VentureBeat

Twitter isn’t the only company trying to build a big business off short messages. For text messages, or SMS, delivered via mobile phone, there’s Mozes, which says it’s ready to take the leading position in a growing marketing and communication business, and now has an $11.5 million funding (unearthed by peHUB ) to back up its claim.

Mozes is based off a simple idea, one that has barely changed since the company took seed funding two years ago. A mobile phone user sends a text message to MOZES (66937) involving the name of the person or entity they want information about. They get a response by text or voicemail, which will usually involve the option to sign up for further notifications. Mozes has applied this idea mainly to bands, who often tell their fans to send texts during concerts, while competitors like TextMarks and Waterfall Mobile have reached out to other audiences.

We’ve tracked Mozes’ progress over time, and it has been encouraging. By February of last year, it had raised $5 million and signed up 500 bands. It’s now got 4,000 bands, according to CEO Dorrian Porter, and sends out 10,000 to 190,000 messages per day. Almost 1.5 million unique phone numbers have messaged Mozes since it launched, and over 40 percent of its first-time users opt in for ongoing communications, which suggests over half a million “users” (assuming they don’t turn around and opt out).

But those numbers are just a start, says Porter. “Mobile marketing is going to be a huge opportunity, if you can believe that the world in the future will be centered around the mobile phone,” he told me earlier today. That means going after audiences other than musicians. Mozes has long been usable by small customers who sign up, but starting this summer, it will be turning its efforts to other defined markets, starting with sports and entertainment.

Signing up big customers is important, because Mozes makes its money primarily from charging its business users — people receiving the texts are charged only by their phone companies. Retailers and big brands are also on the roster, with one “major retailer” already testing out the service. Marketers have yet to fully grasp the concept, but mobile messaging likely has plenty of uses, like sending out information about sales in local stores.

Noise from competitors has always been a problem in Mozes’ space, because once you have a simple idea, it’s easy for others to try to copy. But as time goes on, Porter sees that being less of a problem than in the company’s early days. “We think we can take the music beach-head and use a scalable platform to reach further,’ he says. “We’ll build momentum and critical mass to show how the service is solving a real problem, and at that point, it becomes difficult for others to come in and expand as quickly as we can.”

The $11.5 million funding was led by Maveron, with participation from previous investors Norwest Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Mozes, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has taken $16.5 million to date.

Some venture firms are having difficulty raising new funds, but top firms are still getting money with ease — in part to invest in fast-growing places like China and India.

In the past month we’ve seen Foundation Capital take $750 million, Kleiner Perkins grab $700 million, plus its $500 million “Green Growth” fund, and now Lightspeed Venture Partners is announcing its own fresh $800 million fund, oversubscribed from a $675 million target.

The fresh Lightspeed fund is almost twice the size of its last raise, which topped out at $475 million two years ago. It seems like a lot to invest. But the firm is expanding its game. It will continue to invest in early-stage investment in the United States and Israel, but put more focus on later-stage investments in China and India.

It joins a host of other firms. That trend became most notable last year, when Sequoia Capital kicked its highly-respected LP Yale University to the curb for refusing to put money toward the firm’s risky-looking global investments, like its vegetable farm in China. Along with cleantech — the reason for Kleiner Perkins’ extra $500M — global investment is the top reason that many VCs have started raising funds sized more to private equity.

China and India are prime beneficiaries of the trend, in particular China: Last year, VCs pumped $3.2 billion into Chinese companies - up from $1.8 billion the previous year - and that figure could jump to $4 billion to $5 billion in 2008, according to a piece by the Mercury News on the trend this weekend.

Despite their immensity, China and India have been capital starved historically, Lightspeed managing director Ravi Mhatre told me. However, there’s no indication that Lightspeed is going to start putting money into growing vegetables. He explains his approach using mobile services as an example. In the US and Europe, the market isn’t growing much, so carriers are looking for value-added services for high-paying customers. In poorer countries, revenue per subscriber is much lower, but their numbers are exploding — making investment more of an infrastructure bet.

The fund will keep its traditional focus on IT, including the internet, enterprise software, mobile services and the semiconductor industry. And like many of its top-tier peers, Lightspeed will probably be up the percentage of its money that it puts towards cleantech from the smaller amount it has invested to date.

