The lawsuits are piling up for electric car startup Fisker Automotive — here’s the third this month, this time from design and communication firm Ignited over an alleged unpaid bill of $535K. Read more »
Fisker’s landlord has filed a suit that says the electric car company has to pay its April rent or evacuate its headquarters. The company seems to be getting ever closer to bankruptcy. Read more »
According to sources electric car startup Fisker Automotive is laying off most of its staff and is announcing that to employees today. Read more »
MuleSoft wants to push its Anypoint Platform as the Switzerland of application integration,and now it has $37 million to promote that vision. Read more »
Solar startup Alta Devices says its achieved a new efficiency for its solar cells developed for mobile gadget makers. In a difficult year solar companies are heads down focused on boosting the efficiency of solar cells. Read more »
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 »
One of the most aggressive cleantech investors, VantagePoint Capital Partners, has stopped raising its more recent billion dollar cleantech fund. Why? Lack of interest from limited partners, the investors that put money into VC funds. And that’s been an ongoing trend. Read more »
A new startup from the founder of The Climate Corporation is looking to use driving data to remake the stodgy car insurance sector and is launching in Oregon on Wednesday. Read more »
BloomReach, which offers a big data parsing service that etailers can use to juice their web sites, netted $25 million in new funding which it will use to boost both sales and marketing and research and development efforts. Read more »
Here’s five ways that next-generation solar technologies can survive and even thrive in the difficult solar manufacturing market. Read more »
GoodGuide, a startup with a ranking system for consumer products based on environmental, health, and social data, has been acquired by a business division of Underwriters Laboratories. Read more »
What’s new with venture-backed solar thin film maker HelioVolt? The company has stayed fairly quiet since a big funding announcement last fall and is taking part in a small project in its hometown of Austin, Texas. Read more »
While some venture capitalists are moving away from funding cleantech startups, NEA — one of the oldest and most established VC firms out there — plans to stay in energy tech investing for the long haul and will continue to invest in new energy innovators. Read more »
Proving that the venture model is working for at least a few select brand name venture capitalists, NEA announced on Wednesday that it’s closed a massive $2.6 billion new fund. The firm describes the fund as “one of the largest venture funds ever raised.” Read more »
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 »
Looks like Groupon will go public on Friday morning at $20 per share, giving it a valuation of $12.6 billion for its online coupon business. Let’s compare it to some of the greentech startups and big energy firms and try not to get disturbed. Read more »
Startup WeatherBill has built a business around offering farmers financial protection against weather, but the underlying goal of the company has always been to help companies adapt to a changing climate, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder David Friedberg told me. Read more »
Venture capital investing in cleantech companies was up slightly in the third quarter of 2011, but still continues to focus on large follow-on rounds as investors’ more capital-intensive companies are maturing and need more capital to scale up, and in some cases, reach a commercial stage. Read more »
A startup offering Groupon-style group discounts for solar panel roof installations is now looking to connect with potential solar customers nationwide. Read more »
Will huge returns on social media investments — like Groupon, LinkedIn or Pandora — help make up for underperforming greentech investments in a venture firm’s portfolio? If so, perhaps this gives firms time — and wiggle room — to keep up their cleantech investing. Read more »
On Friday afternoon Bloom Energy touted its growth, announcing that it has quadrupled the size of its factory in Sunnyvale, Calif. to 210,000 square feet, has grown its workforce by over 70 percent in 2010, and grown by 525 percent over the past four years. Read more »
Much of the innovation around next-gen cars focuses on electric vehicles and biofuels, but there’s a massive need for tech that can make our current cars more fuel efficient. Pinnacle Engines just emerged with just such a technology and a round of VC funding. Read more »
ATX Innovation, which makes TabbedOut, an app that enables bar and restaurant patrons settle their tabs from their iPhone or Android handsets, has raised $2.05 million in funding from NEA, for a total of $2.8 million raised. Read more »
At the Bloom Energy official unveiling this morning I brought our handy dandy Flip video camera to try to catch a couple interviews and Bloom Box clips. Scott Sandell, General Partner with venture firm NEA, which is an investor in Bloom Energy, made the statement that […] Read more »
Although I’m finding the web browser on a loaner Nokia N900 to be quite good, I’m still keeping an eye on Mobile Firefox, aka: Fennec and PocketFox. The N900 should be the first device to see the a release candidate — possibly by next week — […] Read more »
