Heliovolt’s $101mm Series B
Rob Day: October 22, 2007, 8:03 AM
Seems like just a couple of weeks ago we were talking about how hot solar is again... News came out this morning (first saw it in CTI) that CIGS thin-film PV startup Heliovolt has raised an $101mm Series B round, which means they've added $24mm to their previous close on the round of $77mm. New investors apparently include Sequel Venture Partners of Colorado, Noventi Ventures, and hedge fund Passport Capital. The capital is intended to help them open "foreign" manufacturing facilities.
It's a huge round (Matt Marshall says the biggest solar venture deal ever, but I haven't checked) at any stage, and especially for a Series B. A sign that many investors expect big things out of thin-film and other emergent solar technologies in the near future. Is this another one of the sort-of-VC, pre-revenue mezz rounds, quasi-project-finance, that we've talked about before? The inclusion of hedge fund financing would suggest that might be the case.
It certainly turns up the heat in the CIGS sector, at very least...