There has been no shortage of attention to market research in the past few years. Established business like Nielsen and J.D. Power have struggled to encompass the Internet and use its information to give their clients a better idea of how new products are seen by consumers. Where they’ve fallen short, multiple startups have bloomed to do a better job.

The innovation has led to plenty of acquisitions: Umbria, Buzzmetrics, Telephia, Audience Analytics and others have all made exits for their investors. But according to Biz360, which just took a fresh $10 million round, the market for market research is still seriously lacking in creativity.

Biz360’s current offering is a media tracking tool called Media Insights. Any time someone like me writes about, say, a digital camera, Biz360’s automated process picks it up and does some analysis on the thrust of the article: Did I like or hate the camera, and why? The data is then returned to the business customer that produces the camera. But what corporations choose to do when given that data is changing, says CEO Brad Brodigan.

“Two years ago, people were buying media analysis for defensive purposes — they wanted to know when people were saying bad things,” says Brodigan. But now companies want to know how to compete better. “What’s driving someone to buy one digital camera over another, or one car over another? There’s been a big shift from defense to offensive tools,” he says.

That sort of information is mostly revealed by customer opinions, of course, which means Biz360 — and its competitors — will have to move toward much more analysis of social media and customer opinion on websites like Amazon.com. Brodigan admits that some companies already do that, but says Biz360 will provide a superior product by merging its new findings with its existing media research.

And, in any case, the trick is in the analysis, not simply collecting the data. There’s no shortage of information on the Internet, but just like search engines, market research startups have to find ways to understand that information, and give it to their clients in a processed, easy-to-understand format. The aim is not just to see whether people like your camera, but specifically which features and characteristics they like and dislike.

Startups are hard at work to bring that level of detail to market research. One example is Networked Insights, which tags reviews and conversations to figure out, for instance, what percentage of customers really care about the camera’s 24X zoom. Another company is BuzzLogic, which recently acquired the Firefox add-on BlogRovR, to give it better data. But as far as the old guard of market research, Brodigan says he doesn’t think there are any that have a strong product. And down the line, that will likely mean another round of acquisitions by companies struggling to catch up.

The $10 million funding was led by Foundation Capital, and partner Bill Elmore joined the board. Previous investors Granite Ventures and Scale Venture Partners also participated. It’s the second full round of funding for Biz360, but it hasn’t disclosed the total amount of the first round. The company is based in San Mateo, Calif.

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Rearden Commerce, a Silicon Valley company that wants to become your personal concierge everywhere, including on your mobile phone, has raised $100 million in funding from some financial powerhouses.

So far, the company has worked for years on a web-based personal assistant service, which lets you do everything from book travel arrangements to manage your calendar. But the company recently demoed its coming mobile service to VentureBeat. It is preparing for a major offensive in mobile, to be announced at the end of this month.

Investors include JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Oak Investment Partners and Foundation Capital. The latter three has also pumped in an earlier $100 million round. The company is now valued at more than $500 million, according to an anonymous source cited in a separate Dow Jones article (no link).

It comes at a time when there’s a big race on among companies to be able to offer advertisers a compelling mobile platform to reach consumers. Rearden says it can offer advertisers detailed information, about where people are located at any given time, what their travel plans are and all sorts of other information about them.

It is growing quickly. It has 300 employees, and wants to have 500 by the end of this year.

The Foster City, Calif.-based Rearden Commerce was created by Patrick Grady, who has worked on this since 1999, and who was previously an investor.

Notably, it also comes at a time when fast-growing social networks like Facebook are developing more robust mobile versions, which also contain useful applications that might compete with Rearden. However, Rearden says its product is more robust for transactions.

Indeed, the company’s user-friendly personal assistant helps you manage a variety of tasks, including dining, managing your address book and more. But it has focused on business-to-business applications, making sure transactions can be conducted securely. But the company will eventually deliver the Rearden Personal Assistant for consumers. The company also plans to rapidly scale its on-demand platform, to allow new merchants and third-party applications providers to be integrated into its concierge service. A demo of the company’s initial technology is here.

The downside, however, is that its platform isn’t completely open. If you prefer Yelp as a restaurant review service, for example, you can’t sub it instead of Rearden’s default service, Zagat. While the service will open up more going forward, executives aren’t saying when that will happen.

