Continuing its run of massive alternative-energy investments, Mountain View, CA-based Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) said in a blog post today that it has invested roughly $100 million in the Shepherds Flat wind farm project under construction south of the Columbia River near Arlington, OR. Developer Caithness Energy, which is headquartered in New York, hopes the facility will produce 845 megawatts of electricity once it’s completed in 2012. Southern California Edison has already contracted to buy the electricity. Google recently invested $168 million in BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar concentrator project in California’s Mojave Desert, bringing its total clean energy investments to more than $350 million. The company said the Shepherds Flat project “is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology…This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities.”

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

A March 11 regulatory filing shows that San Jose, CA-based flexible photovoltaic maker Solopower has collected an additional $13.5 million in an apparent extension of its $51.6 million January Series E financing round. Solopower’s past backers include Hudson Clean Energy Partners. In February the company received a conditional $197 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build a photovoltaics manufacturing plant in Wilsonville, OR.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, MA-based developer of security and network management software, has agreed to be acquired by Tektronix Communications, the Texas-based firm now owned by tech conglomerate Danaher (NYSE: DHR). Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but it is expected to close next month. Arbor Networks was founded in 2000 by University of Michigan professor Farnam Jahanian and U-M PhD grad Rob Malan. It makes security software primarily for Internet service providers and data centers. The company has a growing presence in Ann Arbor, MI. Meanwhile, Tektronix Communications is affiliated with Tektronix, the Oregon tech institution that was bought by Danaher in 2007 for $2.85 billion. Back in 2004, Tektronix had acquired Texas-based Inet Technologies as its entry into networking software.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Pivotal Leaders, a new Portland, OR-based network of cleantech business leaders, announced this week its 32 top leaders for 2010. They were nominated by the community and selected by their peers, from a pool of more than 600 nominations, as people most likely to lead successful Northwest clean technology companies in the next three to five years. The Pivotal Leaders hail from companies including McKinstry, Microsoft, Pixelworks, PV Powered, EnerG2, Blue Marble Energy, V2Green, GlobalSmartEnergy, and EnergySavvy, and from organizations such as Clean Edge, Climate Solutions, and the Oregon State Legislature. Pivotal Leaders will hold a kick-off event in Seattle in July.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

This is not good. Less than a month after proclaiming that venture funding may have stabilized at a lower but more sustainable level, I have to report that funding for Washington-based companies in March plunged to $21.3 million in just three deals. That’s significantly down from $53.5 million in 10 deals in February, and $57 million in eight deals the month before that. March looked a lot like December 2009, when Washington companies saw just four deals amounting to $22 million.

These stats were compiled by our partner, the private company intelligence platform CB Insights. Granted, the list doesn’t include financings under $1 million, and it excludes other Northwest geographies like Oregon, where we’ve seen a lot of activity lately.

But there’s no mistaking some signs for concern. The only sizable Series A round was $9.8 million from Ignition Partners, Benchmark Capital, and General Catalyst Partners for a stealthy Seattle online travel startup (NewTravelco) founded by former Expedia execs Rich Barton, Greg Slyngstad, Sunil Shah, and Simon Breakwell. And they’re not even talking yet.

Maybe it’s the calm before the storm, but this low level of funding activity took me by surprise, especially given the excitement in the Seattle entrepreneurial community around things like the TechStars startup program coming to town, the NWEN First Look Forum happening next week, and the University of Washington business plan competition just around the corner. Let’s see if the venture deals pick up, together with the busy event schedule around Seattle in the next month.

Here is the very short recap of March 2010 venture deals (of more than $1 million) in Washington state:

.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

If you watched last night’s NCAA men’s basketball championship game on the Web, or followed any of Major League Baseball’s opening day action via video on your mobile phone, then you have an idea of the market that Elemental Technologies is trying to tap.

Elemental, a Portland, OR-based video processing startup, is announcing today its most ambitious product to date: a real-time video encoding system that will let broadcasters, media companies, and cable networks stream live video to any type of device across any network. It could be a significant step toward the company’s ultimate goal of letting consumers watch video on any device. That means watching live events as the action is happening with a smooth and seamless experience, instead of getting a jittery picture or waiting for the video to load.

