Ausra, Blackstone, and Fotowatio

In the last post, we examined how solar and later-stage investments are really driving the cleantech venture sector these days.  Nice of everyone to prove our point with the various deal and fund announcements this past week—thanks, guys!

• PE Week Wire broke the news this week that Ausra has raised approx. $25mm of an ongoing Series C round of financing, with KERN Partners joining existing investors Khosla and Kleiner.  I don’t remember seeing past announcements of a Series B, so maybe that slipped by unnoticed by the press…

• GE Financial Services and Grupo Corporativo Landon are together investing $353mm into Spanish solar project developer Fotowatio.  GE Financial Services is putting in $235mm of the total.  Together, the two investors will end up owning 49.5% of the company.

• Cyrium Technologies, a developer of high-efficiency solar cells for use in concentrator systems, announced a $15mm Series B led by The Quercus Trust, and including existing investors BDC Venture Capital, Chrysalix, and Pangaea Ventures.  It’s unclear how this relates to their insider round from December, whether that was an extension of the A or a bridge that rolled into this B.

• Smart grid system developer BPL Global raised a $23mm round of financing, from new investor Cross Atlantic Capital Partners and existing investors IFA Group, Novitas Capital, El Dorado, and Morgan Stanley.  The company last raised a Series C last year.

• Thermal management vendor Nextreme Thermal raised a $13mm Series B led by Chart Venture Partners, and including In-Q-Tel, RTI, Redshift, Harris & Harris, and Itochu.

• Cell phone recycler ReCellular announced a $15mm Series A from Investor Growth Capital.

• Hydrogen sensor company H2Scan announced a $4mm fourth round (Series D?) of financing from new investor TGB Partners and existing investors Chrysalix, H5 Capital, Tri-Strip Associates, Ravinia Venture Fund, and members of the Tech Coast and Pasadena Angels groups.

• VentureWire confirmed this week that Rive Technologies has raised a $14mm round of financing led by Nth Power, with participation from existing investors ATV and Charles River Ventures.

Cleantech investors in the news:

• The Blackstone Group announced their entry into cleantech with the hiring of a dedicated team to focus on later-stage investments.

• IKEA is launching an effort to invest $77mm in cleantech startups.  They plan on making inexpensive investments, but the startup management teams will need to assemble everything themselves and adopt funny-sounding names (I kid, I kid)...

• Boston-area cleantech investor Dave Danielson on Massachusetts’ new energy law.

• With the recent shift to later-stage investing, there’s been increasing angst about the seed capital gap in cleantech (we discussed it a while back).  More thoughts on the subject here and here.

Other news and notes:  Speaking of solar, Mark Modzelewski shares his blunt thoughts on the topic...  Here’s a useful comparison of the recent cleantech “boom” and the internet bubble from the late 1990s... Martin LaMonica writes about Obama’s cleantech-heavy energy plan...  As cleantech firms like A123, First Wind, and others line up to lead the charge in re-opening the IPO window, it’s worth looking back on the NYT’s assertion that VC activity in cleantech was one of the major reasons for the lack of IPO activity in the first half of the year (oops)...  Finally, here’s a pretty funny column by GTM’s Michael Kanellos.