The mobile version isn’t yet public, but the demo we saw shows that the mobile features use some of the cooler features of Yahoo Go, such as the ability to scroll through your services, carousel-like, via a menu on the left-hand side of your phone.

Rearden Commerce has also inked strategic partnerships with American Express and JPMorgan Chase. In the past 18 months, Rearden Commerce has added more than 1,700 new corporate customers representing more than one million contracted users. The customers include Fortune 500 companies such as ConAgra Foods and Thomson as well as small enterprises C-COR, Diagnostic Health, and Symplified Technologies.

It’s worth noting that the company raised the big pile of cash during a weak environment for start-ups to raise venture capital.

The company came out secrecy in 2005. Its Rearden Personal Assistant helps users find and book the range of services they need based on company policies, their personal preferences, location and the context of what they’re doing.

Just like a seasoned executive assistant, the Rearden Personal Assistant automatically inserts details into the user’s calendar and proactively notifies them of schedule changes via phone, email or text message — whether they’re in the office or on the road. Chase said it plans to use the assistants as the basis for a program to manage a new credit-card service for millions of consumers.

The company is not yet profitable but says it has growing revenue streams from some 137,000 merchants that are hoping to gain distribution through the assistant.

With oil past $120 a barrel and possibly headed to $200, cellulosic ethanol companies are looking like a smarter investment choice every day. Following the increase of Range Fuels’ second funding to $166 million, its competitor Mascoma has pulled the wraps off an $81 million funding of its own, with $10 million coming a major oil and gas producer, Marathon Oil Corporation.

Range, Mascoma, Coskata and others are all racing to raise huge amounts in an attempt to bring the world’s first full-scale cellulosic plant online. The stakes are high: If the process proves to be cheap enough, investors will be eager to pour money into new plants. On the other hand, waiting to see if competitors fail won’t be particularly helpful — each company has its own proprietary process.

Mascoma will begin production this year at a demonstration plant in Rome, New York, but is also planning facilities in Michigan and Tennessee. By comparison, its two largest competitors will build a single, big plant each, a bet that could presumably result in a more spectacular success, or failure.

Backing each company is a network of high-profile investors, some of whom overlap. General Motors has investments in both Coskata and Mascoma. Morgan Stanley is with Range Fuels, which also counts Khosla Ventures as an investor — and Khosla has invested in Mascoma, as well. Taking venture fundings and government grants together, Range Fuels is the most heavily funded, Mascoma coming second with just over $200 million now, and Coskata third.

It’s possibility none of the three emerge with a competitively priced product — something that also hinges on whether oil prices continue to climb, or fall back to somewhat saner levels. If all three find their methods too expensive, there is still a constellation of smaller cellulosic startups waiting for their own turn in the spotlight, like Zeachem.

Other investors in the round included Khosla, Flagship Ventures, Atlas Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Pinnacle Ventures and Vantage Point Venture Partners. Out of the total amount, $20 million was venture debt provided by Pinnacle.

It’s pretty rare that venture capitalists will bet on a company that shows a hint of impropriety. Yet happens occasionally, for companies that don’t push the envelope too far.

In March, for instance, soft-porn site Zivity got $7 million from two prominent firms. The latest is PurePlay, a poker and proto-gambling site that today announces $15 million in funding from Bay Partners and prominent investors including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel and Owen Van Natta.

PurePlay doesn’t do much to distinguish itself in terms of game play: Like Yahoo Games and many other sites, it uses standard poker variants like Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hi-Lo.

What distinguishes the site is that you can actually play for, and win, money in your poker games. That makes it almost unique in the aftermath of recent legislation. Recent laws like the Unlawful Interent Gambling Act, passed in 2005 to limit online gambling, drove the betting sections of huge poker sites like PartyPoker.com out of the United States.

That initial description makes it sound like PurePlay was started to capitalize off the UIGEA. The law has been murky, and so open to infringement. Congress stopped short of defining it clearly in the 2006 law, directing the federal government instead to enforce state laws restricting such activities.

But the site was planned out and started well in advance of those laws, says CEO Jason Kellerman. The trick to PurePlay is that it works off a subscription model, with users paying set monthly fees to play, but gaining the potential to win large sums if they’re good enough to win tournaments.

