Oil co. Terralliance finds funds despite risky business
Oil and gas exploration company Terralliance has raised an undisclosed amount of funding mostly from existing investors, despite reports that it squandered almost $300 million in capital on questionable purchases — Russian jets not least among them — before laying off more than half of its employees.
The company is not taking money from just anyone, either, naming Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Goldman Sachs and Passport Capital among its backers. It has raised $450 million… Continue Reading
Agriculture dept. earmarks $80M for Range Fuels, cellulosic ethanol
Cellulosic ethanol producer Range Fuels announced today that it landed an $80 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fund construction of a new wood-chip processing plant in Georgia, slated to open in 2010. The deal, which falls under the biofuel provisions of the much-discussed 2008 Farm Bill, is essentially a promise that the department will cover the loan if Range can’t; it also lowers the cost of the project and interest… Continue Reading
Sense Networks experiments with indexing the city
In what may be a first step toward bringing some real-time intelligence to local recommendation sites like Yelp and CitySearch, a startup called Sense Networks is today unveiling a new platform, called Citysense, that it says can create a Google-style “index” of places in a city based on where people are going.
Think of people as being a bit like members of nomadic tribes, and you’ll be on the track to understanding what Sense wants to… Continue Reading
Range Fuels ups earlier round to $166M, racing against Mascoma and Coskata
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… Continue Reading
HelioVolt raises $101M — biggest solar investment yet?
HelioVolt, one of about ten companies racing to produce solar power cells based new cheaper material than traditional silicon, has raised $24 million more in financing for a its second round.
This brings the Austin, Texas’ company’s total second round to a huge $101 million, making it the largest clean-tech venture capital financing on record — or at least that we’re aware of. The company raised $77 million in August.
The funding comes at a time when… Continue Reading