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- 🐺 A San Diego team is turning phones into vehicle damage detectors.
🐺 A San Diego team is turning phones into vehicle damage detectors.
Plus a Carlsbad battery company powering data centers and defense, and a San Diego robotics platform running 50,000+ machines across six continents.
Sheryl Sandberg just led a $10M investment into Self Inspection, a San Diego AI startup that turns smartphone cameras into vehicle damage detectors. Avis, Stellantis, and Westlake Financial are already customers.
That's one of three SD companies worth knowing about this week. Plus a Carlsbad battery infrastructure company partnered with UNIGRID and Toshiba, and a physical AI platform now running more than 50,000 autonomous robots worldwide.
Howl yeah, let's dive in.
Self Inspection - 3 Open Roles (Remote / Hybrid)
San Diego AI startup that turns any smartphone into a vehicle damage detector. Sheryl Sandberg's family office led a $10M raise in July. Early customers are: Avis, Stellantis, Westlake Financial.
Why they matter:
Vehicle inspection has been a painful process. Self Inspection built a guided smartphone walkaround, trained on 20 million+ images, that produces a survey-grade condition report in a few minutes.
The company was funded in 2021, is San Diego-based, and in July, Sheryl Sandberg's family office (Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners) led a $10M strategic round. Earlier backing came from Jon McNeill's DVx Ventures (former Tesla president).
Their platform has already completed more than 1 million inspections for rental fleets, dealers, marketplaces, and lenders. Stellantis' financial services arm uses it for corporate vehicles and lease-end returns.
Note: the current three open roles are remote or hybrid, not on-site in SD.
Momentum signals:
Strategic co-investors in the raise: tire distributor U.S. AutoForce and auto lender Westlake Financial
Institutional investors: Costanoa Ventures, Rebellion Ventures, BrightCap Ventures
Platform validated across 6,000+ combinations of parts, damage types, and severity levels
300,000+ hours saved and $80M+ costs saved across customer base to date
Open roles:
Senior Computer Vision Engineer
Full Stack AI Engineer
Remote Vehicle Inspector / Auto Damage Estimator
Proper Voltage - 10 Open SD Roles
Carlsbad battery infrastructure company. Built a Battery Operating System that lets emerging chemistries (sodium-ion, LTO, XNO) work in critical infrastructure. Partnered with UNIGRID, Toshiba, and Echion.
Why they matter:
Battery chemistry today comes with tradeoffs. Sodium-ion is safer but has different voltage curves than lithium. LTO cycles longer but at different voltages. Product manufacturers have to redesign around each new chemistry, which is why most stick with the same old lithium-ion options.
Proper Voltage's Battery Operating System (bOS) sits between the chemistry and the product. It handles voltage adaptation, real-time optimization, and chemistry-specific management, so a data center or defense system can adopt a new battery type without a full redesign.
Their cell partners tell you the technical bet. UNIGRID for sodium-ion (an SD company). Toshiba's SCiB for LTO. Echion for XNO Anode. Each partner brings a different chemistry, and Proper Voltage's platform is the universal adapter.
Headquartered in Carlsbad, founded in 2019, and growing from ~24 employees toward the mid-30s with the current hiring wave.
Momentum signals:
Focus markets: data centers, defense, robotics
$6.55M raised to date across seed rounds led by Commonweal Ventures
Testimonials from Toshiba's VP of Power Electronics and UNIGRID's CEO on record
Hiring pattern is heavy on senior engineering (Chief Engineer, Mechanical Engineer II, plus product and ops roles)
Open roles across:
Chief Engineer - Critical Power
Mechanical Engineer II
Plus engineering, product, and operations roles
Brain Corp - 20 Open SD Roles
San Diego physical AI company. BrainOS powers more than 50,000 autonomous robots worldwide. Announced a UC San Diego research partnership in May.
Why they matter:
Physical AI is the layer that lets robots reason about the real world. Brain Corp has been building it in San Diego since 2009. Their BrainOS platform now powers more than 50,000 autonomous mobile robots deployed across six continents, with a global fleet that has logged over 25 million hours of autonomous operation.
In May, Brain Corp and UC San Diego announced a research partnership to advance the "contextual grounding layer" of BrainOS. The collaboration focuses on semantic mapping and situational intelligence so robots can operate reliably in complex commercial and industrial environments.
Momentum signals:
Just launched ShelfOptix™ with Driveline: the first fully managed, robot-powered shelf intelligence service
Autonomous robot fleet crossed a 250 billion square feet operational milestone
Signed a 3-year exclusivity extension with Tennant Company, with 10 new products planned over the next 24 months
Named a 2026 Top Workplace by both the San Diego Union-Tribune and USA Today
Open roles across:
Autonomy engineering
Software engineering
Program Operations (including a dedicated Operations Lead for Walmart)
QA Engineering
Product and Program Management
Manufacturing, Facilities, and Tech Support
Still on the Radar
Two companies from last week still hiring and worth your time:
Aptera Motors - 5 open SD roles. Solar electric vehicle designed and built in Carlsbad. Publicly traded on Nasdaq.
Luminize - 10 open SD roles. Amazon accelerator agency, Inc 5000 listed. Founders started as Amazon sellers themselves.
Let's help good people find great San Diego teams.
Jonah 🐺