That general scheme also applies to other sites, like skill-gaming portal King.com, but PurePlay caters exclusively to poker players. And the market is huge: 50 million players, of whom 40 million don’t gamble for money anyway, according to Kellerman.

For that 80 percent of the group who apparently don’t want to pay, though, there’s a hidden motivation to shell out for a subscription fee. In free games, bad play reigns — when the money is entirely virtual, players have no motivation to do well, and make stupid moves that detract from the game. With a subscription fee, players are simultaneously assured that any losses will be small, while also given a better standard of gameplay.

Of that sizable pool of gamers, PurePlay has captured about a million people. It doesn’t disclose how many are paying, but some extrapolation is possible. The company says it pays out over $125,000 each month in prizes. Subscriptions are $20 a month, so if PurePlay gives back 25 percent of its subscription fees, it has around 25,000 paying subscribers; if it gives back 50 percent, then only 12,500 subscribers, and so forth.

For the (likely) vast majority who still prefer to play for free, PurePlay runs its own ad business, which Kellerman says does quite well, generating “hundreds and hundreds of millions” of ad impressions each month. In addition, he says, user growth has been strong, with adoption rates by new visitors “fantastic.”

So if the online poker business can still be so profitable, why isn’t everyone and their brother jumping in? For starters, Kellerman says, the business of growing a poker portal isn’t easy. “It turns out the infrastructure is pretty expensive,” he told me, noting that the majority of initial investment went toward scaling up to meet demand.

Now the “vast majority” of the company’s money is pushed back into advertising. Kellerman, as well as other members of the executive team, have backgrounds in search engine optimization, meaning they pour most of their effort into low-CPA schemes like Google ads.

Of the $15 million invested into PurePlay, the company isn’t disclosing how much went into each round. It’s based in San Francisco.

A few months ago, VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall highlighted the various players in the gesture recognition technology space, speculating that “one day, very soon, you’ll be able to control an avatar or character on a screen with a mere gesture of your hands or body.”

That day is here, says Prime Sense CEO Inon Beracha. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company believes it will be the “Intel inside” for the 3D peripheral world, and with a new $20.4 million second round of funding, it may have the cash to make its vision happen.

Prime Sense’s product is a device which allows a computer to perceive the world in 3D and derive an understanding of the world based on sight, just the way humans do, Beracha says. The device includes a pair of sensors — which “see” a user — and a digital “brain” that understands movement.

The device is plug-and-play, but won’t be sold on its own. Rather, it will be packaged with other companies’ products.

“[The product is] like you’re wearing a suit with tens of thousands of Wiis on your body,” said Beracha, who in 2000 helped take Ceragon Networks, a provider of high-capacity Ethernet wireless solutions that he co-founded, public on Nasdaq,

Prime Sense — whose product was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show in February — has signed many “big names” not only in the gaming industry, but across the board in consumer electronics as well.

Compared with competing technologies, Prime Sense is superior in terms of both price and functionality, according to Beracha. “We are doing 3D capturing,” he says. “The competition focuses on ‘time of light’ technology — flashing a very strong IR light and measuring their reflection— and it requires quite expensive components including a high speed shutter, which is very expensive.”

Those competitors, profiled here, include Softkinetic, XTR, Oblong Industries, 3DV systems, and GestureTek.

Although Beracha sees the Nintendo Wii as a competitor, he claims Prime Sense’s technology is better and cheaper, saying that the electronics carrying their product will cost less than Nintendo’s Wii.

“Since the mouse was introduced, the complexity of consumer devices has evolved dramatically. In comparison, user interfaces have remained under-developed. Prime Sense’s technology propels user interfaces straight into the future,” Maizels said.

Prime Sense has kept most of its work secret, although a meeting with Beracha several months ago left VentureBeat’s Chris Morrison impressed with the technology. But although the company presented at CES, it has remained relatively quiet. Beracha said that the biggest announcements will come from its partners.

Although Primse Sense seems positioned to do well in its own space, there are other technologies on the horizon. Several companies are lining up to create a cheap competitor to the Wii controller. There’s also mind-reading technology from the likes of Emotiv and Neurosky.

