Kleiner Perkins related stories
All articles and analysis
Fisker Automotive Adds $115 MillionFisker Automotive, an Irvine, Calif.-based electric vehicle maker, has raised $115.3 million in new VC funding. Backers include A123 Systems, Ace Investments and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Lithium-ion battery maker A123 yesterday announced /61013/a123-takes-stake-in-fisker-automotive/ that it would invest $23 million, and provide power packs for a rechargeable luxury car being launched later this year (Fisker Karma). Fisker previously raised more than than $160 in VC funding, from firms like Kleiner Perkins, Eco-Drive (Capital) Partners, Palo Alto Investors and Al Ghaffara Investment Co. It also recently secured a $528 million low-cost loan from the Department of Energy, which was conditioned on the company raising additional private equity.
- ReputationDefender Adds $8.65 Million
ReputationDefender, a Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of online name-monitoring and protection services, has raised $8.65 million in Series B funding co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company previously raised $2.6 million from European Founders Fund, Maples Investments and RP/JA Investments.
- Nordic Windpower Raises $38 Million, Led by Khosla
Nordic Windpower, a Berkeley, Calif.-based maker of wind turbines, has raised $38 million in Series C funding. Khosla Ventures led the round, and was joined by New Enterprise Associates, Novus Energy Partners, I2BF Management, Pulsar Energy Capital and return backer Impax Asset Management. The company previously raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Impax, Goldman Sachs and NBT AS.
Year in Review: Time LineA look at key moments in the venture industry over the past year
- More Deals, Fewer $ In 2009 Clean Tech
Venture capitalists invested $4.85 billion in clean tech this year, according to Greentech Media -- a 36% drop from 2008, when they invested $7.6 billion. The number of deals was up slightly, though -- by six -- to 356 deals, and 2009 was still a more active year for investors than 2007. Solar power attracted the most money -- $1.4 billion -- followed by biofuels at $976 million. Smart grids, energy storage and electric cars also drew more money, as did wind, lighting and water. Water is declared to be on "venture capital radar screens" -- it attracted $130 million.
- The Decade's Top VC-Backed IPOs
Just running some IPO data, and noticed something kinda creepy (at least if you're semi-religious and/or watched lots of Headbangers Ball): There were 666 VC-backed IPOs over the past decade, which raised $66.6 billion. Not exactly a great omen for investors who are banking on an IPO rebound in the near future. Or maybe the endtimes refers to just the recent IPO market -- just 19 offerings in 2008-2009 -- which most everyone would be okay with obliterating. Or, most likely, this is just a wonderful piece of statistical symmetry. Moving on: What follows is a slideshow of the decade's ten largest VC-backed IPOs, including brief updates on where the issues currently stand. Each offering caused cork-popping at the time, but only a few retained their glory...
- CrowdStar Backer Sees Early Profits
I had an interesting conversation this week with Peter Relan, the founder of YouWeb, the shoestring-budget Silicon Valley incubator that spawned social gaming hitmaker CrowdStar. Relan, YouWeb and CrowdStar are interesting for a number of reasons. One is that Crowdstar, a social gaming startup that launched by an Armenian physics major named Suren Markosian, has gained phenomenal traction in the last couple of months. The 17-person company’s biggest hit, Happy Aquarium, a virtual fish-raising game, now has 27.5 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AllFacebook.com. Across all games, CrowdStar has just shy of 40 million monthly Facebook users.
- VCs Compete Hard For Early-Stage Science Projects
Mohr Davidow this month named four researchers -- two from Stanford and two from UC Berkeley -- as recipients of a new Innovators Award that the venture firm designed last year. Each researcher will get $50,000, which Mohr Davidow's partners are taking out of their own fees, to work for a year on a high-risk project. Researchers are picked by senior faculty at their schools and can't be tenured. "This program is designed to identify, award and accelerate the early careers of professors we think have high potential for research and commercialization," said MDV partner Erik Straser. All four winners -- assistant professors Nick Melosh and Thomas Jaramillo at Stanford, UC Berkeley assistant professor Ali Javey, and Delia Milliron, who works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- are pursuing projects that may have applications to clean tech, including new ways to capture solar energy and make buildings more energy efficient. One of last year's winners, assistant professor Yi Cui of Stanford, who specializes in nanotechnology, said he is talking to Mohr Davidow about forming a company
- Dangers Of Relying On Government For Cleantech $
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126074549073889853.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews today about the influence of government loans and grants on the clean tech industry -- it called the government "a kingmaker in one of technology's hottest sectors" and says the government has put five times as much money into clean tech this year as venture capitalists. The story also says the presence of government funds influences how much private capital a company can attract and how easy it is for a company to progress. It cites politics as a factor in government funding, telling how Fisker Automotive -- a hybrid electric car maker backed by Kleiner Perkins -- got funding from the DOE after it agreed to manufacture cars in Delaware, at a plant that GM was planning to shut down, rather than in Finland. None of this is new. Battery maker A123 Systems, which got help from politicians in Michigan -- where it will locate manufacturing -- rather than Delaware, could tell a similar tale, as I wrote