The Twin Cities Business Show

In 2017, Skywater Technology was spun out from Cypress Semiconductor as an independent semiconductor foundry based in Bloomington, Minnesota. In 2026, it was announced that they would be acquired by quantum computing giant IonQ for $1.8 billion. This episode is about everything that happened in between.We sat down with the company's CEO, Thomas Sonderman, to hear more about their path to becoming an integral part of some of the most advanced technological supply chains in the United States.Sonderman shares how the company focused on growing their Advanced Technology Services (ATS) business, which pairs collaborative teams with clients that need rapid innovation and customized solutions for their technology. By marrying innovation as a service with manufacturing as a service, they've built a company that's grown from 300 to 900 employees in Bloomington with another 900 employees located across the U.S. Listen in to why the future of quantum computing runs through Bloomington.

How do you build a summer resort from the ground up? The Oxborough family took Sugar Lake Lodge out of bankruptcy and built it up in the early 90s after it was abandoned for years. It continued their family's legacy of resort and hospitality work that dates back to the 1880s in Minnesota with Ruttger's Resort. Sugar Lake Lodge Co-owner Abby Oxborough sat down for an interview with The Twin Cities Business Show this week. We asked her more hard-hitting questions like where "up north" starts in Minnesota, what it's like to work inside a family business, how to run a summer resort, and more. Abby talks about running the Lodge alongside her Dad, who built the resort from the ground up. She shared lessons that can apply to many other family business transitions, including things she's struggling with every day. In the hospitality business, you can either make or break someone's day. Abby shares with us how she views hospitality and the role that empathetic leaders can play in working to create environments that people want to work in and visit.

To understand the Twins payroll situation, you have to understand the business of baseball. And if you want to understand the business of baseball, you need to understand how debt works for a team like this one. This week on The Twin Cities Business Show, we sit down with our Editor Adam Platt to talk to him about his interview and the business of the Minnesota Twins. For our latest print issue, our Adam Platt sat down with the Twins new owner, Tom Pohlad, to discuss his plans and where the team is at. A recent survey from The Athletic showed that only 4% of the team’s fan base was optimistic about this season – though that number came out before Taj Bradley turned into Johan Santana for the first two weeks. The Twins lost millions of dollars from their local TV deal in the past few years. Adam takes us through how that happened and how it’s impacted the team’s finances.Major League Baseball might be headed for a strike or a work stoppage at the end of this year. How could that impact the Twins? Adam shares with his view on how the possibility of a strike might be impacting the payroll for this year’s team.

North Wind's new hypersonic testing facility will make Rosemount, Minnesota the center of innovation for aeronautics and hypersonic testing across the United States. North Wind's CEO, Dr. Artie Mabbett, shares with us how their team plans to build and expand the facility in the years to come. Hypersonic flight, or planes that move five times the speed of sound, could make it possible to travel from Minneapolis to Honolulu in 45 minutes. To get there, the company will start by testing unmanned aircrafts traveling at hypersonic speeds. If they're successful, one day they'll try the same with human pilots, then human passengers – the future of hypersonic flight might be pioneered right here in Minnesota. We dig in to how rapid advances in AI are changing hypersonic testing. "What used to take six months can happening in two and a half minutes," shared Dr. Mabbett. When a testing facility costs $1 million per week to operate, innovation that happens much faster than it used to will mean massive savings for the companies that was to build and grow.The future of war is also changing rapidly, and Dr. Mabbett shares more on how the shift from ballistic to hypersonic technologies are going to force us to rethink and revamp the way that our military operates.

In this week's episode, Nate shared lessons on being an entrepreneur, educates us on why guitars are such great accounting tools for artists, and shares stories about his experience selling guitars to some of the biggest musicians on the planet.He covers a lot of ground, including how the Panama Canal brought Hawaiian music and the guitar to the masses in America, the story of the guitar as a soothing tool at Gettysburg, how old-growth Brazilian Rosewood sounds different than other wood, and the history of the Telecaster, slide guitars, and more.He tells us the story behind one the biggest mysteries in music history, Jimmy Page's missing guitar. The Led Zeppelin member had his instrument stolen on a visit to Minnesota in 1970. It was hiding in plain sight for decades until Nate used a blacklight to discover signature elements of the legendary instrument. After a conversation with the Rolling Stones, Nate got connected to Jimmy and returned his guitar decades after it went missing.He talks about why are guitars such a smart investment for artists. Nate shares with us that his Telecaster guitar, which he purchased for $3,000 in 1989, is worth about $60,000 today. Musicians can depreciate the value of the instrument for accounting purposes while the vintage guitars rise in value. Add in bonus value that comes from musicians themselves owning the instruments, and in many ways they're the best assets that an artist can own.His big break came when the band Genesis needed a quick fix before they went on stage. Moments before they started, he took a saw to their instruments and got them ready. From that day on, he was someone that artists came to depend on.He shares lessons that any business owner can borrow from, ideas for how small businesses focusing on vintage can create a moat against bigger corporations, how young entrepreneurs should build their businesses, and more.

How does a business survive an 85% drop in sales? Mercado Central lost 85% of their revenue during the month of January in Minneapolis. In this episode of The Twin Cities Business Show, Juan Linares, Co-founder of the market, takes us through that period of time and how they are navigating the aftermath.This episode is doubling as a fundraiser for the Mercado. You can donate to their GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-mercado-central-from-closureThe last few years have been difficult ones for the Mercado. They play host to 35 small businesses, non-profits, and more. Since 2020, they have faced a series of challenges that have threatened their existence, but Linares and their team have fought to keep the building open and the Mercado alive because they know the essential role they play for the community.Linares also talks about his journey, from Mexico City to Detroit Lakes to Minneapolis, and how immigrant-owned business owners are at the heart of American capitalism and dynamism. He shares his perspective on how the immigrants that come to this country want to make a contribution and how that drives them.

