Airworthy Cabin Solutions LLC’s new production facility in Anaheim gives the aircraft interior products maker a lot more legroom.
The location, about a mile north of Angel Stadium at 1560 S. Harris Court, also provides the company plenty of room to expand its local workforce and business.
The property features 7,000 square feet of office and 35,000 square feet of production space, as well as parking to accommodate up to 150 employees.
That’s roughly 100 more than its current workforce.
“The move is mainly for a better location and business growth,” said Abraham Sarraf, vice president of sales and marketing for Airworthy Cabin. “The previous building in Garden Grove was not big enough for our growth potential and also limited in parking space for our employees.”
Airworthy designs, develops and repairs cabin interiors for more than 250 customers, including airliners, such as Delta and American, and rail companies, such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.
The company is a unit of Hudson, Wis.-based Airworthy Aerospace Industries Inc., which has been growing revenue at a 20% annual clip.
It moved to the Anaheim facility from Garden Grove in July.
Airworthy projects sales will hit $35 million this year, according to Sarraf.
The Anaheim operation accounts for about $10 million.
The company was formerly known as Bolder Manufacturing LLC, which was established in Garden Grove in 2002. Its prior location there was 12,000 square feet.
Last week, Airworthy debuted at 33rd on the Business Journal’s annual list of the largest aerospace and defense contractors ranked by employees.
Luckey Seeks Employees
Tech wunderkind Palmer Luckey is hyping up hiring plans at his Irvine defense startup, Anduril Industries Inc.
“We are expanding the electrical engineering team at Anduril!” Luckey wrote in an Oct. 17 tweet. “We have a lot of challenging problems for you to tackle.”
He listed some of them in the tweet, including building “innovative defense products,” such as autonomous robots, small unmanned aerial systems, and virtual and augmented-reality applications.
Of course, the latter is how the Long Beach native made a name for himself in OC and beyond in the tech and gaming worlds.
He co-founded Oculus VR Inc. in Irvine, which sold to Facebook Inc. in 2014 for $2 billion. The sale catapulted Luckey, who now has a home in Newport Beach and owns a marina in Huntington Beach, to OC’s most wealthy, clocking in at 25th on this year’s Business Journal list with estimated wealth at $800 million.
He was pushed out of Facebook last year after word spread that he bankrolled a pro-Donald Trump organization that criticized Hillary Clinton for months leading up to the presidential election.
This year he’s raised the ire of some in the tech world by giving money to Republican congressman Steven King, who is known for his abrasive comments on illegal immigration and other topics.
Fellow Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe announced last week that he was leaving Facebook. There’s no indication that he plans to be involved with Anduril.
Anduril engineering job openings include electrical, mechanical, embedded systems, computer vision, sensor fusion and software, according to the company’s website. The company is also looking for a head of finance as it scales.
Luckey has big plans for the startup, which is a few months away from moving to a much larger location in Irvine.
Exterior work is currently wrapping up at the company’s forthcoming headquarters, 2722 Michelson Drive, a 155,000-square-foot building a few blocks from John Wayne Airport.
It’s owned by Irvine-based LBA Realty.
The building should comfortably accommodate several hundred employees. The company’s LinkedIn site said it has fewer than 50. Its lead investor is Founders Fund, a venture capital firm headed by billionaire Peter Thiel.
Veritone Gets BMC Expertise
Enterprise cloud software expert Nayaki Nayyar has been appointed to the board of Costa Mesa-based Veritone Inc., which is trying to crack into the booming artificial intelligence segment.
Nayyar is president of Digital Services Management at BMC Software Inc., a Houston-based IT provider that helps companies with digital migration. Prior to BMC, she served as general manager and global head of SAP SE’s (NYSE: SAP) Internet of Things division and held other strategic and senior management positions within its cloud business unit.
Veritone Chairman and Chief Executive Chad Steelberg said in a statement that her knowledge of enterprise software will help the company “advance the adoption of our artificial intelligence technology platform.”
Veritone closed two acquisitions in August, one for its emerging artificial intelligence business and the other for its media-buying arm.
Shares have fallen 65% this year, trading recently at $8.12 and a market cap of $157 million.
Nayyar’s addition brings Veritone’s board to nine directors.
She’s at least the fifth woman appointed to a board this year by an OC public company, an increasing concern as the state legislature recently enacted a law requiring every publicly held domestic and foreign corporation with principal executive offices to have at least one female director by the end of 2019, with escalating quotas in ensuing years.
