This Week in San Diego Tech News – September 23, 2022

Well, happy Friday everyone. It's actually Thursday. We are coming to you live from the Top Tech Awards inside the brand new Snapdragon Stadium. And I am here with my co host Sesha. Hey, thanks for joining.

Glad to be here. It is a beautiful evening. Very, very much excited to be here. But my name is Sesha. I'm a former biotech data person currently working in cyber and cloud evangelism over at Microsoft. Check us out on Twitterzuresupport. I'm a San Diego transplant by way of Seattle. Been here for a few years and fond of all things tech startups and top workers.

Thanks for being here. It's been a really fun evening seeing technology leaders get recognized in front of their peers. Pretty much everyone did not expect it, which is always fun too. So we also have an episode coming out of this very special Top Tech Awards episode. But we're here to talk the news. I'm Neil Bloom from Freshbrew Tech. We put out news car about the Senegal tech ecosystem and we are thrilled to kick off this week with some funding news from my friends over at hone. Tom Griffiths and team congratulations on their series b funding of 30 million. The hone team are building employee learning and development platform. So they're working on live online worker training classes to kind of scale businesses. And this round of funding was led by 3L who has also funded some San Diego companies and they totaled at 52 million in funding. Now a little backstory about Tom. He's actually one of the co founders of FanDuel. He was chief product officer there. So he has built some companies pretty big and now he's doing it again for employee learning and development.

Very cool. Well, I'll take us through a little bit about what platform, what the platform is does. So their instructors are domain experts and this platform enables real time practice sessions, peer discussions and measurable results in the form of pre recorded online training providers as well as in person training and coaching services. And so so far they have 60 live online classes focused mostly in DE and I mental health management techniques. But they're looking to expand this the suite of classes as well as the type of content they provide. And some of their customers include indeed ConocoPhillips. So I think it will be really interesting to see what they get up to next.

Yeah, absolutely. And we're stoked to have them in North County. They're working out of the co working space right there in downtown Encinity. So all of a sudden the name escaped me. Union. They're in union. So if you're nearby union go by and say hey. They are new newish residents to the north county area. So it's great to have Tom and team and a former coworker of mine, we used to work together@hired.com working there, shout out to Harris Rabin as well too. But our next story, Biotech related Immunoscape, they just raised 14 million in venture capital to fund their platform targeting cancer. You want to take us through this one, Sesha?

Yeah. So this one is cool and actually quite close to my heart. I used to work work in a biotech startup that instead of TCR therapy, which is what Immunoscape focuses on, the company that I worked at used Cartel therapy, which is very similar, just sort of lateral from each other. And so essentially what Immunoscape does is they focus on discovery of novel T cell receptors for targeted oncology treatments. And so they are developing a platform that profiles cancer specific T cell receptors, otherwise known as T PCRs, to really signal and act as a signal to target cancer cells. And so they call it deep Immunonics, combining computational biology, machine learning and high throughput screening to evaluate blood samples for these T cells. So you want to take us through the total funding and how that's going?

Yeah, so Anzu Ventures funded them, including Amgen Ventures. So love seeing some local and Southern California backers. This brings their funding to 41 million and they kind of are split between Singapore and San Diego. Mostly 10 scientists in San Diego, 43 worldwide. So you know what I love about this is seeing really the tech and biotech coming together. You know, when you see machine learning coming together with curing cancer, like that's exactly what's going to continue to put sanity on the map for building life changes technology.

And this is particularly cool because 10 scientists and really just 40 employees, you know, building this incredible platform is really amazing to see. So I'm very much looking forward to see what they, what they end up developing.

Absolutely. I won't let you take this next one. I think you're for you.

So the news that we've all been waiting for. Sapporo completes sale of stone Brewing for $165 million. And so we spoke on this a couple months ago, but the sale has been completed as of August 31st. And so while the founders Greg Koch and Steve Wagner are no longer at the helm, there are no layoffs for the 600 employees of Stone, which is great to hear. We are expecting that beer production will double and Sapporo could invest tens of million in the Escondido HQ down here and maybe 20 to 40 million over in Richmond. So you want to take us through some of the production?

Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing we're seeing, obviously that craft beer dipped a little bit during the pandemic. A lot of us. I know I did. I got more into tequila and whiskey and I think you get more into wine, especially orange wine.

Yes. As bougie as that is, orange wine is my love now.