Prime Sense previously received $9 million in a previous round of funding from two of Israel’s leading VCs, Genesis Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. A new investor, Canaan Partners, led the current round.

Sidewalks used to be so much nicer, before the Segway Personal Transporter started hitting the streets. Remember being able to walk peacefully along, happy on the two legs God gave us? Then Dean Kamen brought us the Segway, and suddenly you couldn’t step outside without one whizzing by. Everyone and their neighbor bought one, making Kamen and his investors rich –

Whoops, sorry, wrong future. In retrospect, it seems at least a little silly that the Segway got as much hype as it did back in late 2001 and 2002, to the point of top Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr saying that Segway would be the fastest outfit in history to reach $1 billion in sales. Yet the firm has also survived thus far, and appears to be expanding the $10 million third round of funding we reported in January, according to a filing dug up by VentureWire.

Segway’s blessing and curse is its oddball design. It’s packed with electronics and gyroscopes that keep the vehicle balanced and make rolling around at the pace of a running human effortless. Unfortunately, aside from being ridiculous looking, Segways are also expensive, a combination that has sent most potential consumers buyers packing to alternatives like Edge scooters. Nobody except the company knows how many have been bought for recreational use, but the fan club has long since disbanded, and in most places, just spotting one makes for a red-letter day.

What has saved Segway, at least so far, is its business customers. Police departments and security love to use Segways for what were previously onerous foot patrols. Warehousing businesses and golf clubs have bought them for employee and visitor use. Google, predictably enough, offers them as a perk to employees. Other uses abound — anywhere walking, biking or driving is impractical, a Segway can likely fit in.

What’s interesting about the reported funding is that one of the new investors is the Masdar Clean Tech Fund, an arm of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative. While that could just be a venture investment, it’s possible it was more of a strategic funding — after all, Abu Dhabi will need to figure out some zero-emissions transportation options for its promised zero-emissions city.

If Segway is selling worldwide, especially to other small cities that need a local transportation option, the company could get recoup its investments, which have now reached almost $150 million of venture capital and $100 million in development costs. And though the fan club may be dead, Segway is still reaching for a consumer base, with its recently launched Segway Social network. There’s also the strong likelihood that the company will roll out other transporter designs in the future.

Backers on the round, which VentureWire says is $35 million total with a recent tranche of $9.5 million, include Kleiner Perkins, CSFB Private Equity, the Masdar fund, buyout firm Duff, Ackerman & Goodrich, and others.

[Photo credit: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten; Flickr]

World Golf Tour, a company that uses Flash technology to make a realistic game for golfers, has raised a second round of financing in the double-digit millions of dollars.

The San Francisco company, which I raved about a year ago when I first tried it out, announced the funding at the VentureBeat party last night. The company isn’t disclosing the exact size of the round.

It’s now moving in that inevitable direction — to become a social network. You’ll soon be able to invite others to play with you, and chat live while on the course.

There are still questions about whether the free game can pull in the users and revenues to become a blockbuster hit, but one thing’s clear: The company is keeping quality high. It uses helicopters to take high-definition footage of real golf courses. Its software uses physics to calculate the mix of your actions, factoring in the club you pick, wind direction, the timing of your swing and even the surface of the grass. Its debut course is the Bali Hai in Las Vegas.

It doesn’t have much of competition at this level of game — and by this, I mean the attention to the physics and details of golf, and its online Flash-based graphics delivery. That may be why its taking its time. It has been in closed testing since last year, but it opens to the public in July with a new test version.

Then, you’ll be able to play a full round at the Bali Hai course, and also at Kiawah Island Golf Resort (in real life located in Charleston, S.C.).

The company will add the ability to chip and putt — not just drive. The company says more than 500,000 people in 150 countries have already played the basic demo on the site, and that the average visit is 20 minutes.

Venture capital firm Panorama Capital led the round, which included participation from Battery Ventures.

CEO YuChiang Cheng said the company will make money from sponsors, including PGA.com, TaylorMade and adidas Golf — by letting them showcase products within the experience. The site will give real-world info about resorts in the game, and provide access to tee time reservation systems and resort booking.

Cellulosic ethanol producer Range Fuels has heaped more than $50 million extra onto a $100 million round we reported two months ago, picking up the support of Passport Capital, Morgan Stanley Capital Group and others.

