AI-powered healthcare company Tebra was the fastest growing software firm in Orange County this year by headcount as its local employee number jumped from 400 to 450 for a nearly 13% rise.

“For far too long, independent providers have been outgunned, competing with hospital systems with endless resources. AI levels the playing field.” founder and Chief Executive Dan Rodrigues told the Business Journal late last year.

The Corona del Mar-based company’s services include a variety of digital tools for independent healthcare practices, including website management, online appointment scheduling, patient portal oversight, data analysis and billing services.

Survey Shows 7% Headcount Drop

While software development is a pillar of the technology industry in Orange County, getting company leaders to provide the Business Journal with employee headcount figures has been challenging.

Of the 22 companies surveyed, only five provided local employee figures.

The survey, including estimates for headcounts based on labor department employment data and regulatory filings, showed the local employee numbers at OC firms fell to 5,701 in July, a 7% drop compared with the year earlier.

IBM Corp., with offices in Costa Mesa, had the largest local headcount with an estimated 1,188 employees as of July, the same as the estimate for the previous year (NYSE: IBM).

Blizzard Down, BlizzCon on Horizon

Video game maker Blizzard Entertainment, owned by Microsoft Corp., fell nearly 29% in total local headcount to an estimated 900 employees for the No. 2 slot, based on publicly disclosed layoffs (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Blizzard is gearing up for its annual raucous fanfest BlizzCon on Sept. 12-13 in Anaheim.

“BlizzCon is more than an event: it’s a homecoming,” Blizzard says on its website. “It’s a celebration of the stories we’ve shaped, the worlds forged together, and the friendships and bonds that make this gathering so unforgettable.

Tebra, with its concrete number, had the third highest headcount for local employees.
No. 19-ranked MeridianLink in Irvine had a total OC headcount of 95 as of July, down 13% from the year before.

Digital ad company Viant in Irvine edged up its OC workforce number ever so slightly, from 146 to 148 for the No. 14 slot.

Tim Vanderhook, chief executive and co-founder of Viant, said AI is shifting developers’ work away from routine coding and toward system design, problem-solving and strategic judgment.

“This is not the disappearance of the developer,” he told the Business Journal. “It is a shift in where the value sits. AI takes on more of the execution.”

In advertising, Viant is moving the industry from assisted workflows to autonomous ones, from copilots to intelligent systems, he said.

“A copilot helps someone execute a task,” he said. “An autonomous system runs the execution loop itself. That leaves the human with the more important job: setting the destination, applying judgment and bringing creative and business context that a system cannot generate on its own.”

Notables

Other OC-based software companies that provided specific numbers for their total OC workforces:

Melissa Data Corp. in Rancho Santa Margarita shed one employee to register a local headcount of 140.

iBase-t in Lake Forest moved up three notches as its local workforce increased from 38 to 41, for the 22nd slot.

“As demand for digital manufacturing, sustainment and AI-enabled solutions expands across aerospace and defense, we have added talent in strategic areas including product innovation, customer outcomes and corporate operations,” iBase-t CEO Naveen Poonian told the Business Journal on Aug. 28.

He said that Orange County “remains iBase-t’s home and an important center for our leadership, culture and long-term growth.”