Smart window startup View raises another $60M led by Corning
Smart window startup View (formerly Soladigm) gets a new big backer in glass giant Corning. Read more »
Superstar investors give Upstart $5.9M for its first birthday
Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff and Scott Banister pony up for Series A round as Jessica Jackley and Bob Kerrey join board of startup that matches college grads with backers. Read more »
Chinese auto giant building $200M factory to make EcoMotor’s efficient engines
Five-year-old, Bill Gates and Khosla-backed, EcoMotors is finally commercializing its efficient engine technology. And it’s got a killer deal to do it: a $200 million plant being built by Chinese auto giant Zhongding Power. Read more »
Wearable design, Misfit and the age of the glanceable UI
A second generation of wearable computing is emerging that focuses on design and a so-called glanceable UI. Valley startup Misfit Wearables is leading the charge, and trying to create a new type of user experience. Read more »
Five things to learn from Khosla Ventures’ newest partner Keith Rabois
Khosla Ventures’ Keith Rabois talked about startups, dealing with the press, and the Series A crunch on Wednesday in Mountain View. Here are five pieces of wisdom from the Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur. Read more »
Mascoma finally realizes going public is not a good idea
A startup hoping to make cellulosic ethanol finally pulls its IPO plans after a year and a half. The real question is why did it ever file to go public? Read more »
Westly Group raises a $160M (gasp) cleantech fund
One of the few investors to make money from backing cleantech startups, The Westly Group has finally closed on a $160 million cleantech fund. Read more »
Next-gen biofuels making slow, slow, slow progress in 2013
Companies that are still looking to produce biofuels from plant waste (and not corn) are making slow, but steady progress on milestones in 2013. Read more »
Former Square executive Keith Rabois to join Khosla Ventures as investor
Former Square COO Keith Rabois plans to announce Tuesday morning that he’s joining Silicon Valley venture firm Khosla Ventures beginning in March as an investor. Rabois left Square after allegations of sexual harassment that surfaced in January. Read more »
For investors sticking with “cleantech,” it could be the best of times (just don’t call it cleantech)
Despite the hand-wringing over the cleantech investing cliff, it actually could be the best of times for investing in energy tech, resource management and sustainability, for investors that stick with it. Read more »
Lux Capital closes $245M third fund, remains committed to energy tech
Lux Capital has closed on its third fund, of $245 million, and remains committed to investing in energy technology, despite that many VCs have backed out of cleantech investing. Read more »
A land grab emerges over the connected thermostat
The connected thermostat is one of the hottest devices out of the Internet of Things that’s using a data connection to get smart software and to enable new types of services. It’s also getting a lot of attention from the latest Valley startups. Read more »
A quiet breakthrough in geothermal power tech
A startup backed by Google, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Paul Allen’s investment firm, called AltaRock Energy has delivered an important breakthrough for the next-generation of geothermal technology at a site in Bend, Oregon. Read more »
Has Ayasdi turned machine learning into a magic bullet?
By combining machine learning with stunning visualizations, Ayasdi thinks it has created a product that could revolutionize data analysis. Its software is the latest product that tries to make humans better at their jobs by taking away the guesswork of spotting correlations. Read more »
GigaOM’s top 10 cleantech posts of 2012
Show me — that’s the common thread in the top 10 most-trafficked GigaOM cleantech stories of 2012. Exclusive photos and videos of emerging clean power and electric car technologies lead the year. (OK, we’re not so surprised by that.) Read more »
Solar startup Stion raises $25M, but cuts costs, workers
Amidst rampant solar manufacturing bankruptcies, thin film solar startup Stion has raised a $25 million equity round, of a planned $55 million round. At the same time the company is cutting costs and laid off a small amount of workers. Read more »
Khosla and Condi Rice cozy up over emerging markets
Venture firms have a long history of partnering with high profile former politicians, to help grease the wheels of the regulatory frameworks. Khosla Ventures says it will work with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to help its startups in emerging markets. Read more »
KiOR hits milestone of making biocrude in Mississippi
Next-gen biofuel company KiOR has started up production of its biocrude at its plant in Columbus, Mississippi. It’s an important advancement for an industry that’s had major delays and setbacks. Read more »
Smart window startup Soladigm emerges from stealth as View
Soladigm is emerging from stealth after five years as View, and is now commercially selling its dynamic windows that can be tinted on demand by an iPhone app. Read more »
The internal combustion engine 2.0 emerges
A startup backed by Khosla Ventures called Transonic Combustion has raised another round of $32 million to deliver a more efficient internal combustion engine. How far away is a more efficient internal combustion 2.0? Read more »
Peter Thiel, Khosla, Bill Gates back air energy storage startup LightSail
Peter Thiel is leading a large investment into an air energy storage startup called LightSail Energy. Thiel joins Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures as investors. Compressed air energy storage tech pumps air into tanks and releases it on demand to create a sort of air battery. Read more »
