EvoNexus Re-Opening Irvine Incubator
TECH: San Diego Location Relocating to Larger Space
After putting them on hiatus for a time, EvoNexus has a slew Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings planned for 2025. Photo courtesy EvoNexus
Written by Karen Pearlman, San Diego Business Journal Reporter
SAN DIEGO – Get ready, Orange County, tech-forward EvoNexus is coming your way – again.
SAN DIEGO, CA / FEBRUARY 7TH, 2025 / — The nonprofit incubator signed a new lease in January and will re-launch an innovation-forward hub in Irvine next month.
EvoNexus first opened space for tech startups in Irvine in 2014, but when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, EvoNexus was only able to keep things going for about a year before shuttering the office.
“Things are coming back, venture capital is coming back, companies are back working five days a week, and we think things are getting back to normal,” said Rory Moore, who co-founded the organization that helps startups get going with Vice Admiral Walter Davis, USN (Ret.) in 2008.
Moore said the Irvine EvoNexus would start up again March 1.
The new property at 101 Academy in Irvine is in the same complex as the previous one on California Avenue – a complex owned by The Irvine Company LLC, the Newport Beach-based real estate developer.
“They’ve taken great care of us over the years,” Moore said. “It’s extremely favorable for us with The Irvine Company. And this spot is in a building with a lot of other things that are going on. The building has probably five tenants, and one of them is part of the UC Irvine OB-GYN department.”
Moore said there will be about 5,000 square feet of space for EvoNexus applicants to work in.
“We’ll have 26 engineering seats, designed desks and four small offices we’re converting to lab space, so room for about eight companies,” Moore said.
By comparison, the current San Diego location of EvoNexus on Shoreham Drive off Governor Drive and Interstate 805 adjacent to UC San Diego has a little more than 10,000 square feet of space with nine startups currently occupying space.
San Diego Relocation, Too
Moore said things have slowed down for admission to San Diego’s EvoNexus of late because they’re moving into new digs in the coming months.
Its lease for the UC San Diego-area building expires at the end of April, and Moore said EvoNexus has a site in mind in the University Town Center area, in a building also owned by The Irvine Company.
EvoNexus has been in the UTC area twice before, once when it opened its doors for the first time in 2010, then again in 2017 after five years in downtown San Diego. The most recent UTC site was 20,000 square feet with office space, private lab space and conference rooms, and Moore said it had as many as 70 engineers working there.
He said the coming spot at UTC is closer to 15,000 square feet.
Moore said EvoNexus continues to be “very rigorous in who we select to enter our program,” and that while there are plenty of great small business ideas, they’re not a fit for EvoNexus “if they’re not ideas that will scale.”
“We’re looking for deep tech ideas that could go across sectors,” he said. “We look for great companies that can grow the region’s innovation economy. We want to help with hiring people and growing the talent and keeping the talent here in San Diego, keeping the best and brightest here instead of leaving and going to Silicon Valley.
“It’s the same at Irvine. UC Irvine loses a lot of their students to opportunities outside of Irvine and they want to keep the best and brightest there, too. We want to help them keep the talent there, with opportunities and a launch ramp to engineers and technologists. Maybe some who are working at a large company want to branch off and do something on their own.”
Other EvoNexus News
EvoNexus’s two-year program combined with its individualized milestone-based structure and one-on-one mentoring fosters a path from post-ideation to minimum viable product and long-term sustainability. More than 85% of EvoNexus portfolio companies have secured venture funding from more than 400 venture capitalists and independent investors.
EvoNexus’s unique incubation program attracts applications from early-stage technology ventures seeking to benefit from EvoNexus’ strategic advisors and capital connections.
Financial and strategic support by corporate partners – some of the largest multinational technology businesses in the world – allows EvoNexus to continue its work.
Moore said EvoNexus in December landed a strategic corporate partnership with Alat, a company created by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Alat is backed by $100 billion of capital by the Saudi PIF.
While Moore didn’t want to go into detail, a news release on the the EvoNexus website said that Alat will create a global sustainable technology manufacturing hub in Saudi Arabia focused on advanced industrials and electronics.
Alat’s primary goal is to ensure that global companies set up sustainable manufacturing solutions in Saudi Arabia, “benefiting from abundant green energy resources, the country’s unique geolocation and its investments in technology,” the release stated.
Alat will focus on seven key strategic business units – advanced industrials, semiconductors, smart health, smart appliances, smart devices, smart buildings and next-generation infrastructure.
Moore said one of the Alat executives will be joining the EvoNexus board at the end of February.
Special Interest Groups
Moore also said there has been renewed interest and excitement around EvoNexus Special Interest Groups (SIG), which were a popular draw prior to the pandemic, but were put on hiatus and then have been slowly brought back. A few trial SIG launches last year were successful, Moore said.
Moore said the new SIGs, open to the public through RSVPs offered by EvoNexus on its website through EventBrite, offer people unique opportunities to meet, network and learn from high level industry professionals.
Plans are still being worked out, but Moore said there will be four meetings a year for seven different SIG entities in San Diego this year. The SIGs are in the areas of semiconductors, digital health, satellites, military, security, automotive and consumer devices, he said.
“We’ll have a panel with speakers in the different domain areas,” Moore said. “This will be to take advantage of how valuable they were in the past before things got shut down. (SIG) will be a vertical area for semiconductors and ‘semiconductor people, and the same thing goes for consumer devices, for digital health, for satellite and for the rest of it, for big companies and for startups.
“It’s networking events for people of like kind, of like mind, birds of a feather, to get people in the room who care about that same sector. It’s for maximizing networking but also, if you’re thinking about, let’s say, starting a semiconductor chip company you might want to first go to a SIG to network with others that have started semiconductor companies.”
EvoNexus
FOUNDED: 2010
CO-FOUNDERS: Rory Moore, Vice Admiral Walter Davis
HEADQUARTERS: San Diego (and Irvine)
BUSINESS: Nonprofit technology incubator
TOTALS: EvoNexus companies have secured over $1.6 billion in venture funding and had 54 acquisitions valued at over $2.1 billion
STAFF: 7
WEBSITE: evonexus.org/
CONTACT: info@evonexus.org
IMPACT: EvoNexus Incubators enable motivated entrepreneurs to turn their transformative ideas into fundable, commercially viable companies. In 2024, EvoNexus companies secured $347 million in funding
NOTABLE: More than 85% of EvoNexus portfolio companies have secured venture funding from more than 400 VCs and independent investors
SOURCE, Courtesy of Karen Pearlman: https://www.sdbj.com/finance/startups/evonexus-re-opening-irvine-incubator/
About EvoNexus
EvoNexus is California’s leading nonprofit technology startup incubator located in San Diego and Irvine. EvoNexus has successfully incubated over 268 startups with a survival rate of over 85%. Since the incubator’s formation in 2010, EvoNexus companies have secured over $1.6B in venture funding, $10B in pre-exit valuation, and had 54 acquisitions valued at over $2.1B. EvoNexus is supported by corporate partners, including some of the largest multinational corporations in the world. Learn more at evonexus.org/.