Friday, September 28, 2007

$900M in cleantech investment from U.S. VC firms in first half of 2007, New England companies snag 7%...

(Bob Buderi, co-founder of Xconomy.com and former Editor of Technology Review Magazine, had a nice post on U.S. cleantech investment here.)

U.S. VC Cleantech Investment for First Half 2007:
  • $892.6M in 71 deals/5.4% of all VC investment

For reference, this is up 70% from $525M/46 deals for First Half 2006 and only 1.4% of U.S. VC investment was in cleantech in 2001.

Four N.E. companies snagged 7% of this First Half 2007 funding:

  • A123 Systems - new battery company from tech out of MIT Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang's Lab raised another $40M, bringing it to over $100M in total funding. Very exciting developments with GM's plug-in hybrid plans.
  • Advanced Electron Beams - electron beam tech for clean, efficient industrial energy raised $17.5M. Congrats to CEO, good friend, and NEEIC co-founder Mitch Tyson.
  • Ze-gen - waste to syngas waste gasification company raised a $4.5M first round of financing.
  • Greentech Media - a cleantech market reserach/news website raised $1M. This has become my own go to clean tech news site.
  • SolarOne Solution - a maker of solar powered lighting systems - raised money as well. I had not heard of these guys before reading Bob's post.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Massachusetts has 2nd highest number of startups in Greentechmedia "GTM:10" Top 10 Cleantech Startups...

Greentechmedia (GTM), an up and coming clean technology media company itself and interestingly based out of Cambridge, MA (Xconomy post on Greentechmedia), recently came out with its "GTM:10" list of the top ten startups in "greentech". Fun stuff......

The first thing I did when I found this was figure out where the companies were from. The tabulation: Bay Area - 5, Massachusetts - 2 (including #1), Arizona - 1, Pennsylvania - 1, all of Israel - 1.

I'm glad to see MA starting to come into its own on these popular "cleantech/greentech" innovation lists, as I was very disappointed when I read the much talked about cleantech book The Clean Tech Revolution recently and found MA no where to be found in Chapter 9 on cleantech cluster building entitled "Create Your Own Silicon Valley". (See my prediction that we would start getting on these lists here.) :)

The Companies:

Lightning quick overview:

1.) A123 Systems - Watertown, MA-based Li-ion battery startup out of MIT Materials Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang's lab. Hitting the PHEV market working with GM.

2.) Tesla Motors - Bay Area-based electric car startup. Hitting the rich guy electric car market.

3.) Mascoma - Cambridge, MA-based (although tech came from Prof. Lee Lynd out of Darmouth College in NH) cellulosic ethanol startup. Hitting the ethanol market (or the cellulosic ethanol market if/when it develops)

4.) Solaicx - Bay Area-based silicon company. Hitting silicon market supplying to solar.

5.) Serious Materials - Bay Area-based startup that has a way of making dry wall at 10% of energy (CO2) cost of competitors. Don't laugh. Drywall production accounts for 1% of U.S. energy use according to Greentechmedia.

6.) Bloom Energy - Bay Area-based solid oxide fuel cell company.

7.) Fat Spaniel - Bay Area-based energy management/monitoring company. I'll leave a good description to someone who will comment below and do a better job than I can.

8.) Southwest Wind - Arizona-based small scale wind company. Greentechmedia says they're 20 years old, but was fired up on the fact that the company has shifted focus to the consumer market. I wonder why Bergey WindPower, a small scale wind power company c0-founded in 1970 by MIT Aero Engineering MS '51 alum and Energy Club member Karl Bergey didn't get on the list instead...

9.) Plextronics - Pennsylvania-based organic printed electronics company. Hitting the 3G solar market and OLEDS.

10.) Atlantium - Israel-based UV water treatment company. Hitting the water disinfection market.


Looking forward to seeing MA beat the Bay Area next year on this list and others. All the ingredients are right here..... :)