This week in San Diego Tech News

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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.

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to another edition of this week in San Air Tech with Neil and Fred. Fred, good to see you.

Good to see you as well. Neil.

Love always seeing you hanging out the Telepot office in downtown La Jolla there. Shout out to Dylan and the telepath team for nibbling Fred to hang out week after week in the office. Fred, how you doing?

I'm doing pretty good, man. I was just talking before we hopped on the podcast. It seems like things are picking up on the tech side. It's been a busy week of just travel. You were at obviously in Austin for TechCon conference and we're talking about south by Southwest coming up. We have NASCAR coming up in June. Things are, things are good, man. We had a little rain in San Diego for a while, so it's nice to have a change of pace. But yeah, still, still some great momentum having in San Diego.

Definitely. Yeah. And it's nice to be back. I, I think we recorded this pod last week while I was getting ready for TechCon SoCal or TechCon Southwest. I actually finished the pod and ran over to do my, my panel so finished it minutes before. The panel was great. Techcon was great. It's good to see Faisal who really started techcon to, to link ecosystems and it really started as like NorCal and SoCal SF San Diego connect communities. Right. And him connecting to other communities. A lot of San Diegos came out. There was actually a crew of us that hung out, you know, San Diego, hung out in Austin together and all flew back together. And in two months there'll be TechCon SF right at the Moscone center, which is a huge place. It's like where everything happens conference wise in SF and then a month later will be Techcon SoCal in San Diego. So it's great to see Faisal just linking these communities and it's not like your tech typical techcon because it always has a local flair to it. Right. So I, I interviewed a panel of four investors. Some are fund to funds, some are just funds and some are like Antler really is almost like a co founder Incubator, like they help you find your co founder in a sense. So they do full stack, right. Is on the panel all the way through. And. And they're all over people who are from New York, Dallas, Austin. And we're just talking about, you know, what's. What's happening on the ground in every community. And so that was great to have that. And then I actually wrote an article about my dinner in Dallas. I joined and it got a lot of pickup. I mean, people wrote me from all over saying how great it was to feel like they were at the table with me. So I appreciate everyone's love. I just appreciate being in the room hearing, you know, the real conversations, the real chat of what's happening at the community level in other ecosystems. Because, man, we're in it every day. And to hear that other communities are out there trying to build as well is satisfying to know that people are building community, not just, you know, building in their own little silo. Let's jump into it. We got a lot of news this week. The biggest news is a little more Rumorville right now, but usually those come to fruition. SHIELD AI. The word on the street is that they're raising a cool billion dollars on a $12 billion. Shield AI is a both drone and autonomous software company. I feel like they're the original drone software AI company. You know, really use that word from 10 years ago when they had drones that could self locate themselves indoors for special warfare officers. And now they have acquired many drone companies. They've put their software on actual fighter jets and can pilot autonomous. Actual planes, you know, autonomously. So they're just scaling as they're realizing one, the Department of War's budget continues to grow. The need of the warfighter continues to grow, and they're capitalizing it because they're way ahead in terms of where they've been at building. What's your take on this, Fred?

Yeah, so there was a great article, I think Bloomberg also wrote about it as well, saying that shield AIs and talks to raise 1 billion at 12 billion valuation. And this is, yeah, a rumor, so it hasn't happened yet, but this would basically double their last valuation, which is around 5 billion, 5.3 billion, which was like last year in March. They're backed by Dre and Horowitz as well as 8L3Harris Technologies. They, yeah, they're leader in the space. They're competing directly with Andro and a few other folks who also build autonomous drones. And yeah, this is definitely news. I'm following this is pretty huge, but I'm not surprised. There is definitely, you know, momentum building a defense tech and shield AI is like top three, the largest player in the space. I believe they have a small presence engineering team in San Diego. Most of their manufacturing and like building the drones are actually and I believe in Texas. So they have like over a quarter million facility down there. So expect if they were to close a round of funding they would definitely be selling up and probably hiring some more. So yeah, definitely a story we're going to be watching for sure.

Totally. No, they have, their engineering team is entirely headquartered in San Diego. Big presence here locally. Their CEO and former CEO I think are both in Dallas actually. I tried to try to connect while I was there with them, but you're right, they bought their the VBAT from a comp. They bought the company itself which was based in Texas maybe five, six years ago. So yeah, they have a presence in a few states which is typical of needing different places to build stuff especially. It's kind of the way you have to play the game for federal government contracts. You got to be in a lot of different how senator districts to get that capital going your way. But good to see this, good to see them growing. Let's talk about another tech raise. Another hardware company, autonomous boat and ship company CSATS announced their 20 million dollar Series A raise here. Fred, do you want to start this one off?