A Khosla-backed big data energy startup you should know about
Are big data, analytics, and machine learning the answers to reducing the energy consumption of our homes? Yep, according to newly-emerged startup Bidgely that’s backed by Khosla Ventures. In an exclusive interview, Bidgely’s CEO gives GigaOM the details about what it’s been up to. Read more »
Blue River gets $3.1M for a weed-whacking robot
photo: Blue River Technology
Blue River Technology is a startup that raised $3.1 million to take machine learning from Silicon Valley to the farming-focused Salinas Valley. It has built a robot that identifies and then kills weeds and hopes to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture. Read more »
Bill Gates-backed Liquid Metal Battery is now . . . Ambri
Liquid Metal Battery — a promising battery startup backed by Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and oil giant Total — has changed it’s name to Ambri, a shorter and less literal word that’s a nod to Cambridge, where the company was founded. Read more »
Waste Management bets on turning trash into sugars
Finding new and profitable ways to recycle the trash it collects has guided the investment strategy of Waste Management, which recently put money into a startup that can turn some of the garbage into sugars for making plastic and other products. Read more »
Nutanix raises $33M for a new type of scale out storage
Investors continue throwing money at infrastructure companies, especially if they have a product that helps accomodate and mitigate the complexities of virtualization and scaled out computing infrastructures. Nutanix aims to solve problems in both areas, and investors are rewarding it with $33 million. Read more »
KiOR to start up next-gen biofuel plant next month
KiOR, a next-gen biofuel startup backed by Khosla Ventures, says it will turn on its first factory next month and will churn out diesel and gasoline made from biomass (plant waste, wood, etc) before the end of the year. Read more »
Exclusive: Wattpad makes it easier for authors to go mobile
Community-writing site Wattpad says over 70% of time spent on the service comes from users on tablets or smartphones. One of its most requested features is the ability to write and edit stories from mobile devices. So the company is rolling out “Create” functionality for Android. Read more at paidContent »
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Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data
In cloud and big data, the second quarter of 2012 featured several high-profile deals and product launches that could reshape the marketplace for everyone. Google and Microsoft launched Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, software-defined networking took off, and all eyes stayed fixed on the continuing promise of data analytics. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cleantech VC funding drops by a quarter in Q2
Not a bigger shocker from the Cleantech Group this morning: the amount of venture capital funding that went into cleantech startups worldwide in the second quarter of 2012 dropped by 25 percent, in terms of total dollars spent, from the prior year second quarter. Read more »
EcoMotors raises $32.5M from Khosla, Bill Gates, Braemar
EcoMotors, a startup building an efficient engine, has raised a $32.5 million Series C round led by Braemar Energy Ventures, and including previous investors Khosla Ventures and Bill Gates. Read more »
Soladigm raises $55M for smart windows
Soladigm, a startup that makes windows that can be tinted on demand, has raised another $55 million, bringing the company’s total funding to $125 million. Read more »
Khosla-backed SunBorne Energy raising $20M for Indian solar
SunBorne Energy, backed by Khosla Ventures, is looking to raise $20 million, and has closed on $5 million, according to a filing. Read more »
Khosla Ventures appears to be raising second seed fund
Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures looks to be raising a second seed fund, according to a filing. The filing doesn’t disclose a fund size, but the fund follows behind the first Khosla Ventures Seed fund, which raised $300 million and closed in 2010. Read more »
A battery breakthrough that focuses on the building blocks
If battery makers could enhance just the basic electrolyte — the guts of the battery — it could provide a major breakthrough for batteries. That’s what a year-and-a-half-old startup called Boulder Ionics is trying to do. Read more »
Khosla joins Bill Gates & Total to back Liquid Metal Battery
Liquid Metal Battery, a startup developing a battery for the power grid that already counted Bill Gates and oil giant Total as an investor, has now brought on another high profile backer: Khosla Ventures. Read more »
6 lessons Khosla Ventures learned from cleantech funding
Check out Khosla partner Samir Kaul on 6 lessons learned about cleantech funding. Read more »
NanoH20 raises $60M for clean water tech
On Monday clean water startup NanoH20 announced that it’s closed $60 million in financing from chemical giant BASF, oil refiner Total, and Valley investors Khosla Ventures, Oak Investment Partners, and CalPERS Clean Energy & Technology Fund. Read more »
KiOR: Yep, still no revenues
In case you were wondering how KiOR, the biofuel company backed by Khosla Ventures, is coming along, the firm announced its fourth quarter and full 2011 year earnings on Monday. And yep, the company is still in a pre-revenue state. Read more »
How computer models can lead to battery breakthroughs
Tapping into computer models that can simulate chemical reactions between materials could significantly speed up the pace of progress for battery innovation. Read more »
