What else happened last week

We deferred mentioning the deals and other news from last week to focus on discussions about the looming recession and the numbers from last year, but a lot happened during the week.  One of the reasons for moving this column over to GreenTech Media was to take advantage of their reporting about deals, etc., so as always please bookmark the GTM home page and check there regularly for more timely updates!

Deals from the past week:

• Building-integrated wind turbine developer Marquiss Wind Power raised a $1.3mm Series A, led by Velocity Venture Capital, with participation by Strategis Early Ventures.

• Khosla Ventures increased their stake in Transonic Combustion, at a “substantially higher valuation” than their second round of funding last year.  Khosla Ventures is now the biggest preferred shareholder.

• Clean Technology Investor mentioned on Friday that coal giant Peabody Energy is putting an undisclosed amount of strategic investment into GreatPoint Energy.

• VentureWire’s Jonathan Shieber reported on Thursday that stealth-mode diesel engine developer Achates Power has taken in an undisclosed amount of financing from a syndicate including Sequoia Capital, RockPort Capital, Interwest Partners, and Madrone Capital Partners.  The VWire story’s been written up a few more places now—see the column at CNet’s Green Tech Blog, for example.

• Renewable energy monitoring and reporting software vendor Fat Spaniel raised an $18mm Series B, led by Ignition Partners, and including participation by Pacific Corporate Group and Applied Ventures, as well as existing investors Element Partners and Chrysalix Energy.

• Solar thermal power developer eSolar took in a $10mm investment from Google.

• VWire also reported that wastewater treatment tech developer Microbial Solutions Ltd. raised a GBP1.2mm round of financing led by Oxford Capital Partners, with participation by H2O Venture Partners and existing investor The Rainbow Seed Fund.

• CTI reported that W.R. Grace is planning on investing $3mm and “up to $5mm” total in concrete developer CeraTech.

• Aquaculture (Kona Kampachi hatchery) company Kona BlueWater Farms has taken in a $2.6mm Series D, according to VWire.  Investors in the company include Cornerstone Holdings; Garrett Gruener,  co-founder and director of Alta Partners; and other undisclosed investors.  The company now plans to raise a large Series E to expand into Mexico.

Cleantech investors in the news:

• A nice hagiography of Aileen Lee and Samir Kaul in Forbes—Samir’s “managing 35 greentech startups”, according to the story.

• Very pleased to welcome back Todd Kimmel to the dark side!  Todd’s back at ATV after his successful effort to launch Coskata.

• Angel investor Jonathan Bonanno is launching a new green energy project development group.

• Intel Capital is joining the wave of corporate venture groups in getting more into cleantech.

It’s becoming clear that Project Better Place is going to be receiving a lot of PR-driven attention over the coming months in part just because it’s a bold idea, and in part by design.  The latest announcement with Nissan and Renault in Israel was big news this past week, although it was also notable to see in the CTI coverage that the car companies are going to continue their own ground-up EV development efforts anyway.  Readers are invited to post or email their own thoughts and questions about this fascinating endeavor.  I’ll kick us off:  “In a geographically small country where 90% of drivers travel less than 70 kilometers per day, why do they need to stop at re-charging centers instead of just plugging in their cars at home or at work?”  Maybe the answer is that it’s all on-street parking in Israel?

Other news and notes:  Florida is looking to bring in more cleantech venture dollars...  Color me skeptical, but Neal thinks Climos may be for real...  Interesting overview of CIGS markets and movers...  The energy intelligence market consolidation wave is coming...  Tesla’s planning on their first shipment being 3/17...  Finally, it’s only tangentially related to cleantech investing, but what a great quote.