Yeah. So CSATs, we've actually been talking a lot about them a lot on the podcast. They've been getting a lot of government contracts, I think upwards of around 100 million at this point. There's been like 10 million and 20 million from the US Navy and other government related organizations. So yeah, fresh octopus, they got a 20 million Series A, they're scaling up. They had a, a large group of investors including SHIELD Capital which is doing a lot of deals lately. Congrats to Mike and team. We've actually been talking about how defense tech in San Diego is having a moment. We mentioned SHIELD AI you can throw in Firestorm in that, in that mix surrounding technologies which also expanded in San Diego. Harpoon Adventures is here. CSAT is really making a name for itself as kind of the next emerging company in San Diego. And they are building I think autonomous boats as well as other military related products.

Yeah, the story, what's really cool about this story is for the last 10, really 20 years, if you go all the way back to General Atomic north of Grumman building large scale aerial drones, you know that kind of kicked off a lot of the drone, what we call drone city in San Diego and then SHIELD and many other drone companies in San Diego. A Firestorm being another drone one. Right. Qualcomm has even spun off a drone platform to build on top of chassis wise. So that was all aerial. And now to see the surface, which is the kind of the name for the Navy uses for above water drone market. Come here is really strong. You have seasats doing small which is I think considered under 20ft size boats that they can autonomously cruise through the world. They regularly go on cruises from San Diego to Japan or Rhode island to England. This is. And it's completely self sustaining solar battery and it can continuously go without needing anything in between. And it's a platform. You can literally put anything on it. You can do it from sensing to weapons to actually launching aerial drones from it. It's literally whatever the need of the customer is. And now they have three different sizes for three different kind of missions. We're talking from shadowing boats from afar. I think they've been used to shadow the Russian oil fleet that is constantly being watched under sanctions to monitoring oil and gas pipelines and the Internet lines running cables running under the sea, monitoring for that as well too. And so with all that, we did a big event with them last fall on Veterans Day actually, which is fun. And my investment fund, Rice and Tide Partners was fortunate enough to participate in the series a raise as well. So great to have a whole bunch of San Diegans on the cap table helping this company scale up. And you know, I think seeing a few other companies move to town with their autonomous boats like Saronic, which is a big Austin based autonomous boat company. Came out here, opened a big facility in kind of near like the airport area, kind of in between downtown. The airport. I think you'll see more of that obviously because of the massive presence of the military, specifically the marine, the Navy, which is the customer for many people in this. So I expect we will draw more attention to and have more companies either relocating or just opening an office here. So wouldn't be surprised, I wouldn't be surprised if Andrew has already got the office going and others just because they're. They're servicing the customer in that regard too. All right, well congrats to csats. You know, we haven't done an actual interview with Mike on the pod, so that'll come up soon here for sure. Another week. We got another venture fund raising a fund. I love the momentum on new local VC funds here in town. We already mentioned over the Last few episodes a bunch. Whether it's social leverage or others. You want to kick us off here on Carmel Capital?

Yeah. So I had a scoop through the business of San Diego Substack. If you're a subscriber you probably got the news a little bit early. But you have to break it down to Carmel Capital just raised 170 million fund. This is their fourth fund and it now brings them to 350 million in assets started by two local serial entrepreneurs, a guy named Scott and Jim Brayleen. They started the firm in 2013. Their first acquisition was through a carve out through Qualcomm, I believe it was a company called snaptrax. They were able to invest and get some majority ownership. I believe Scott was a CEO for like about two years and that produced roughly a 5x return. They then pivoted their strategy and started doing secondary share investing. So they were actually involved in some of the like most sought after private companies in the tech sector. The most recent one was a company called Cor Weave which had an IPO last year and helped driven 5x return. They were also investors in Squarespace, Zscaler Fastly, among others. So yeah, I had an opportunity to talk to those partners and understand you know this new fund which they may, they plan to aim to do about 14 to 15 new investments and they're a small team, they're about eight employees right here in Solana Beach. But they're LP based or across, you know they're global and they also have some investors mostly in Southern California. So great story. They're the third firm in 2026 raise a fund or at least announce a fund. Social Leverage, Blueprint Equity and now Carmel Capital. Who will be next? You will find out. We'll, we'll stay, stay attuned of what's going on in the local investor landscape. And it's, it's great. San Diego is home to several investment firms. Seaside Equity Partners, JMI Neo's partner Stepstone. The list goes on. Tide Rock. It's exciting about the momentum happening here in San Diego.

