This Week in San Diego Tech – Aug 15, 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 hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to this week in San Diego tech or as we call it, behind the scenes twist dt. Hey Fred, co hostess with the mostest. Good to see you.

Hey Neil, good to see you as well.

I am live from Launch Factory today. You know, another day, another place that I love to camp out and be alongside founders and builders and this week has been no different except that I have a guest in town with me, a friend, company builder investor Michael Loeb who is visiting San Diego ecosystem for the whole week and I am introducing him to the people and companies he needs to meet and doing a little bit of AI deep dive with him with specific people who are giving him topics to research and dive deeper. So we started the week with Cheryl Goodman giving him a great talk and right now he's talking vision tech with Andy Ballister and accuracy with Arjun Bansal. So it's great to have some AI leaders step up and who are on the top of their game right now, share their wisdom with some other people, especially visitors from out of the country. So it's been a fun week. How's your week going?

Week has been good man. A lot of events this week. I had an event yesterday with the San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange. It was a packed house in Carmel Valley at BDO's office and the conversation was all around weathering the storm, surviving the current market conditions. We had a great panelist I helped moderate. We had Taryn from Connect, we had Jim Crin who was a long term partner. There's a lot of M A deals at Morrison Forester. We also had a VC, biotech, VC8 and E's insight partners who you know pretty well Neil and you know, really it was an animated conversation, talked about how biotech has been probably one of the the sectors getting hit the hardest with the new administration and just the tailwinds of 2025. So we kind of shared perspectives of what we're seeing on the ground level and how current companies are navigating this space. But yeah, it was definitely great. It was a lot of familiar faces in the room, some early stage companies who were Maybe considering starting a company or some early stage companies who were, have been running a company, trying to raise capital and even some senior folks in there too. So it was across the board super, you know, well attended event and you know, trying to help people navigate this stuff. It's, it's crazy times right now.

It is, it is. You know, Stee has been this sleeper of an organization almost like they've been at it 12 years plus, even longer than startup San Diego and really being kind of the front door of the life sciences ecosystem. You know, if you were starting, you got to know to go to their every other week happy hour that they've been doing in Sorrento Valley at New Belgium Brew. Not New Belgium, New English Brewing that they've been doing for so long. It's been cool how consistent they've been at it and really helping the early, early stage biotech founders. So thanks for doing that. I'm sure you shared a lot of wisdom. Any, like, what else came out of that? The talk, like, I'm curious, any other nuggets?

Yeah, I mean I set the stage using example from, from Tim Scott, who's a new Biocom CEO and you know, really there's about 47 billion in NI NIH funding has been kind of paused because of the new, the new laws. You know, also there's complaints about there's not enough VCs in San Diego. And there was a question posed, if there's more biotech VCs in town, would that change? Would that change anything? And ultimately Aiden was kind of sharing with the group that, you know, it's not about having more investors locally because he's like, hey, I invest in companies everywhere. I want to find and invest in great science, whether that's a company in Boston or New York. I just happen to live in San Diego. And so, you know, I think there's a mentality of local founders who are like, hey, I only need to talk to investors in San Diego. But no, you got to go out and find them elsewhere. But yeah, there's more companies and investors moving in town which is great for ecosystem, but it's really just getting started. So it really starts by the community building and the events that we do here in town. And there's a lot of accelerated programs like Johnson and Johnson J Labs, Eli Lilly, we have Novartis expanding in town, we have big Pharma here. There's a lot of positive things to look at even though there is the broader macro stuff of challenges in the ecosystem. So that was really like the conversation. But I mean, what are your thoughts on some of those things that we'll share?

