Qlipso Acquires Veoh Networks, V-Vehicle Ousts Founding CEO, Local Technology Clusters Converge on Bioinformatics, & More San Diego BizTech News

With all the life sciences news in San Diego last week, it would be understandable if you thought there was no high-tech news to be had. A simpler explanation, though, is that I was out of the country. So I cast the net a little beyond Xconomy’s pages for this summary.

—A shakeup at San Diego’s V-Vehicle occurred after the U.S. Department of Energy rejected the startup automaker’s request for more than $321 million in loans. Chairman Ray Lane of the famed VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers stepped in as CEO, replacing founding CEO Frank Verasano. With Lane in Northern California and V-Vehicle’s planned production facility in northeastern Louisiana, it seems unlikely the company’s headquarters will remain in San Diego much longer.

—Aptera Motors, the Carlsbad, CA-based startup developing a two-door, three-wheel electric vehicle, has been seeking a production partner in China, according to the China Car Times. Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur later said the Aptera model to be built in China will be sold in China. Wilbur says, “We have no plans to build U.S. vehicles in China.”

—Falling somewhere between healthcare and information technology, bioinformatics is an emerging field that represents new opportunities for San Diego’s high-tech community. UCSD’s new chief of biomedical informatics, Lucila Ohno-Machada, told Denise that San Diego has all the ingredients necessary to become the country’s No. 1 center for bioinformatics.

—What’s left of San Diego’s Veoh Networks was acquired by Los Angeles-based 2Peer Ltd., which operates the Flash-based social video startup Qlipso. The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog says 2Peer CEO Jon Goldman acquired Veoh just hours before its planned bankruptcy liquidation filing for less than $20 million. Veoh had raised close to $70 million from its venture backers.

—Ryan reported that a gold rush of sorts is underway as software companies develop technology to share medical images. A case in point is eMix, a separate corporate entity created within San Diego-based DR Systems.

—In an extensive review of Apple’s iPad, Xconomy’s early adopter (Wade) concluded that the hype was largely justified. He found the electronic tablet is useful in a genuinely new way, and represents the beginning of the end of the mouse-and-keyboard era of personal computing. A few days later, however, Xconomy’s fearless leader (Bob), declared that the iPad won’t become a breakthrough success.

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.