While the company originally planned to keep the round to $100 million, it appears to have received intense interest in its project. While the round was at first over-subscribed to $130 million, according to Ethanol Producer Magazine, Range has now taken a total of $158 million, according to a regulatory filing obtained by VentureBeat. The cap on the round is currently $166 million.

The additional funding should give Range the edge it needs to speed ahead in the race to open the world’s first full-scale cellulosic ethanol refinery in Soperton, Georgia, which broke ground last November. At 100 million gallons per year of capacity, the plant will be larger than many existing facilities that make ethanol from corn. Importantly, it has trees from the surrounding forests on-hand for use, rather than counting on next-generation feedstocks like switchgrass that have yet to be planted at scale.

Size is important for Range, because the thermo-chemical process the company uses works better at large scale. Yet even with its size advantage, a number of onlookers have speculated that the company may suffer from the pitfalls of being first to try out a complex process. Just breaking down woody fibers into a product isn’t good enough — Range’s ethanol must also be cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, albeit with the help of subsidies.

Its investors either don’t have the same expectation, or have been caught up in the drama of (maybe) leading a (possible) revolution.

Range’s competition for the distinction of being first is from two companies. One, Coskata, has a partnership with a plant construction company and plans for a 40 million gallon per year plant. The other, Mascoma, took on $50 million more in February and just today announced a partnership with General Motors, which also backs Coskata.

The round was led by Passport, with participation from a passel of others: PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, Khosla Ventures, Blue Mountain Venture Capital, Leaf Clean Energy, Pacific Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, and possibly some unlisted investors.

Here’s the latest action:

Kleiner Perkins preparing “big news” — Venerable venture fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has “big news” that it will be sharing tomorrow morning, we hear. We’ll be covering it first thing. One possibly related item is the recent registering of the firm’s 13th fund, found in a filing dug up by peHUB. The firm’s last raise was completed in February 2006, for $600 million. Data from Thomson Financial suggests the firm has invested a lot of that, or at least $556 in 107 startups over the past two years — though that does not include unannounced “stealth” deals.

Hewlett-Packard invents artificial intelligence circuit — Researchers at HP have come up with a circuit element for memory chips that will dramatically lower the power required and allow a range of values outside of binary code (zeros and ones), according to the New York Times. The device, a “memristor”, could revolutionize mobile devices, as well as easing the development of artificial intelligence functions like understanding speech.

Sims Online / EA-Land virtual world shutting down — EA-Land, the virtual world based off the popular Sims gaming franchise, will close its doors in two months. While Electronic Arts phrases the issue rather delicately, saying only “The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end,” it’s fairly obvious that they wouldn’t be closing the business if it were making money. And if a hot property like the Sims can’t succeed as a virtual world, other game developers should take note.

Generation Investment Management closes $683M cleantech fund – Headed by the infamous (and frighteningly named) duo of Al Gore and David Blood, Generation Investment Management is a London-based investor in both private and public cleantech companies. The new fund will invest in sectors including renewable energy, building efficiency, cleaner fossil energy (possibly meaning clean coal), sustainable agriculture and carbon markets, with an average investment size of $30 million. More details at the Financial Times. Gore, it should be noted, is also a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

Courts reject RIAA “making available” anti-piracy argument — A legal tactic used by the Recording Industry Association of America has been slapped down by a Federal judge, according to CNET. The RIAA’s argument was that simply making copyrighted files available over sharing networks constituted breaking the law, even if they were never downloaded by other users.

Radiohead won’t repeat free music experiment – A much-hailed experiment by Radiohead involving the public release of a new album on the Internet for optional donations by downloaders won’t be repeated, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The band still hasn’t said whether it considered the release a success. Radiohead is also working with MTV to highlight child slavery and sex trafficking, saying the opportunity is about “exploiting a situation while you have the chance.” Interesting wording…

Miasole just can’t get a break — Miasole, a thin-film solar cell maker that has raised a massive amount of cash, has run into quite a few problems over the last year, including delayed production, employee defections and disappointing cell performance. The latest blow: The loss of a $9 million contract from Dow Chemical, according to CNET. The money will go to a rival thin-film maker, Global Solar.