Odds and ends

First, some deals:

• Li ion battery startup ActaCell has raised a $5.8mm Series A, led by DFJ Mercury and including Google.org, Applied Ventures, and Good Energies.  Expect the energy storage sector to get even more attention going forward as some anticipated exits come to fruition, and as the political campaigning season and other developments focus attention on the transportation applications for batteries.

• Carbonflow, a startup from fellow cleantech blogger Neal Dikeman, has raised a $2.9mm Series A led by Clean Pacific Ventures, and including OVP Venture Partners and Meridian Energy.  More below…

• Performance Plants, a developer of agrotech innovations with applications in biofuels and food crops, has raised a C$13mm round of financing, led by Ceres Global Ag Corp., and including Eastwood Capital Group and a syndicate of Boston-area private investors such as Saturn Asset Management, plus Montreal-based Endurseaux Inc.

• PE Week Wire reported today that Athenix, another developer of ag and biofuel techs, has raised $10mm in “Series S” funding from return backers Hunt Ventures, Intersouth Partners and Polaris Venture Partners.

• PEHub’s Alex Haislip reported today that Optisolar’s April $132mm round of financing has been expanded by another $77.8mm.  Alex also jumps on board with me in arguing that these kinds of investments are hard to categorize as “venture capital” per se…

• Sweden’s QuNano AB has spun out a new venture, Sol Voltaics, to develop multijunction PV cells.  The list of seed investors is long, so here’s a cut-and-paste:  “The seed investors in Sol Voltaics include funds advised by venture capital firms Provider Venture Partners of Stockholm, Teknoinvest and Nano Future Invest of Oslo, joined by LU Innovation together with LUAB, the investment arm of Lund University (Sweden), as major owners, along with the founders and employees of QuNano.  A new investor will be Scatec Adventure AS…”

Other items:

• We’ve added a few new blogs to the blogroll:  Carbonflow’s Karla Bell is writing on carbon trading subjects at GHGblog.com...  Shai Agassi’s Long Tailpipe is worth checking out (ummm, not sure I phrased that as well as I could have)...  and Andy Bochman and Chris Davis’ PowrTalk always has some good perspectives.

• Cleantech IPOs are expected to lead the way when the IPO window re-opens...  And the linked CNet article also notes further down John Doerr’s use of the contrast between the $25mm Google required to get to exit vs. Bloom Energy’s $250mm (and 7 years) and counting.  Which begs an obvious question—doesn’t using that comparison as Exhibit A in an argument for going later and bigger in this sector require an assumption that both companies were equally good investments, or at least that Bloom Energy is a very typical cleantech investment?  There are plenty of other good arguments to be made in support of their making such a shift in investment strategy, of course, but I was struck by his comment at the time, and I’m still struggling with it even now.

• Meanwhile, M&A exits overall are apparently a buyer’s market right now.  Haven’t seen any good info on how that might be affecting cleantech in particular.

• I wrote up a bit about the power of information as a policy tool in the latest issue of Mass High Tech, for those interested in such topics…

Also, the California Clean Tech Open has announced their finalists... And finally, take the cash!!