Well, it makes me reflect on the lunch you helped put on a week ago at Kiln, which was right after we recorded the last pod, so we actually didn't get to talk about it. Where you and Sidney Thomas from Symphonic Ventures and Kiln and Dan from Flare Capital brought together a group of local investors who I would say at the partner level who could, you know, kind of claim that they are San Diego based, a San Diego fund. A majority of them, I would say some are partners, live here, but fund is claimed elsewhere. But what was unique in the room was that everyone is like gung ho San Diego. And I think, you know, a lot of people live here and like living here and say, I would love to do deals here, but you know, it's just another city to them. You know, it's almost starting down the line of certain VCs who live here who say I, I don't, where I eat, where they say I actually on purpose don't do deals here. Where obviously you and I come from, the exact opposite, right? Whereas, look, I'm going to look at the best deals possible. My LPs tell me that, right? I, I can't lower the quality bar. But if I'm in a space where there's 20 founders today, you, you better. Well, no, I'm going to meet every single one so that I could at least say I try to meet great companies, right? And I think that's the opportunity in San Diego is if you live in your own spot, you should be at least meeting everyone here. You may find that none of the deals fit your area, right? That's fine. But if you didn't get to meet them, shame on you, right? Like this is the opportunity to make relationships here over multiple copies, not just fly in and one hour and see you next year. Next time I'm here for the conference. Like this is every day, right? Like, yes, there are partners who live here and I'm sure and you know, spend half the week in the bay, guess what? There you can get time on their calendar and then you can get another time on their calendar. And that's two meetings more that you could do in your own city than somewhere else. So if you live here, get to know your local companies. All right, that's it. Everyone who lives in San Diego, from an investor perspective, just come to me and Fred first. If you're like, I don't know deals or where to go for it, fine. We'll help you, but you better at least meet every company here. Okay, so that's where that's may get off my horse there and there, but not everyone shares the same opinion. And it makes me just feel and understand that community is relative in that regard and related to that. The biotech community, like you said, is going through some hard times, especially on big bio, which has been interesting to watch. So obviously we've been seeing the big exits of our biotechs over the last year. Big billion, dollar two billion, three billion dollar exits. Well, we all know what happens after that. They slim down and layoffs come from there as well too. And so unfortunately there's been some layoffs hitting the, the biotech world. I think you've got kind of a deeper scoop on that, on seeing the trend line.

Yeah, yeah, we have some data. I mean there's been some, a lot, a lot of stories coming out of layoffs and people who are searching for jobs. I know I get a lot of DMs on LinkedIn of people, you know, asking me if there's any opportunities in the biotech space. There's a great reporter, Jonathan Wilson, who's a west coast biotech lifestyle porter at Stat News. He's a great follow on LinkedIn. He shared a helpful chart of, you know, how the San Diego biotech workforce changed over time. And the chart basically showed in 2022 it was about 80,000 jobs in life sciences in San Diego and that has dropped to about 75,000. So about 5,000 or plus or minus layoffs in the last three to two to three years. And you know, some of the notable companies that have done layoffs recently include Thermo Fisher wasn't a large amount like 1% of the workforce. And then also Poseidon Therapeutics, they were also did some layoffs, but they actually were acquired by a bigger pharma company earlier this year. And there just happens to be an effect with the funding environment and just companies not making as much revenue as they used to. And so I think there's an effect of just like more companies are, are downsizing, consolidating. We definitely can see it in the real estate market. A lot of companies aren't, are taking up as much space as they used to. And it's unfortunate, but it's definitely a tough time for, for big companies and small companies to now navigate this talent challenge. I think people are trying to be more capital efficient and do more with less.

Yeah, it's interesting because biotech, I mean they go, they're always small Companies actually for quite a while, right. They're like less than 30 people through IPO a lot of times, you know, and then suddenly you look at around and boom, there's like a Ionis who has an entire campus and there's like uh, what's the other one who's taking Neurocrine, right. So I'm always as someone looking outside in being like this is a big industry of San Diego. Supposedly it's like 20% of our GDP or something like that or no, no one in 20 jobs is biotech related I think is the stat as opposed to military which is one in five. So just to give you relative scale but you know, it's interesting to see some of the companies who forever stay small and get acquired for a billion and the others who are massive and our 10 billion kind of market cap companies. So a lot for me to learn. You'll be sharing a lot as you see their physical spaces where they habitate, where they you know, live in that regard. But either way one, if we can keep the people in jobs here, great. We know the people do not want to leave San Diego, that's for sure. So it's on all of us to just make sure we're sharing jobs and opportunities. And luckily Jonah Peak has been keeping up the the Career Coyote newsletter which is a newsletter for jobs. So make sure you're sharing, getting out there and getting connected. And this, if you're listening to this, obviously you already are doing one step. You're, you're getting connected by listening now share it with other people to make sure that they need help as well too related to that there was a, there was a raise and an acquisition I think we saw this week. You have some details on the Equilibria, Fred?

