Saturday, June 11, 2005

One More Tonight: Nanosolar Gets A $20M Infusion

I'm surprised Monkeysign, who usually picks up on this stuff first, didn't beat me to the punch on this one, but thanks -- indirectly -- to Odograph for forwarding this San Jose Mercury-News story about Nanosolar getting yet another round of capital funding, this time to the tune of $20M, from an investor group led by Mohr, Davidow Ventures. A competitor, Miasolé, got $16M from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Miasolé believes they will have production next month. These companies use nontraditional products to make solar cells, but even conventional silicon-based cells are hot sellers at the moment:
Large solar cell wholesalers are struggling to ensure supply of solar cell modules, with BP Solar saying it is 70 megawatts short -- the equivalent of about $250 million in revenue. ``That's the magnitude of the demand issue we're looking at,'' Pearce says.