The new product is based on Elemental’s core approach of using off-the-shelf graphics processing units (GPUs) and smart software to do video processing much more efficiently and cheaply than conventional systems that use central processing units or specialized hardware. The difference between this and its two previous video products—a post-production system and an on-demand server—is that “Elemental Live” works in real-time as the video is being sent from a camera to the viewer’s device. The company has filed five patent applications on its technology.

“We spent a ton of time building an interface that’s really easy for anyone to use,” says Sam Blackman, the CEO and co-founder of Elemental. “The product line is fleshed out now.”

Of course, the Major League Baseballs, Turner Broadcasting Systems, and NBCs of the world already have streaming video systems in place. But they don’t always work that well, and they tend to be costly. So the question is whether Elemental can deliver much better live-video performance, such that it immediately drives up traffic and advertising revenues for these big networks. One promising sign: CBS Sports has reported that its ad revenues from streaming video are increasing without … Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

It was a fairly quiet week for deals in the Northwest, as the event season is kicking into high gear. But there was a huge cleantech acquisition, and some notable deals in biotech, software, and mobile.

—Microsoft and Ford Motor Co. are teaming up to implement online energy management software on electric vehicles. Ford is the first automaker to say it will use Microsoft’s Hohm software to help electric vehicle owners figure out the best times to charge up, starting with its Focus Electric next year.

—Seattle-based Sage Bionetworks, the nonprofit collaborative that’s spurring an open-source movement in biology, has formed a multi-year collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Merck, as Luke reported. Financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but it will enable Sage to hire some more staff. Data from the collaboration will be available exclusively to Merck until one year after the collaboration ends, when all the data will get poured into the public domain.

—Luke broke the news that Seattle-based Adaptive TCR’s had raised $4.5 million in angel funding to develop new tools for studying the adaptive immune system. Adaptive TCR is a spinoff from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The company’s scientific advisory board includes distinguished researchers from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Benaroya Research Institute, and the University of Washington.

—Erin caught us up on five Northwest startup financings from last month that you probably hadn’t heard of. These are our monthly “under the radar” deals (less than $1 million), and February had some interesting activity in wireless (Eden Rock Communications), Internet, cleantech, and biotech.

—The week’s biggest deal came from Oregon: Bend, OR-based PV Powered has been acquired by Colorado-based Advanced Energy Industries for up to $90 million in cash, stock, and earn-out pay. PV Powered makes solar energy components called inverters that convert the electricity from solar cells into a form that homes and businesses can use. Cleantech experts say the deal is a very good sign for the mergers and acquisitions market.

—Seattle-based Voyager Capital participated in a $3 million follow-on financing for Placecast (also known as 1020), a San Francisco-based mobile marketing company. Other existing investors Quatrex Capital and Onset Ventures also participated in the funding, which is an add-on to a $5 million Series B round last November. Placecast is a location-based marketing platform for publishers and advertisers.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

[Updated 4:00 pm, 3/25/10. See below.] Bend, OR-based PV Powered, a maker of solar energy components, announced yesterday it is being acquired by Advanced Energy Industries of Fort Collins, CO. The deal will be worth as much as $90 million—$50 million upfront ($35 million in cash and $15 million in Advanced Energy’s common stock), and up to $40 million in earn-out pay based on PV Powered’s 2010 sales.

The acquisition shows how solving a relatively small but crucial piece of the solar energy puzzle can pay off in spades, even in a difficult economy. PV Powered makes solar power inverters, which are electronic components that help convert the DC electricity output of solar cells into AC current that homes and businesses can use.

At least one cleantech industry observer thinks the acquisition—and more specifically, its size—signifies a resurgence of the mergers and acquisitions market in alternative energy. Michael Butler, the CEO and co-founder of Seattle-based Cascadia Capital, calls the Oregon company’s sale a “big deal” at a “huge price.”

“It tells me that M&A premiums are coming back,” Butler says in an e-mail. “Traditionally, balance of systems companies such as inverter companies trade at 1x revenue. This is more than 1x revenue. We are seeing M&A coming back big time in the alt energy /clean tech markets. This is another data point… and a good one.”

Gregg Semler, co-founder and managing director of Portland, OR-based Pivotal Investments, seems to agree. “Corporates have cash and a growing need to differentiate themselves with proprietary technology that can build their leadership in renewable energy,” he says. “This acquisition by Advanced Energy shows the increasing demand for growing companies that have innovative technologies focused on solar energy. I think we will see lots more this year.” [This paragraph was added for further analysis---Eds.]