It is. And founder co founder Jim Bradling really got some deep roots in San Diego late 90s. He created a kind of a legendary 90s tech company called Packet Video. Very San Diego company and I believe they're in the same Office as the mp3.com people. So they actually right around the same time, one doing video, one doing audio. I've heard some stories from both Jim and from Michael Robertson about the two of them just being on the other side of the Walls packavito was ultimately sold and did pretty well before the big dot com bust. And Jib's gone on to invest in a bunch of other San Diego Companies I believe DivX, Next Wave and a bunch of others. So he's been here for a while funding local companies, which is great. I know we had another partner of theirs, Antolin Garza was at Fred Nye's recent 2026 VC Outlook event. So it's great to have them not just here but looking at local deals and knowing the local community in that regard. I'd say that's rare for VCs in San Diego. So shout out to Carmel Capital. Hopefully we can see more San Diego deals coming out of this as well too. Some other news we picked up just some late breaking news just today from my friend Tony Martins from Plantable got FDA approval on their alternative protein for, for food science. They've created this Ruby protein that is really their flagship product and it is a way to. It's really grown in water in an aquatic growth from a plant actually like scrape the proteins off a plant called duckweed. I believe that they grow, they started growing in San Marcos. Now they actually have scale of a massive facility in Texas. Um, and they are continuously used in food applications. Some of the companies I believe like McDonald's and chick fil A use them in their sauces as a protein. So pretty cool to see them get this FDA approval for more of their product to be used in more places. Great to see. Life science, me, food science, right. That food tech that we talk about here. That is really cool. It's kind of the consumer side of biotech in San Diego. What else you got here on Plannable, Fred?

Yeah, I wish we had like a gong. We make a noise for every time a company hits a milestone, whether it's fundraising or FDA approval. Congrats to the Plantable team. Tony Martins had a LinkedIn post today that this marks a defining moment. Plantable in the future of food and agriculture. They didn't set out to build another plant protein. They set out to build a better food system. And in the press release they mentioned that, yeah, they will be, you know, transitioning from an R D to kind of full scale manufacturing in Texas. And now with FDA approval, the company plans to expand capacity over the coming year to support their existing customer partnerships and new commercial opportunities. So huge congrats to the team.

It is huge. It's awesome. Congrats guys. And I believe we will have other FDA approvals coming up within the next month. Or two. So keep your, your dial set here, keep listening in to what Fred and I are sharing, and keep sharing your news with us. We love getting the texts, the replies to our substacks of what's in your world, and we love to amplify that. That's what we're here for. And a good way to do that is in person. We got a bunch of events coming up next week, actually hosting a gaming founders and tech leaders event up in Carlsbad on the 24th. And then the next day, the 25th, there's a small group of us doing a tour of the San Diego wind tunnel. This is a really hidden gem for anyone you know, mostly in hardware and mostly in Aero, but even on the boat side, people are using this facility that's been around since the 50s. We're doing a private tour there for anyone very related. Specific to that the following week is San Diego Angel Academy. This is the precursor to San Diego Angel Conference. So if you've ever thought, huh, what's angel investing all about? We actually go through a whole day. I'll be emceeing it, kind of be bringing in some other besties throughout the day to talk about different pieces of angel investing. I got Ashok Kamal from New Fund Ventures joining me on the mic, which he hasn't been out. I feel like we haven't been together in person in years. So I'm excited to have that. I'm excited to have a panel of angel investors who've been added a long time talking about what's on their minds. And then we're going to have a VC fund, kind of do a reverse fireside chat with one of their portfolio companies, kind of talk about, you know, how each other help each other out to a certain regard and where the role of the investor plays within that. So Angel Academy, you can check it out. Link in the show notes here. Fred, anything else on your radar, events wise? Where can we find you?

I believe. Yeah. Next Tuesday, February 24th through the 26th, Biocom is hosting its global Partnering Investor Conference. This is also hosted at Torrey Pines the Lodge. This happens every year. A bunch of folks are flying in. A lot of local Biotech investors and CEOs and C Suite will be, will be there. So if you're in the biotech space, definitely give that a look. I'm sure there will be a lot of networking events in conjunction with the conference as well. And also subscribe to Social Coyote, ran by Jonah Peak. He does a really great job of like curating what other events are happening in the local community. And Hussein also does his north county mix mixer in north in North County, I think they had one this past week and had over 175 attendees. So yeah, not a shortage of events to get plugged in from biotech, tech to consumer. And yeah, we'll continue to bring, you know, funny news and headlines in San Diego.

Yeah, always lots to talk about but even more to go and do. So thanks all for listening in and we'll see you all next week. Fred, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

Always a pleasure.

Likewise. Cheers everyone.

In these modern times, a craft beer and coffee my coating yoga posse fold 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 cost 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 Tia Juana St. Be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party, get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech in 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.

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