing is they've had multiple successes that then go start the next thing like Jeff Church has started next things after Suja has had big success and to be incubating and investing in them. It's. That's exactly what we want to see, right? That, that shows maturity of the industry and CPG is a big one here for San Diego. Last one on our list here caught Modal AI A a spin out drone platform out of Qualcomm actually got a great mention in a new video produced by the U.S. defense Department. So we'll link here to the video. I'm I'm guessing you've met Chad before and heard a little bit about kind of their drone chassis that they've been working on like way long time, way before Ukraine made drones the thing that they are now. But it was kind of a whole way for actually Qualcomm to part of their diversification strategy. Right. Which is how do we get our core chips and other hardware into other industries. And modal AI was this platform to get into the aerospace world. So we'll make sure we circulate the video here. Caught it online from Chad Sweet's LinkedIn but you got anything on this here, Fred?

Yeah, I think they had a recent fundraise last year in April they raised 25 million led by Left Lane Capital which has done a few deals in San Diego including go site and yeah, it's great to see them being, being included in that video. They are definitely one of the companies I'm watching that have spun out of Qualcomm years ago. And you know Qualcomm has a few ex executives who always go on and do new things. Netrodyne was I believe one of them too or platform science, one of those. And yeah, it's great to see them, you know, continue to get recognition. We have drones is a big piece what we do in San Diego and we have so many companies that are leading the way in that space.

Yeah, big time for sure. Love to see it. Speaking of which, you and I and a few others are doing a San Diego defense symposium in August that coincides with Navy Gold bringing together very explicit kind of a small group of actual defense tech companies to showcase and they'll have tables to that and then the end user military like the real person who can cut a check, who can sign a contract. So we've been working on that. That's coming up. We also got a fintech founder lunch that you and I and Social Leverage are putting together. So keep. So if you're working in that space, find a way to meet or Fred and we'd love to have you at our future gatherings here. Some are public, some are private. It's just the way it goes. Different kind of events for different kind of folks. But oh, the next big public one we have is the Dev and data night CTO talks, Digital Health night at Google. This, this thing is packed. Honestly I think I have to close it off. I think we're at 115 people. I got to ask Google how many we can hold. But stacked panel all about kind of the emergence of healthcare and AI and we're going to talk a bunch of different lenses of life sciences, from med device to genomics to digital healthcare itself. We got Kelly Ko, chief innovation officer of Sharp Healthcare is moderating the panel, so it'll be great to hear his questions as voice of customer. Right, like where, where are all these things happening? We've got Arjun Bonsol, OG AI from Nirvana Systems on the panel too, who's built a new LLM platform specifically for life sciences. So should be a great panel. Look for it on event chip or in the Social Coyote promoting all the events that you need to be at anything. Close it off here, Fred.

So yeah, just follow us on x or, or LinkedIn. We try to, you know, do our best to show showcase. Hey, you know, what companies are, what events are happening in San Diego, what companies you should be, you know, following. Neil has his bloom bites. It's a weekly digest of who he's meeting around town. I'm also always posting once a week of just important stories that people should know in San Diego. And thanks for listening in. It's always a pleasure to be able to talk about the biggest headlines and startup news in San Diego. And yeah, it's exciting times.

It is a pleasure. It's even more of a pleasure to collaborate with you in so many ways of connecting the community, which we feel helps move us forward faster. But we also love hearing of the results. You know, people tag us and say, hey, because of this, I met blank, right? And hey, they just placed an order because you tagged me in Blank. Like that's what it's all about here, right? So do the community thing. Build a great company, then help your other fellow founder here. All right, thanks, everyone. We'll see you next week. Cheers. See you, Fred.

See you.

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech. You know, we got tacos and tech is on smash for the green guacamole Keep accountants counting beans Contador Quentan Frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a craft beer and coffee My coating yoga posse folk hold the body origami we be surfing Coronado eating tacos El gordo the taco stand in puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to coast angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shows entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside the Tijuana est Be full of hustlers from couch surfing to Penthouse is right on the beach? Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach? We interview and founders who be shooting for the moon. SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Come on.

Startups get the party? Startups get the party started? Startups get the party? Startups get the party started? Startups get the party? Startups get the party started?

You want pecking? Tacos, tacos, tacos? In tech, you know we got it?

Hey?

Startups get the party? Startups get the party started? Startups get the party? Startups get the party started? Startups get the party? Startups get the party started?

You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it?

Hey? Sa.