DivX Buyout Anticipates Boom in Internet TV, ViaSat Sees Big Bet Paying Off, Solekai Leads Charge in Smart Grid Software Development, & More San Diego BizTech News

customers like Sony Electronics, DirecTV, and TiVo. But now Solekai president Martin Caniff and CTO Marco Thompson are see the smart grid as the next opportunity for exponential growth.

—Startups considering an IPO are now looking more seriously at doing a reverse merger instead, according to Byron Roth, the chairman and CEO of Roth Capital Partners. What used to be viewed as a penny stock promoter’s game is now more of a hybrid between an IPO and a private equity buyout, with a hedge fund making its private investment in a public entity almost simultaneously with the reverse merger.

—San Diego’s renewable energy technology cluster gained some added capabilities following a couple of announcements by Japanese companies here last week.

—Sanyo and UC San Diego agreed to collaborate on a three-year R&D renewable energy program, focusing in particular on advancing energy storage and real-time monitoring of solar power production. It is Sanyo’s first collaboration with a U.S. university. The Japanese giant will provide $3 million to support the work and deliver about 20 of its advanced batteries—each about the size of a typical DVD player—for use by UCSD engineering students and researchers.

—In a separate announcement, Kyocera said it has begun manufacturing solar modules in San Diego, with initial annual production of 30 megawatts of solar energy generating capacity. Kyocera said it wants to produce 1,000 megawatts of solar power by March 2013.

—San Diego videogame accessory-maker Mad Catz Interactive (AMEX: [[ticker:MCZ]]) acquired Tritton Technologies, an audio headset maker based in Vista, CA, in a deal that eventually could total $10 million over the next five years.

—SDNN, an online media news website also known as the San Diego News Network, has put itself up for sale just 15 months since the founders, power couple Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, launched the company. The startup raised at least $707,000 from investors, according to regulatory filings. One media report says SDNN raised almost $3.2 million, with close to a third coming from Qualcomm scion Gary Jacobs.

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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.