This was another busy week for venture capital investment in greentech. Before we get into the details, here are some VC stats from Steve Bengston of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
- There will be about $20 billion in venture capital invested in the United States this year.
- About 15 to 20 percent of VC dollars have gone into greentech.
- Q3 2010 VC investment in greentech was $625 million in 58 deals, $333 million in Silicon Valley, $110.8 million in Texas, $57.5 million in the Midwest. Sorry, New England.
- Trilliant was the largest Q3 deal.
- The average cleantech deal size was $10.8 million.
- Expect more interest from strategics like Applied, Bechtel, Intel, Google, Cisco and Chevron.
And here are the greentech companies funded this week:
Oregon's ClearEdge Power raised $10 million for its fuel cell technology. The firm makes fuel cells for small businesses and residences. More on fuel cells here, here and here.
EcoSmart Technologies, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based maker of pesticides derived from natural plant oils, raised $2 million in VC funding from Greenmont Capital Partners. The firm also secured an additional $2 million under an existing credit facility with Western Technology Investment.
Ice Energy of Windsor, Colorado, a provider of distributed ice-based energy storage to electric utilities with a smart-grid angle, completed a $24 million first closing of its round C with venture funding from TIAA-CREF, Energy Capital Partners, Good Energies, Sail Ventures and Second Avenue Partners in an up-round.
Richmond, California-based industrial recycler MBA Polymers received $25 million in their round E (or F) led by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Balderton Capital with Honeywell Capital Management, Citi’s Sustainable Development Investments and Less Plastics of Hong Kong. The firm processes several million pounds per month of high-value engineering plastics from durable goods streams such as computers, electronics, appliances, and automobiles. Details at the SEC Form D here.
Siluria Technologies, spun out of the Belcher lab at MIT is a San Francisco startup looking to produce ethelyne from natural gas using a synthetic catalyst. The firm raised $13.3 million in a round A from Alloy Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Altitude Life Sciences Ventures, Lux Capital, and Presidio Ventures.
SiOnyx, the Harvard spin-out that has come up with a way to make "black" silicon for solar panels, raised another $12.5 million. The company uses lasers to alter the characteristics of silicon in a way that prevents the silicon from reflecting light. More light gets trapped and thus more power gets produced. The first application might be for cameras, but there is potential for increasing efficiency in solar panels as well.
Tendril of Boulder, Colorado, an energy management startup, acquired GroundedPower, a relatively obscure Massachusetts-based company and closed a $23 million round D, bringing its VC total to $73 million. GroundedPower adds behavioral analytics to Tendril's capabilities -- see OPower for more details.
1366 Technologies raised a $20 million round B from Hanwha Chemical, Ventizz Capital, North Bridge Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners bringing the firm's total raised to $37 million. 1366's Direct Wafer technology manufactures a 156mm multi-crystalline wafer directly from molten silicon in a semi-continuous process.
General Compression, a Massachusetts firm building a compressed air energy storage (CAES) system for utility-scale storage which burns no fuel when generating power -- near isothermal compression and expansion, completed the 2nd tranche of a $20.9 million round A from US Renewables Group, Duke Energy and Northwater Intellectual Property Fund. More info on energy storage here.