Home Podcast This Week in San Diego Tech News – July 8, 2022

This Week in San Diego Tech News – July 8, 2022

by Neal Bloom


Neal: Welcome everyone to the weekly San Diego Tech News by Neal Bloom and Sesha Machiraju 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.

Sesha: Hey I’m Sesha, former biotech data person, currently working on cyber & cloud evangelism at Microsoft Azure. SD transplant by way of Seattle, fond of all things tech, startups, and data. 

 

For July 8, 2022:

  • Mid year update on venture capital in SD
  • Maui Brewing acquires Modern Times for $15M when Brewery X drops out
    • What’s a stalking horse bid?! That’s Maui Brewing apparently in this scenario – they set the floor price
    • Anheiser’s BreweryX pulled out so second place bidder Maui gets to acquire MT
    • The current CEO of MT is from
  • The future of PCR: Startup Pleno uses telecom coding techniques for clinical diagnostics
    • Pieter van Rooyen sold Edico Genome to Illumina 4 years ago for $100M – an early example of SD’s semiconductor/software sector mixing with the genomics sector 
    • Van Rooyen’s second startup, Pleno, raised $15M in seed funding 
    • Building an instrument that hypercodes – using signal processing techniques from the telecom sector to find DNA, RNA markers 
      • Akin to PCR machine, which is used to find gene markers in samples 
      • Hypercoding instrument has higher throughput; expanding the amount of targets to look for in samples by 3-4x in magnitude from PCR machine 
    • Alpha expected to be completed by 2023
  • San Diego construction tech startup AGORUS lands $6.5 million to digitize and automate home building
    • AGORUS, a construction tech startup, develops software that automates home building raised $6.5M in seed round
    • Focuses in “modular home construction” in which software enables precision, off-site manufacturing of homes, apts in an automated assembly line. Construction crews then add in the “final touches” and add on the framed, weather-warpanels at the assembly site 
      • Reducing building time to days not months!
      • Goal is to include plumbing and electrical in these panels
      • “Permits to keys” in 30 days
    • Founded in 2018 by Navy SEALs Kyle Tompane & Garrett Moore
    • Emphasis on reducing waste + cutting energy consumption in homes 
    • Built 100 projects so far
  • Scripps Clinic First to Use 3D Hologram Tech for Surgery in Southern California
    • From Pokemon Go to surgical suites – mixed reality is making its way into every facet of life
    • Scripps became the first in SoCal to use mixed VR headset tech to give surgeons a holographic view of a patient’s preoperative surgical plan during shoulder replacement surgeries. 
    • Allows surgeons to use hand gestures/voice commands to view and manipulate the preoperative surgery plan while having a direct view to the surgical site
    • Imposes surgery plan over the surgical site making a personalized view of the prosthetic placement 
    • Adding a layer of precision to surgery 
    • Currently 1 of 33 healthcare providers using mixed reality tech in the US

 

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