CaliSolar shines with $60M for photovoltaic cells
CaliSolar, a Sunnyvale, Calif. maker of solar cells has brought in $60 million in equity, rights and securities, reports VentureWire. This is a good amount for a company that just landed $101.8 million in November. It plans to use the new financing for a plant that makes cells out of metallurgical-grade silicon — a much cheaper material than pure silicon.
Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners provided the recent round.
Mayfield brings cleantech sector expert on board
Mayfield Fund announced today that it’s hired Coskata founder Todd Kimmel, a specialist in cleantech investing, to expand its portfolio of energy technology companies. Before now, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm has focused almost exclusively on demand-side opportunities — companies that offer ways to gauge and reduce energy consumption. The addition of Kimmel, who has experience working with renewable energy providers, will help Mayfield address the supply side of the equation, says managing director Navin… Continue Reading
CaliSolar raises over $100M for planned “dirty” silicon cell factory
There’s a shortage of the pure silicon used to make solar cells, but Sunnyvale, Calif-based CaliSolar doesn’t care. There’s plenty of the less refined stuff — what’s called metallurgical grade silicon — that the company says it can use in its own proprietary cells to generate electricity.
Using metallurgical silicon has more than one advantage. Not only will CaliSolar be able to get around the supply bottlenecks that every traditional photovoltaics manufacturer in the world is… Continue Reading
Roundup: 37Signals, MetroFi, CaliSolar & Duffield’s taxes…and more
37signals, the jazzy Web 2.0 company, takes funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — See the company’s announcement here about why. We last mentioned the company here. The company boasts: Since we launched Basecamp we’ve been contacted by nearly 30 different VC firms. We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’t… Continue Reading