SD Tech Roundup: ServiceNow Files IPO, On-Ramp Wireless, SwoopThat

go public? Peregrine Semiconductor, a fabless wireless chip designer, revived its long-dormant S-1 registration with an updated filing just last week. Genomatica, an industrial biotech, filed for an IPO seven months ago, and still appears poised for its stock offering. IASO Pharma, a biotech focused on treatments for infectious disease, last updated its IPO plans about nine months ago. Two other San Diego companies, Ambit Biosciences and Fallbrook Technologies, withdrew their S-1 registrations in 2011.

—When asked to identify what Qualcomm products are in the latest Apple iPhone and iPad during last week’s Rock Stars of Innovation Summit, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said he’s contractually precluded from publicly discussing the components Qualcomm supplies to Apple. He then praised Apple for transforming the mobile Internet market. “One of the things we learned from the mobile Internet is that you really need a catalyst to get things going,” Jacobs said. Qualcomm had established the protocols to provide Internet access in mobile devices in the early 1990s, Jacobs said. “But the iPhone provided that catalyzing moment.”

—The Rock Stars of Innovation Summit, sponsored by Connect and Xconomy, included 10 “quick-pitch” presentations by up-and-coming startup companies. The audience favorite was SwoopThat.com, a Web-based business that operates as metasearch engine for college textbook searches. Founding CEO Jonathan Simikin says SwoopThat can help students save as much as 75 percent textbook purchases by aggregating online sales offerings from Amazon, Alibris, AbeBooks and other online book dealers.

—On-Ramp Wireless CEO Joaquin Silva told me he’s preparing to raise $20 million to $30 million in a third round of venture funding needed to expand the company’s technology for long-distance, low-data rate, low-power wireless sensor networks. On-Ramp Wireless is ready to launch its technology, and has targeted utility smart grids as its initial market.

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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.