Orange County’s tech companies will be focusing on automation, artificial intelligence and more ways to speed up tedious, routine office processes in 2020.
For example, business software maker Ephesoft (see story, page 16) next month will introduce a product with more machine-learning functionalities. Cloudvirga is trimming the time for homeowners to get mortgages, and Spireon helps trucking firms deal with ever-increasing amounts of data for their trailer management.
“Everyone wants to automate every analytic process,” is how Alteryx Inc. (NYSE: AYX) CEO Dean Stoecker views some of the latest trends.
It’s not all back-office work for the area’s tech industry. In the local defense and aerospace sector, Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries is developing high-tech ways to protect the U.S. southern border and other sensitive areas, and the company was valued at more than $1 billion in a fundraising round.
“Everything that we’re building is specifically for the Department of Defense,” Luckey told CNBC television in November, adding that the company is also working with a few strong U.S. allies with the government’s support.
Small-satellite launcher Rocket Lab of Huntington Beach will make its first U.S. launch sometime between April and June of next year, sending off a dedicated flight for the U.S. Air Force from Wallops Island, Virginia.
5G, the next generation of high-speed telecommunications, is getting a boost from area innovators like Movandi Corp., while Mobilitie is helping set up thousands of 5G-enabling small cell stations across the country.
In the next five to 10 years, 5G-related work will result in the “greatest investment in wireless infrastructure we’ve ever had,” Gary Jabara, founder and chairman of wireless infrastructure firm Mobilitie, told the Business Journal last month.