Yeah, so that was a kind of fresh news. It just got, just got released. Equilium is a Lola based firm. They actually raised some new financing. It's actually ran by a guy named Bruce Still I believe and he is former investor at Biomed Ventures. So yeah, we have some good, some more financing news. I'm not seeing as much news these days but you know, definitely seeing more late stage companies raise capital capital. What are you seeing on the ground level?

Deals being done? Definitely people talk about them. I feel like it was hot and heavy, you know, June, July in terms of deals happening and actively getting done and I feel like people are finally taking that vacation in August now. So it's a little slower this last than this week but school's coming right back, starting in session for everyone's kids like this and next week, which means people are back in town, which means deals are going to start getting done again right after Labor Day. I feel like so little August lull maybe, but it was hot and heavy in the summer for sure. I'm at the one yard line on one or two deals right now as well too. So one in ad tech and one in med device. So yeah, things are happening which is good. Definitely getting a lot of pitches, that's for sure. And but like I said, I think people just took a little bit of a vacation right before school starting and we'll be back at it here. There was another acquisition, right. I think worth talking about Scale Bio getting acquired by 10X Genomics. Did you catch this one?

Yeah. So this one was interesting headline. It was Scale Biosciences actually met one of the co founders, I believe she's a woman founder. She was in J. Johnson and Johnson J Labs and it was actually acquired by her previous employer, 10X Genomics. And what's interesting about these acquisitions is if it's $100 million or more round use the acquisition that's in the headline but if it isn't a dollar amount specified then typically it's a smaller acquisition. So yeah, I'm curious to learn the sky the size of the scale of this one. I think Neil, you might have a scoop on how much was required for. But yeah, I actually want to kind of talk to her and hear more about the backstory of this acquisition. Was it, was it by choice? I think we're going to see a lot more M and A activity. I think we're going to see smaller deals. We're not going to see a bunch of $100 million plus M&A this year, second half. We're going to see a lot more smaller deals by big pharma. And I believe 10x genomics is a significant, significant large company. So not to see surprise that they've acquired a former employee who was building an adjacent space.

Hey, it's all about relationships. It's a good thing to not have to go do a ton of work to get to find your acquirer. If you need the help or you need a home, let's wait for the full story to come out. It's linked there. You can go and find the details of the amount itself. But I'd love for you to do the deeper dive on the tech side. I hope we see some billion dollar acquisitions come to San Diego. Finally we've got the companies and now companies are trying to catch up on, on tooling and customers, I would say. And so, you know, some of these late stage unicorns would be awesome to see. Make some exits happen one way or another. Go public. Honestly, we need more public tech companies here in San Diego. So yeah, I hope your M and a crystal ball flows into the tech world as well too. On the company that sits in between the two, Plantable, we kind of mentioned them last week on some news. They won an award, but they're actually, and let me do a quick opening of who they are. They're a life science meets agriculture technology company that is growing alternative proteins for the food production space. So think of your products that maybe in your like your sauces. A lot of times it is like a filler or an additive and they're growing actual natural pieces, ingredients to go inside products. And so they started with a San Marcos treatment or a demonstrator plant which I just went to recently go check Bloom Bites for some photos. It's super rad of what it is. And then they got a lot of interest from the likes of like McDonald's, Chipotle, chick fil A to be an ingredient supplier for them. And so they built out a hundred acre massive manufacturing plant in Texas. And so the team has been splitting their time between the two for a while actually. I know they come to our ag tech events, but often co founder CEO Tony Martins is in Texas, you know, managing a plant out there. Wild story. We're going to get them on the podcast soon to talk about their story because super, super fun. And so yeah, so they've got some big news that their manufacturing plant has I think gotten to full capacity now in Texas. Right? You have a bit more of this scoop, Fred.

Yeah. So Tony Martins is one of the co founders. His tagline is better farms equals better cables. This is a one of its, one of a kind, 100 acre manufacture, manufacturing module in Texas. And he kind of details a story. Hey, this was an idea on PowerPoint and you know they're living in an RV working and sleeping in a breaking, breaking bad trailer lab. And if you've been in his site you would, you would agree with that. But it's great to see them continue to, to succeed and thrive. You know, it's, it's cool to see some ag tech companies thrive not only in San Diego but also now in Texas. Congrats to them and yeah, we'll continue to celebrate local founders doing cool stuff.

