San Diego Tech Roundup: Entropic, Xpenser, OneRoof Energy, & More

—A federal bankruptcy court in Delaware has tentatively approved a $65 million bid from San Diego’s Entropic Communications (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ENTR]]) to acquire system-on-a-chip technology that Trident Microsystems developed for its set-top box business. Entropic, which develops technology for connected home systems, had initially offered $55 million when the arrangement was disclosed in January. In a statement today, Entropic said a final court order approving the deal is expected March 6.

—I profiled Xpenser, a San Diego Web startup that provides expense tracking and management services. Founder Parand Darugar told me he self-funded the startup since he decided to make it a business in 2009, and currently counts more than 80,000 customers. Customers can use their camera phones to take a picture of a receipt and send the image to their own Xpenser home page—where the system extracts the relevant data and enters it into the user’s online spreadsheet.

—Mob Science, a Carlsbad social media game developer founded this year, raised about $3.6 million toward a planned $4.1 million round of investment, according to a recent regulatory filing. Mob Science has been developing games for Facebook users, such as “Snowball Fight,” which allows players to throw snowballs at each other.

—San Diego-based OneRoof Energy CEO David Field told me the company plans to introduce its solar financing package in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Arizona in coming months. OneRoof Energy demonstrated its first completed project—a suburban San Diego home outfitted with its solar roofing tile. The company said it could help homeowners trim 20 percent off their electric utility bill. Under a business plan developed with Boston’s Black Coral Capital, OneRoof Energy finances the extra cost of incorporating a photovoltaic solar system when a homeowner installs a new roof.

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.