Business

The first time Vivien Bang grilled the outside of a rice ball in a little bit of sesame oil six years ago, she knew she had struck gold. “He was just like, ‘What are you doing? You have to do something with this,’” she remembers her then-boyfriend and now husband, Luke, telling her when he tried the new version of the snack she’d been making for years for friends and family.

Eight years have moved by quickly for STEER Tech CEO Anuja Sonalker, not just in the growth and success of her autonomous vehicle company but in cities and states embracing the industry as a catalyst for growth in infrastructure. “We’ve had some great last few years,” said Sonalker, who in the last five years was named an All-Star by Automotive News and a distinguished alumnus by the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering.

Salesforce executives told investors that deals are shrinking or getting delayed. Dell said its margin is getting smaller. Okta highlighted macroeconomic challenges. And Veeva’s CEO said on his company’s earnings call that generative artificial intelligence has been “a competing priority” for customers. Add it all up and it was a brutal week for software and enterprise tech.

A huge mixed-use health care development is planned for Montgomery County’s White Oak region. The Baltimore-based MCB Real Estate will break ground next year on a 280-acre mixed-use health care development next to the Food and Drug Administration headquarters. Viva White Oak is approved for 12 million square feet of mixed-use development. It is near the Adventist Health Care White Oak Medical Center, off Cherry Hill Road.

When we last checked in with Port 44, the all-female development group was making a splash in this canal town with the renovation of venerable buildings on Conococheague and Salisbury streets. Nearly half a dozen businesses had moved in, and seven newly redesigned, upscale apartments were occupied. That was last fall.

Pompeian Olive Oil staffers spent three weeks this spring making daily calls to a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to pull off an expensive gamble: getting a ship across the ocean just in time for the reopening of a channel into the Port of Baltimore. The journey required precise timing to prevent the vessel from waiting for the wreckage of the Key Bridge to be cleared, but Pomepian officials deemed it worth the risk given the high costs associated with trucking imports from other ports. In the end, the trip was a success.

Baltimore’s Atapco Properties is expanding into the southern Virginia industrial market. The development and investment firm on Tuesday said it had acquired 124 acres near the Port of Virginia. The site within the Virginia Port Logistics Park can hold a warehouse of up to 1.5 million square feet and is Atapco’s first acquisition in the Hampton Roads market, a strong competitor to the Port of Baltimore.

About 150 Southwest Airlines flights in and out of BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport were delayed Wednesday because of what the airline described as a power outage at one of its data centers. Southwest Airlines confirmed delays were caused because of the power failure in the Dallas, Texas, area.