So breaking bad out there because of the RVs that are there that they literally lived and worked in during COVID and it is so crazy from where they were and what they did and what they've turned it into. So congrats to that And North County AgTech love seeing it on the defense tech world. Some news of our shipyard here which is a quite an asset in San Diego. I don't even know if we really talk about it too much but the race for building ships is a massive one against China. They're building. I don't know what the number is. Ellen Chang would, would do much better service on this but probably like for every one ship we build, they build 200 or something like that. I don't know. It's some crazy number like that. And we don't have many shipbuilding facilities on the west coast and San Diego is one of the few areas that doing it and continuing contracts doing it. So that's a good sign. I know there's a lot of issues in terms of available workforce and available supply chain to supply some of this. Some of these ships have like 5,000 different suppliers just to make that ship. So yes, they're putting it all together in the harbor but then they rely on 5,000 different companies to stay alive and offer a good rate and do it all safely under US government control. It's, it's a crazy story and we're trying to you know re industrialize as an entire nation and San Diego's plan its part so BAA winning a contract to build out, retrofit and build more ships for the Navy is a good sign. So anything come to mind manufacturing wise on you Fred?

I mean to your point? I mean we're seeing a lot of that activity around like shipbuilding. I think of CSATs, one of the local defense tech companies in town. You know they're definitely focused on marine time. But yeah, I'm just seeing, I'm hearing and watching a lot more activity. Even fundings in that sector and I think it's all correlated to the government spending more money in that area. So it's definitely an area that's hot in that space.

Yeah. And it's good timing that we're you know, gearing up for a number of defense tech events. I know that you and I separately and together talked to the Harpoon Ventures guys who kickstarted some really good events about a year ago and then you know, they just got busy and so we said hey, let's help get that going consistently. That's something you and I are good at, right, Is getting something going. So we've got a number of Events coming up over the next few weeks that are both some private that we're matchmaking certain companies and certain military end users and then open to the, you know, kind of public, you know, come meet us at SoCal Deep Tech Week up in El Segundo in September. And then in between then a more of a curated founder build day for the defense tech world. We're doing it out of downtown works Mission Valley campus to just see who kind of comes together and wants to actually work alongside each other and not just for an event. So check out more in the notes event ship always where you can find that. They've got one last story here about one of the more active, I would say foundations that has turned more into an investor here in town as well too. What do you got on this Fred, about Preby Foundation?

Yeah, this is more of a giving story. It's the Prebys foundation. They gave $1 million to the UCSD School of Medicine and this gift will help support medical research focused on areas ranging from infectious diseases and regenerative medicines. There was a great quote just about the state of the industry and the biotech space and research space. Let me see if I can find it really quick. It was basically saying when critical research is interrupted because of federal delays and cancellations, entire research teams can be can collapse. Basically this program intervenes to make sure that doesn't happen. So I think it's just a great way to continue to support science when funding has been kind of cut off for the lifesafe industry. It's great to see local money continue to go back and support the research industry right now in this time. So great win and I think that was shared through the sight head of Johnson and Johnson and yeah, great, great news all around. Love it.

Well like we said it's busy times always there's always an event. Check your local social coyote newsletter to see what is happening. Check event ship itself for the page to see what events are interesting to you. We mentioned some defense tech events. We also got a gaming gathering event early September up in Carlsbad. Been really interesting to see the gaming community come together. Oftentimes when people had said ah, these studios don't want to meet, they're all competitive, they don't want to meet each other. Well they're coming out and they want to meet and there's a lot of spin outs from them starting startup gaming companies. So if you're into the gaming world, not just, not just a gamer yourself like Mike Sims is, I know shout out to Mike but to you're actually developing games out there. Come on out on September 2nd and see the gaming tech community. Any other events on your radar Fred over the next week or two we'll.

Just plug Social Coyote by Jonah does a great job curating the top events. Also be sure to follow me and Neil on both X and Twitter as well as LinkedIn. We always try to share you know what events we're attending to and also other super connectors in town that you should meet. So yeah, definitely follow us on socials and we'll be good to here to show you and showcase you know what companies are growing in town and from AI to defense tech to life science, it's always something new going on across town.

And follow our substacks where we put out these on a very regular basis. In terms of content, you know I would say equal amount. We put the content out on our LinkedIn and our social and in our newsletter to a certain regard and we appreciate all of you sharing it. So find it in the show notes. And Fred, as always, it's always a pleasure to have you here.

Always a pleasure Neil.

See everyone. Take care.

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Startups get the party started. 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 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 taking tacos, tacos you know we got it.