Decades ago, Minnesota used to have a large defense industry presence. Today, our state is 50th out of 50 for per capita spending from the Department of Defense (DoD), despite paying more in federal taxes than we receive in return. The DoD has the biggest budget of any department in the federal government, and Minnesota has been left out of many of their plans – until now.A new effort is looking to change that, and one of the people spearheading the coalition is Bill Harper. Harper serves as the Board President of the Minnesota National Security Ecosystem, a relatively new group that was formed to help coordinate the state's expansion into projects that can attract federal funding. In January, one of six nationwide Defense Innovation OnRamp Hubs opened in Minnesota  as part of "the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) nationwide effort to catalyze the defense technology ecosystem."The focus of this work is on "dual-use" technology, or technology that can serve both civilian or commercial goals as well as military ones. There is a concerted effort to make Minnesota the most advanced testing ecosystem for multiple fast-growing industries that could breed a new generation of advanced technology and manufacturing companies, which the state hopes to be able to keep and grow here after they're done testing. North Wind, located in Rosemount, will be pioneering the the first industrial hypersonic testing facility built in the U.S. in decades. It will be used to test aerospace technology, advanced missiles and missile defense, and hypersonic flight. One day, hypersonic planes will take people around the world in hours, and much of the testing to get us there could happen in Rosemount.BioMADE is a bioindustrial manufacturing company that's building a $132 million facility in Maple Grove. One example of their efforts has been their work developing a domestic source of natural rubber from a specific species of dandelion. Today, 90% of the world's rubber is made from rubber trees that grow in tropical locations, but the belief is that this research can help produce a domestic source for rubber. This partnership, which includes Goodyear and the Department of Defense, is an example of how BioMADE is hoping to drive innovation in the bioindustrial space.From Iran to Ukraine to Yemen, low cost weapons have been surprisingly effective against expensive weapons systems. Adapting to this new reality will take a massive effort, and Harper talks to us about how Minnesota is positioning itself to be a manufacturing hub for the future of the defense industry and the world we live in today.Lake Superior is serving as the home for innovative new technology. Anno.ai is deploying buoys in the lake the build an AI labeling system for acoustic signatures for the Navy. Eventually, it is expected that the lake will serve as a test ground for underwater autonomous vehicles. Why Lake Superior? It's far away from the coasts. In the winter, the lake is similar to the Arctic, and in the summer, it transforms. And not far away, abandoned mining tunnels are being used to simulate tunnel-based robotic combat around the world. In today's episode, Harper takes us through some of the possibilities and maps out a future in which Minnesota serves as the epicenter for an exciting new breed of companies that could drive growth in our state for decades to come.

If you are interested in how real estate really works, you're not going to want to miss this one. This week, we talk to Josh Krsnak, CEO of Hempel Real Estate, about his path to running a growing real estate company in the Twin Cities. He talks about growing up in Rochester, pouring over the tax code before he was 25, sleeping in a closet of one of their buildings every night when he was still getting on his feet, and almost losing it all. Now, his team has a portfolio of marquee holdings that include the West End in St. Louis Park and Lasalle Plaza in downtown Minneapolis, where he was able to fill close to 100k square feet in office space last year while the market lost nearly five times that.

What happens when you close your seed round the day that Covid-19 shuts down the world? "The best path is keeping your doors open."For Claros CEO Michelle Bellanca, it was a lesson in survival. On this episode of The Twin Cities Business Show, she shared how their company pivoted quickly to make masks using their anti-microbial, anti-viral textile technology, which allowed them to keep their lab open and pay their bills until they could operate normally.In the years that followed, their company shifted gears once again to focus entirely on PFAS remediation. They built a world-class analytical lab to allow them to rapidly innovate. In 2022, Claros had a major technological breakthrough as they went into their Series A fundraise that showed them they would be able to destroy every type of PFAS on the planet. They went from having a reactor that could handle 10 gallons per day to a 24/7 continuous process that destroys 99.99% of PFAS."There's this perfect storm building around PFAS remediation," Bellanca shared on The Twin Cities Business Show. They shifted to focus entirely on PFAS because "you need to skate to where the puck is going to go."Bellanca also shared insights from her years working in Asia for 3M before launching Claros. What did she learn from her time in Japan?"Go slow to go fast."In this episode, she talked to us about Nemawashi, the concept of building consensus and strategy with your team before executing. She has brought that approach to Claros, and shares why it has made a big difference for them during their ascent.

We talked to Jonathan Rowntree, CEO of Niron Magnetics. They've been busting out of their Minneapolis headquarters and will be opening a manufacturing facility in Sartell in 2027. Jonathan shared that in the next few years, they plan to raise several hundred million more dollars, IPO, hit $1 billion in revenue, and open multiple manufacturing facilities around the world.Niron makes a powerful magnet that has the potential to reshape global politics. But why should you care about magnets? Your phone, your car, air conditioning, planes, and every electronic device needs them to function.Most magnets on earth require rare materials with big names like neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium to function. China controls 80-90% of the production and processing of all of those minerals, and to date, has total control over the global magnet supply chain. Their story also has a special Minnesota twist. Niron was born out of research from legendary University of Minnesota professor Jian-Ping Wang, and uses iron and nitrogen to power their technology, pairing an abundant resource in Northern Minnesota with a by-product of fertilizer used for farming across the agricultural parts of our state.