And Stone, you know, Stone rode some waves they, like got into. They started a Mexican lagers and they even have a hard seltzer now as well, too. So I'm really interested to see what they do with Sapporo. Like, are they going to start some Japanese lagers and some Japanese beers? Like, that'll be pretty cool to see some collaborations.

I would definitely try that.

We know they are staying true to their roots. They are not going to put out a product that's not authentic to their brand. It's just under new ownership. So we're excited to see what happens to Stone going forward. But please, they will please continue to make the good beers that we know and love.

Yes. And so it doesn't sound like there won't be any changes in any of the gardens or any of the brew spots to go and have a beer, which is good because I think I'm definitely going to be much more of a frequent guest at these spots just so I can try their new beers.

And our last story is in the aerospace world. Well, General Atomics is the aerospace company, but they're getting. This is an interesting story. They're a proposing a Chinese agricultural investment near the Grand Forks Air Base in North Dakota. So the aeronautics division of GA as we know them, so they created the Predator drone. They're asking the US government to reject a Chinese purchase of 370 acres for a corn milling plant due to proximity to the Air Force base. There's a lot of weird webs going on with this one. Do you want to take us through a little bit more of what's going on here?

Yeah. So a few weeks ago, when we talked about some of the cyber security threats that we are starting to see more and more of, there was an interesting story about how the Chinese government was trying to do corporate espionage by stealing some of our grains. And so this actually kind of is a weird parallel, but really highlights that the worries and the fears that the Chinese government could be doing corporate espionage by being so close to our Air Force and of ga, which is, you know, they have the Predator drone. They have, they're doing a lot of these tests on radar systems, unmanned aircrafts and military technologies that we wouldn't want other foreign agents to have that information. And so there's definitely some worries that the proximity of this company would be worrisome.

Yeah, I mean, I think you take ga, which is a private company, so really controls its own destiny, has been family owned forever by the blues. And to say, look like this is the most important thing is our security, our technology, our ip, it's saying what the government maybe should be saying. And maybe this is more opinion here. But like the government and the trend that we are seeing is that putting ourselves in the shoes of other governments in our backyard, we don't have as much control over our technology. So really interesting to see a company step forward and I'm really interested to see and pay attention. So we'll report back what ends up happening here. Those are your stories for the week. There is a lot of events happening through the rest of fall. Just from October. We already know it's San Diego Startup Week, so make sure that's already on your calendar. October 25th through the 28th. We also have the Ag Tech Hackathon October 21st through the 23rd leading right up into Startup Week. And actually the Same weekend is Web3SD one day conference. All the different Web3 meetups are coming together to put on their own conference, which is actually how Startup Week started nine years ago. It was a bunch of meetups. We said let's band together. So I love seeing the grassroots Web3 approach, building a one day conference. So Web3SD you can find out more about the AgTech Hackathon, which is a three day celebration. And Hackathon go to san diegoagtech.com and if you want to find out more about Startup Week, go to San Diego startupweek.com wait, no, that's not right. San Diego startupsd.org and we have a few other events. Fresh Brew Tech, we've got Dev and Data Night, got some great panelists. So come on out. September 27th.

Next Tuesday, next Tuesday. And the September soiree is on. I think it's on the 28th. Village up, that's their annual program that I think they're doing, celebrating just the community, the work we've done. And I think that'll be a great, great, great turnout as well.

Yeah, a lot of events. So we hope to see you out and we're gonna go enjoy the rest of the top tech awards here in Snapdragon Stadium. So thanks all for listening, and we'll catch you next time.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.

All right, that's a wrap.

Nice. Great.

Thank you.

That was very distracting. Gosh, Just like that.

I know. Now you want to get a drink?

I definitely want a drink. 100% want a drink. I'm gonna try to resist, though. It.

Let's go find these guys, too, so they can enjoy their night.

Yes.

I'm just going to tell them we're done.

Yeah.

We set up with a chat and then I walked away and you guys just both put them down and started talking.

Did you hear in the beginning?

I did, but it'll be a little bit quieter from you. That's why I put it up. You guys are talking. It's okay, though.

I think it's.

So like, we set up with the mics for you guys to talk into them.

Yeah.

And then as soon as we start. Started. Neither of you did that?

I did. Halfway through. I held in. I hit this one.

Oh, shit. Halfway through.

You did it then or no? Was I holding the whole time?