• Applied Materials' corporate venture group appears to be focusing on several cleantech areas for their investments, according to this article. Interestingly, Neal Dikeman (of Cleantechblog) has tracked down rumors suggesting that Applied Materials intends to move into the solar PV manufacturing equipment space -- that would fit well with the above article, which mentions that, "Now, as part of Applied Materials, the fund will hear more from the company's engineers and scientists, ensuring that investments jibe with the corporate strategy."

• Agribusiness giant Syngenta (the combination of Novartis and AstraZeneca's agribusiness unit) has launched a corporate venture group of their own, to be managed by Life Sciences Partners, a European VC. The $100mm fund, LSP BioVentures, will be based in Boston, and will invest in -- among several other areas -- biomaterial and biofuel technologies.

• More quasi-project-finance investing by cleantech VCs: Ethanol project developer Altra (which began life as an investment firm called Malibu Capital Partners) has taken in an "undisclosed" amount of funding from Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures (Vinod's new group), Omninet, Sage Capital Partners, and the Angeleno Group. Matt Marshall has a nice write-up on the deal -- and discloses that the amount of the financing was $50mm.

[4/11 update: This post discusses how Vinod has also undertaken a PIPE to take a 10% stake in Indian ethanol plant equipment manufacturer Praj Industries... Continuing to put his money where his mouth is.]

• GreenFuel Technologies, which took in $11mm in Series B funding from DFJ and others last year, and is one of the more talked-about clean energy companies these days, has now completed their Series B with an additional $6.8mm from Polaris Venture Partners.
  

John Doerr, Vinod Khosla and the rest at Kleiner Perkins have been bringing a lot of positive attention to the cleantech investment community lately. The latest is this Associated Press article, which describes the current "greentech" plans at Kleiner, apparently including not just investing but advocacy as well, interestingly. It's a good article that uses Doerr's perspective as a springboard to discuss the broader trend toward more venture investments in cleantech, and some of the reasons for it.

While it's great to see the AP coverage, we continue to be puzzled that people like Mark Heesen of the NVCA seem to think that returns in cleantech have not been strong historically, when in fact available evidence suggests that's just not true, that instead historic returns in cleantech are likely to have been competitive with those in other sectors [self-promotion alert -- one of my firm's GPs co-edited the study]. This comes on the heels of Mark's statements at the Cleantech Venture Forum suggesting that cleantech is also a more heavily-regulated segment than other investment areas...

However, Mark is entirely correct when he's quoted as saying, "There are a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of creating a new way of creating energy." Nevertheless, regular readers of this site will already know -- that's not what most cleantech investing is all about.

• Green-product website Ideal Bite announced they've taken in $250k in angel funding. The site provides "environmental tips" to 38k subscribers in daily emails, and also offers market research services and a blog. If you're interested in some green marketing comps, see that they've also signed up General Mills for $75-100k worth of marketing and market research, or about $2-3 per subscriber...
  

• In the midst of a very busy period, utterly failed to note the funding of Arch Rock, the "mote" network software provider. We've discussed sensors, M2M communications and their cleantech implications before (and here's another useful take as well), and software solutions to be able to manage the various datapoints and the voluminous data are actively being sought by a number of leading players. Fortunately, here's a good discussion of the Arch Rock raise, giving the opportunity to make up for missing it when it was first announced -- the $5mm round included funders Intel, New Enterprise Associates and Shasta Ventures.
  

Wind power has been in the news a lot recently, with market data updates showing strong growth, and the recent funding of Southwest Windpower.

On the same topic, see this Q&A with Quayle Hodek of Renewable Choice Energy. Among other points, some interesting bird epidemiological data...

Also, it seems anecdotally that Clipper Windpower, despite some hiccups, has really been ramping up on hiring, nabbing a lot of folks from GE and elsewhere. Signs that there's room for new entrants in this fairly concentrated market...

• Meir Ukeles of Israel Cleantech Ventures pointed me to a recent Merrill Lynch Europe oil and gas industry report, where they declare that renewable energy is moving to the "centre stage" for the big European oil giants. It's a proprietary research report, so no link, but if you can find a copy, it makes for a very interesting read.

• Had a very enjoyable and entertaining dinner with several GM execs and green policy thinkers (all brought together by Joel Makower -- thanks, Joel!). A wide range of topics were discussed, some pointed questions were asked, but from the cleantech investors' perspective, I would boil down the key takeaways to: a) GM is serious about promoting the use of ethanol, as their recent market campaign demonstrates, potentially providing a strong voice for that cleantech market; b) when asked about their biggest unmet technology needs, it was interesting to hear the clear response "better batteries!" for hybrids and other vehicles, with hydrogen storage also mentioned secondarily, as GM has a stated plan to target PEM fuel cell vehicles in a post-hydrogen highway world (no word on the expected timing of that, of course...). The full conversation was much richer, naturally, it was an interesting dinner all around, but those two points stood out to this investor.

• Cleantech investor Michael DeRosa, formerly of Cordova Ventures, has joined DFJ Element as a Managing Director. Congrats!

• Regarding the recent column here on ethanol IPOs, Neal Dikeman has put up a very thorough, valuable analysis on CleantechBlog, check it out. Notable quote: "...at the end of the day, it is a refiner, not a tech company."
  

• Finally, a small administrative note: I'm not going to allow any more comments in any way related to XsunX. So you day traders can stop alternately promoting and trashing the company, no more comments will be posted here. Apologies to everyone else who may have been sincerely interested in sharing thoughts on the company, I hate having to reach this point, but there we are...
  

Southwest Windpower, which sells small-scale wind turbines for distributed generation applications, announced an $8mm Series B led by RockPort Capital. Chevron's venture group and existing investor Altira also participated in the round. According to the company, sales of small wind generators have grown 50 percent per year over the past two years...