\u201cI am retired from being a CEO and don\u2019t plan on starting a newco\u2014I am focused on board service and helping companies access capital and of course, arranging an exit, if possible,\u201d former Axonics chief executive Ray Cohen told the Business Journal last summer, noting there was \u201ctoo much cool technology out in the world these days\u201d to hang up his spurs.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s evident with the first big fundraising deal reported in 2026 for an OC company, a $67 million Series A financing for Spiro Medical, a new medical device maker in Irvine that came out of stealth mode last year and is building a first-of-its-kind implantable device to treat asthma.<\/p>\n
Spiro\u2019s neuromodulation device has similarities to Axonics, whose implantable product treats incontinence issues; Axonics was sold to Boston Scientific in 2024 for $3.7 billion.
Another common thread between the two companies: the chairman of Spiro Medical is Ray Cohen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce this novel approach comes to market, it promises to have a profound impact on patients suffering from asthma and other breathing related conditions,\u201d said Cohen, who we named a Businessperson of the Year two years ago.<\/p>\n
See the features in this week\u2019s edition for more on our latest crop of five Businesspersons of the Year winners and see next week\u2019s print edition for more on Spiro Medical.<\/p>\n
____________<\/p>\n
RJ Scaringe earned our nod as a Businessperson of the Year in 2022 after taking Irvine EV maker Rivian Automotive public with its blockbuster $12 billion IPO (Nasdaq: RIVN).<\/p>\n
Scaringe now has a blockbuster pay package to aspire to, after Rivian\u2019s board late last year ok\u2019d a new, potential $4.6 billion pay package for the company\u2019s founder, which is tied to revised share price and profit targets.<\/p>\n
The award will vest if Rivian hits various stock-price milestones over the next 10 years, ranging from $40 to $140 a share, among other factors.<\/p>\n
His prior pay package had substantially higher stock price targets that were deemed unlikely to be met.<\/p>\n
Rivian\u2019s shares currently trade at around $20, for a market cap of nearly $25 billion. \u201cI\u2019ve never been as confident as I am today about what our trajectory looks like,\u201d Scaringe told the Business Journal in October.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s newest launch, for a smaller and less expensive SUV model dubbed the R2, is expected this year.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
OC\u2019s biggest IPO since Rivian Automotive came to market in 2021 (it was one of nearly a dozen local firms to go public that year, a record amount for the area) is likely to be Costa Mesa\u2019s Anduril Industries, which has raised over $6 billion in funding to date since its 2017 founding.<\/p>\n
Financing news publication Crunchbase has tapped three-time Businessperson of the Year
winner (in 2014, 2020 and 2025) Palmer Luckey\u2019s upstart defense contractor as one of 15 big companies that could go realistically public this year, alongside Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX in Hawthorne and Torrance satellite firm K2 Space.<\/p>\n
Is that IPO buzz realistic? Anduril job postings now note the firm is \u201cimplementing IPO readiness programs,\u201d and Luckey stated last year that \u201cwe are running this company to be the shape of a publicly traded company.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI am retired from being a CEO and don\u2019t plan on starting a newco\u2014I am focused on board…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-131218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}