development center near its Encinitas, CA, headquarters that will include a 42,000 square-foot greenhouse. SG Biofuels is developing its biofuels business on oil extracted from the seeds of the Jatropha, a non-edible shrub native to Central America.
—MaxLinear (NYSE: [[ticker:MXL]]), the Carlsbad, CA-based wireless chip design company, was the only venture-backed technology startup in the San Diego area to go public through an IPO during the first half of 2010, according to a VentureDeal survey. While the overall market for IPOs seems to be opening up somewhat, VentureDeal CEO Don Jones says the quality and performance of new IPO-candidate companies is still weak.
—A demographic survey of seed stage Internet startup founders by New York-based CB Insights shows that Asian founders of Internet startups in California got a higher median level of venture capital funding than others.
—San Diego’s tech community might be interested in knowing that former Gateway computer CEO Rick Snyder won the Republican gubernatorial primary in Michigan last week. Gateway founder Ted Waitt hired Snyder to run the company in Sioux City, SD, from 1991 to 1997, when Gateway mushroomed from a private $600-million concern into a $6-billion, publicly traded behemouth. Waitt moved Gateway’s headquarters to San Diego after Snyder’s reign ended. Xconomy’s Detroit correspondent Howard Lovy provided a personal look at Snyder, who now faces Democrat Virg Berneo in the November general election.
—A profile of San Diego-based Rayspan, which specializes in meta-material antennas used in wireless routers, caught my attention in The San Diego Union-Tribune. After shipping more than 25 million antennas to Netgear, its biggest customer, my friend Mike Freeman reports that Rayspan is turning its attention to the smart phone market. He notes, for example, that Apple has had a little trouble with the antennas on its new iPhone 4.
—In a wireless innovation that’s off the grid, the secretive Point Loma laboratory run by SPAWAR, the Navy’s San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, has developed technology that gives U.S. troops “Wi-Fi on the run.” The advance provides a mobile wireless network that moves with Marine ground forces as they travel throughout regions of Afghanistan that have no wireless or cellular infrastructure.
