Daily Digest: Smart and Final eyes vacant Fillmore Safeway; Zoox to rev up Bay Area presence

Business Journals

07-05-2025

Good morning, Bay Area. Starting your midweek news crawl with some cleaning products, Clorox CEO Linda Rendle this week told investors that more shoppers are leaving bleach, Glad bags and its other products on store shelves so they can buy iPhones and cars ahead of potential tariff hikes. Senior Reporter Mark Calvey has more on how investors in the Oakland-based company reacted. Turning to health care, Sutter Health and Anthem Blue Cross announced a new multiyear agreement that extends a relationship through 2028, ensuring access to care for NorCal Anthem members via Sutter. In biotech, Menlo Park-based Synthego Corp., which makes gene-editing tools for drug developers, filed for bankruptcy with plans to sell itself to its main lender, an affiliate of private equity firm Perceptive Advisors. Bloomberg reports that Perceptive Credit Holdings III would trade as much as $85 million in debt for ownership of Synthego, unless a higher offer comes in. In aviation, two United Airlines aircraft clipped wings while preparing to depart from San Francisco International Airport on Monday night, the Chronicle reports, as the incident happened an area where air traffic controllers do not communicate directly with flight crews. And finally in entertainment, Outside Lands revealed its lineup for the August show in Golden Gate Park. This year the concert will feature Beck, Doja Cat, 'Anxiety' rapper Doechii, Vampire Weekend and more. Here's the rest of your morning business news lineup to get your Wednesday moving.
FDA appoints UCSF professor, industry critic to lead division overseeing vaccines
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has named Vinay Prasad, a hematologist oncologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, to lead its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, the division that oversees vaccines and biologic medicines. Prasad, who was an outspoken critic of the government's response and its vaccine policies during the pandemic, replaces Peter Marks, who helped lead the division for 13 years and shaped the Operation Warp Speed effort to rapidly develop Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Prasad's appointment triggered a downturn across several Bay Area biotech stocks on Tuesday.
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Zoox lays plans to rev up in Bay Area
Amazon's self-driving subsidiary Zoox is revving up its presence in the Bay Area as it's planning to open a new production facility to expand its robotaxi fleet beyond its current Fremont operation, co-founder Jesse Levinson told the Financial Times. The company plans to begin public rides in Las Vegas this year followed by San Francisco, with production ramping up in 2026. This comes as Zoox paused its driverless testing program in April for more than a week and issued a voluntary recall of its software following a crash in Las Vegas, TechCrunch reports.
Smart and Final offers to occupy vacant Safeway store in Fillmore
SoCal grocer Smart and Final has submitted an offer to backfill a 40,000-square-foot building at 1335 Webster St. in the Fillmore that Safeway vacated in February, the Chronicle reports. The property is under contract to sell to Align Real Estate, a San Francisco developer that has plans for a mixed-use development at the site, potentially including as many 1,000 new homes, but it has yet to close the deal with Safeway or apply for the project with the city. An interim lease at 1335 Webster with Smart and Final would be subject to approval by Safeway and Align.
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Align Real Estate is under contract to purchase the Safeway at 1335 Webster, pictured, and has plans to redevelop it into housing and retail space.
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Is Anthropic shifting its stock options?
San Francisco-based AI upstart Anthropic appears to be transitioning from stock options to restricted stock units, or RSUs, in its equity compensation plan. Zuhayeer Musa, co-founder of Cupertino-based Levels.fyi, posted on LinkedIn Tuesday that a recent submission from a senior software engineer at Anthropic "shows that their $250,000 per yearly equity grant is split across different types of equity: options in year 1, and RSUs from years 2 through 4." Musa said startups typically offer stock options because the lower valuation means a low strike price, giving employees big upside if the company grows, but as the company grows, exercising options becomes expensive and riskier, which is when they often transition to RSUs, which are "more stable, easier to understand, and don't require employees to front cash." I reached out to Anthropic and will update if I hear back.
Bay Area AI company agrees to pay $1.5 million to resolve allegations
Vimaan Robotics, Inc., a San Jose-based company that develops computer vision and AI warehouse management solutions, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by improperly accepting and drawing down funds from a grant award that it was ineligible to receive. The settlement relates to a Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant that Vimaan obtained from the National Science Foundation.
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M&A Watch
San Francisco-based TPG is buying wireless tower investment firm Peppertree Capital Management as the alternative asset manager expands further into digital infrastructure. The firm will acquire Peppertree for about $242 million in cash and as much as $418 million in equity, according to a statement Tuesday. In addition, TPG — together with payments company Corpay Inc. (NYSE: CPAY) — is also buying Charlotte-based AvidXchange Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: AVDX), a financial technology firm specializing in payment processing for midsize businesses, in a deal valued at $2.2 billion.
Weave (NYSE: WEAV) acquired TrueLark, a Palo Alto-based customer communications platform that had raised around $10 million from firms like BluePointe Ventures and Elevate Capital.
People on the Move
San Francisco-based Sigma named Fred Studer as chief marketing officer. He previously served as CMO at several leading high-tech and enterprise technology companies, including PowerSchool Holdings Inc., TIBCO, Certinia, Gigamon and NetSuite.
Numem – a Sunnyvale-based tech company focused on accelerating memory for AI workloads – today announced the addition of two former Intel execs to its executive team: Rob Crooke was elected as an independent board member and Ashu Bakhle has joined as a senior technical advisor.
Palo Alto-based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati announced that Yang Chu has joined the firm as a corporate partner in its Hong Kong office.
Funding Watch
NewLimit, a startup that aims to increase how long people can live a healthy life by genetically programming their cells, has raised a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins. Senior Reporter Ron Leuty has the story.
Layoff Watch
Nonprofit Urban Alchemy, which administers San Francisco's street safety ambassador program, is set to lay off 57 staff members, effective June 30, according to a WARN filing with the state. The layoffs will affect workers in the BART and Tenderloin divisions.
Final thought …
Calling all Edward Berger fans, it's Conclave Wednesday in Vatican City, as a new pope is set to be ordained later today. This afternoon, the 133 voting cardinals will cast their ballots for the next pontiff. If a cardinal receives more than two-thirds of the vote, there will be a new passenger in the popemobile.
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