San Diego Tech News Weekly – November 5, 2021

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Neal: Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News by Neal Bloom and Jonah Peake from Fresh Brewed Tech. Every Friday at 12:30pm Pacific on Clubhouse and now we record them for you to enjoy as well. Find these episodes on Freshbrewedtech.com and favorite podcast player for Tacos and Tech Podcast

I’m Neal Bloom, entrepreneur, investor, and community builder 

Jonah: Hey I’m Jonah, ops guy building marketplaces spent time at Lime, Handy, and Postmates and I enjoy helping startups throughout San Diego. Let’s dive into our four stories of the week:

For Nov 5, 2021:

Let’s Go SD Loyal! Playoff Day!

1. TuSimple aims to test self-driving trucks on public roads without human safety operator by EOY
   1. They are getting closer to to testing human less trucks by eoy
   2. On a 3rd Q earnings call
      1. Drivers will be removed on a short 80mi route
      2. Between Phoenix and Tucson
      3. Driver pull-out pilot will take multiple weeks
      4. Require Major tech developments
         1. software 
         2. Hardware
      5. The challenge is solving for both: know and unknown
         1. non complainant human drivers
         2. Construction (planned or unplanned)
         3. Changing conditions
      6. But if successfully launching the pilot, this will put them in a leading position
      7. Competitor Kodiak Robotics is just now working in closed tracks
      8. Embark is not testing yet w/o human driver
         1. Pilot 2023
      9. Einride, launching recently in USA has had driverles for a few years in europe
         1. Will not be driverless outside of a closed facility in USA
      10. A few next steps
          1. Freeze tech development
          2. Final tests with human inside
          3. Validate process and Safety
          4. Remove driver for 80 mile run
      11. There are a few challenges ahead
          1. Getting more vehicles on the road to help support the supply chain and labor shortage
          2. They see this type of technology as an important piece of the future of the supply chain
      12. Some numbers
          1. Q3: 85m R&D
             1. Up 24m
          2. Revenue: 1.8m
             1. Beating expectations of 1.65m
          3. Q3 miles: 945,000
             1. Q2 880,000
2. This week in mega funding:
   1. BioLinq – $100M for the smallest perfect glucose sensor
      1. Josh and Jared, UCS PhDs, we met in 2013 when we were in Evonexus at the same time. They were called electrozyme back then
      2. early feasibility studies have shown the device can track glucose levels as well as other biomarkers continuously for up to one week without the use of needle-based applicators. The patch also comes equipped with its own integrated display.
      3. Brought in new CEO Richard Yang late 2020 from Dexcom and Medtronic
   2. Cloudbeds – $150M with SoftBank
      1. While pandemic was tough for $1 trillion travel industry, demand is now higher than 2019
      2. Cloudbeds one of few that prospered, creating software for the small hotels
      3. $253M in total funding to date
      4. 22,000 customers in 150 countries
      5. SoftBank has backed 8 San Diego companies
      6. Brain Corp, Flock Freight, Accel Robotics, Cloudbeds, Vuori, Wiliot, Vivideon Therapeutics, Netradyne 
3. How San Diego Gets Drinking Water From the Ocean
   1. Water is very important to the region
   2. Current Mix (SD County Water Authority)
      1. All American & Coachella Canal (colorado river) 18.6%
      2. Imperial Irrigation District Transfer (colorado river) 31%
      3. Metropolitan Water District (rockies and Sierra Nevada) 18%
      4. Desal 8%
   3. Let’s take a look at the 1b facility in N San Diego County
      1. Carlsbad Desalination Plant
   4. Opened in 2015
   5. Creating 50m gallons of fresh drinking water per day 
      1. When water enters the facility it works like a brita filter
         1. Removing algae and bigger stuff
      2. Winding through a maze of pipes removing additional impurities
      3. Leaving only Salt
   6. This is were a high step kicks in
      1. Reverse osmosis desal process
         1. using pressure to force water molecules through a semipermeable membrane
      2. The water is sent through tube after tube of rolled up membranes
   7. Leaving only pure H2O
   8. The current cost each household about $5 per month on average
   9. The ocean is drought proof 
   10. There are some risks
       1. The plans byproduct is toxic brine
       2. How is the power generated to run the plant
       3. Surface water intake
4. San Diego’s Qualcomm sidesteps supply chain woes to deliver earnings that beat projections
   1. Man supply chain is a bit of a mess
   2. We saw this live coming back from catalina just after the oil spill
   3. Qualcomm seems to have avoiding some major impacts
      1. Showing better than expected Q4
      2. Lead by high end android
         1. Laptops, drones, cars, etc
   4. Used dual sourcing techniques 
      1. This is a technique where you diversify the supply chain
      2. Lower risk
      3. Sole Sourcing risks
         1. Pandemic
         2. Weather
         3. Material shortage
         4. Politics in a region
         5. Leverage from supplier
      4. Risks of dual sourcing
         1. Consistency
         2. Cost (admin etc)
         3. Potentially sharing IP with more sources
   5. Securing sourcing early
   6. Still running into some limited supply but planning ahead seems to have limited this impact
   7. Revenue: 9.3B
      1. Up 43% from last quarter
   8. This is interesting because Apple had parted ways to design their own chips
   9. More importantly, efforts to diversity outside of smartphones is working
      1. VR headsets to Digital cockpits in cars
   10. Strong positions in
       1. VR
       2. IoT
       3. RF