🐺 A bionic hand built in San Diego is teaching robots to feel.

PSYONIC's Ability Hand is going on ABB's factory robots. The bionic hand built in San Diego will train collaborative robots on touch, grip force, and motion data for assembly work across automotive, aerospace, packaging, and life sciences.

That's one of three SD companies worth knowing about this week. Plus a Hermeus co-founder's new defense startup just landed pre-seed, and Element Biosciences just crossed a clinical-grade certification.

Howl yeah, let's dive in.

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PSYONIC - 3 Open SD Roles

The Ability Hand built in San Diego is now teaching ABB's factory robots how to feel.

Why they matter:

The Ability Hand is the world's first touch-sensing bionic prosthetic. PSYONIC built it for people who've lost limbs. It's about to make industrial robots better at the kind of dexterity tasks that have stayed manual for decades.

ABB Robotics announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with PSYONIC to combine the Ability Hand with ABB's GoFa CoBot. The collaboration uses real human prosthetic touch data, including grip force, contact, and motion, to train robots for complex assembly tasks across automotive, aerospace, packaging, and life sciences.

Founded in 2015 by Dr. Aadeel Akhtar. About 50 people in Rancho Bernardo. Now putting bionic hands on factory robots.

Momentum signals:

• Industrial applications named: automotive, aerospace, packaging and logistics, life sciences

• Ability Hand is the world's first touch-sensing bionic prosthetic, capturing real grip force and motion data

• $3.6M+ raised including Shark Tank investment in February 2024

Open roles:

• Robotic Simulations + Support Engineers

• Quality / Regulatory Specialist

• All 3 open SD roles

If you've worked on physical AI, robotics, or human-machine interfaces, this is the rare SD company where the product itself goes between human and machine.

Reaxiomatic - 8 Open SD Roles

Hermeus co-founder Skyler Shuford has a new defense startup. Currently running out of his San Diego home and moving to 3,000 sq ft at Brown Field in Otay Mesa.

Why they matter:

Defense aerospace is one of the few sectors where Silicon Valley speed actually translates. At Hermeus, the hypersonic aircraft startup, Skyler Shuford's team built and flew entirely new jets in about a year. That's roughly 8x faster than the industry standard.

He's doing it again at Reaxiomatic (name is a 50’s homage: reaxi-o-matic or Reax for short).

The new company's mission: refresh the critical defense platforms and infrastructure the U.S. military runs on. In June, Reax announced a $7.25M pre-seed led by Scout Ventures and NVP Capital, with Bling Capital participating.

The company is currently running out of Shuford's central San Diego home. They've signed a lease on 3,000 square feet at Brown Field in Otay Mesa, where the work moves next.

Momentum signals:

• $7.25M pre-seed, led by Scout Ventures and NVP Capital

• Founder Skyler Shuford built and flew jets ~8x faster than near-peers at Hermeus

• Newly leased 3,000 sq ft at Brown Field in Otay Mesa for the next stage of operations

• Mission focus: refreshing critical American defense platforms and infrastructure

Open roles across:

• Avionics Systems, Flight Sciences, Fluid Systems Engineering

• Facilities Operations Manager, Staff Operations Engineer

• All 8 open SD roles

Eight seats at a three-month-old company gives you maximum leverage to shape what comes next.

Element Biosciences - 10 Open SD Roles

When we featured Element in April, the story was VITARI and the $100 genome. They just crossed ISO 13485 certification, opening the path to clinical diagnostics.

Why they matter:

Three months ago we featured Element. The headline was VITARI, their new benchtop sequencer that drops the cost of a whole human genome to $100. Big news.

They just got ISO 13485 certified, the regulatory standard medical devices need to ship clinically. That unlocks AVITI Dx, the diagnostic version of their platform, on track to launch in select countries by late 2026.

A company graduating from selling to research labs to selling to hospitals.

Momentum signals:

• ISO 13485 certified this quarter, unlocking the clinical diagnostics path

• AVITI Dx clinical sequencing platform on track for select-country launch in late 2026

• VITARI benchtop sequencer ($689K, $1/Gb chemistry) announced Feb 2026, shipping H2 2026

• 150 AVITI systems in 25+ countries; ~$850M total funding at ~$1B valuation

Open roles across:

• R&D, Operations, Customer Support, and Informatics.

• All 10 open SD roles

Element is the SD life sciences company graduating from research to clinical. Two Quality Engineer roles and a Senior Product Compliance Engineer tells us about the regulatory work ahead.

On the Radar

Three companies from last week still hiring and worth your time:

• Firestorm - 44 open SD roles. The Department of War just awarded $30M to scale xCell drone microfactories into the Indo-Pacific. Squall drones already flew in Ukraine.

• Carlsmed - 7 open SD roles. Publicly traded on NASDAQ (CARL), raised 2026 guidance to $72-77M. A clinical study shows 74% reduction in reoperations on the aprevo platform.

• Monarch Quantum - 28 open SD roles. $55M growth round closed in March. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory just selected Monarch for the first space-based quantum gravity gradiometer mission.

One pattern this week:

Bionic hands on factory robots. A Hermeus co-founder building defense infrastructure. A biotech crossing into clinical diagnostics. Three different sectors, one shared pattern: San Diego is the city where hardware graduates from demo to deployment.

Let's help good people find great San Diego teams.

Jonah 🐺

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