Qualcomm’s Top Executives Talk Shop, Verari Lays Off Nearly Everyone, Assay Depot Goes From Biotech Startup to Online Merchant, & More San Diego BizTech News

San Diego’s tech news slowed to a trickle last week, as considerable speculation focused on the restructuring at Verari Systems, which included laying off most of the data equipment supplier’s workforce. Keep reading to get the latest news.

—San Diego-based Verari Systems abruptly laid off most of its employees, prompting a flurry of reports that the boutique maker of blade-design computer servers and storage racks was shutting down. Dan Gatti, a senior Verari executive, denied that. Gatti said the company is reorganizing its business to protect its customers’ investment in Verari equipment and to provide continuing support capability. Gatti would not comment on the estimated 200 layoffs. The company has raised more than $80 million in venture capital from Celerity Partners, Carlyle Venture Partners, Sierra Ventures, and Voyager Capital.

—Qualcomm’s Steve Mollenkopf emphasized that the San Diego wireless company’s capabilities as a wireless “systems on a chip” provider will be a key differentiator as the wireless industry moves from voice to data. Mollenkopf, who heads QCT (Qualcomm CDMA Technologies), Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and COO Len Lauer gave their perspective on the wireless technology giant’s business at a town hall forum last week. CEO Jacobs noted that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset represents one of the big bets the company has placed on future technologies.

—What started out as a biotech services startup has morphed into a full-service e-commerce business for San Diego-based Assay Depot. The company’s co-founders told me when they started in 2006 with the big idea of creating a Web-based system that would make it super easy for biomedical researchers to order assays, screening tests, and other lab services. They changed their strategy in mid-2007, and now CEO Kevin Lustig describes Assay Depot as the Amazon.com of biotech CROs (Contract Research Organizations).

—Connect, the San Diego nonprofit program for technology and entrepreneurship, found that almost two-thirds of the $252 million in venture funding invested in San Diego during the third quarter went to seed-stage startups. In its third-quarter report on San Diego’s “innovation economy,” Connect says 78 technology companies were started during the three months that ended in September. Federal grants for basic research in San Diego also jumped to new highs.


Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.