PV Powered, founded in 2003, said it will operate under its current management team as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advanced Energy Industries, and will continue to sell its inverters out of Bend. The company has about 90 employees and made $21 million in revenue in 2009.

In a statement, PV Powered CEO Gregg Patterson said his employees are “excited” to join Advanced Energy Industries, and implied the cultural fit is a good one. “Both organizations share a common mission to deliver the innovations our customers are asking for in efficiency, reliability and uptime that will maximize the 20+ year financial returns of solar projects,” he said.

Advanced Energy Industries (NASDAQ GM: AEIS) says it expects PV Powered to contribute $40 to $50 million in revenues this year, the majority of which will come from businesses, not residences. Advanced Energy makes a wide range of solar components, including inverters, but also other power systems and thin-film semiconductor technologies for large solar power plants.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

In the week since Google’s acquisition of Picnik, the Northwest deals scene came back to earth a little bit. But there was a decent amount of activity in software, Internet, mobile, and cleantech, much of it from Oregon-based companies.

—Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology received a five-year, $6 million gift from a venture capitalist in California who wishes to remain anonymous, as Luke reported. The cash will be used to help the Institute move to a new facility that’s twice as large as its current location, recruit new faculty, and support research on personalized medicine, biofuels, and global health.

—DocVerse, the collaborative-document software startup that was founded in Seattle but moved to San Francisco in 2008, was bought by Google for an undisclosed price. The startup’s technology might help Google Docs work (or compete) better with Microsoft Office. DocVerse was started in 2007 by former Microsofties and MIT alums Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui.

—Portland, OR-based DeltaPoint won $170,000 in angel investment capital at an annual Oregon Entrepreneurs Network startup competition. The company is developing diagnostic software that performs “virtual biopsies” on suspected cancers.

—Medford, OR-based UpWind Solutions raised $10 million in Series B funding, according to an SEC filing. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the form lists Michael Linse of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mark Lewis of MissionPoint Capital as directors of the company. UpWind provides operations and maintenance services for utility-scale wind projects

—Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners participated in a $23 million growth equity round for San Francisco-based Cloudmark, a mobile-messaging security firm. The round was led by Summit Partners and joined by Nokia Growth Partners, both new investors.

—Scott Kveton, the co-founder and CEO of Portland-based mobile startup Urban Airship talked about his company’s recent funding round from True Ventures and Founder’s Co-op. But even more interesting was his account of his team’s guerrilla marketing tactics (involving donuts and danishes) outside the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference last summer, which helped Urban Airship connect with customers early on.

—Portland-based ShopIgniter scored $3 million in Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group in Seattle. Former Madrona venture partner Matt Compton has become ShopIgniter’s CEO, and Madrona co-founder and managing director Tom Alberg has joined the company’s board. ShopIgniter started in 2008 and is looking to meld the worlds of commerce and social media in a new way.

—Seattle-based Vulcan Capital, Paul Allen’s venture outfit, participated in a $15 million Series E round for Audience, a Mountain View, CA-based voice processing semiconductor firm. New Enterprise Associates, Tallwood Venture Capital, and VentureTech Alliance also participated in the funding. The round follows another infusion of $15 million about a year ago.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Portland, OR-based DeltaPoint has won $170,000 in the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network’s angel investment competition today. DeltaPoint is developing diagnostic software that performs “virtual biopsies” on suspected cancers, starting with breast cancer. The company was a finalist in the OEN event’s “launch stage” category. Portland-based Enjoy Life, which says it is the producer of the first authentic, premium Sangria in the U.S., took home $25,000 as the winner of the “seed stage” category.

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

Medford, OR-based UpWind Solutions, a provider of operations and maintenance services for utility-scale wind projects, has raised $10 million out of a $29 million round of Series B preferred stock, according to a regulatory filing. The investors weren’t disclosed, but the SEC form lists Michael Linse of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mark Lewis of MissionPoint Capital as directors of the firm. UpWind is led by president and founder Bo Thisted. The company works with wind energy project developers and owners over the lifetime of their turbines or wind farms.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

S4 Energy Solutions, a joint venture by Houston, TX-based Waste Management (NYSE: WM) and Bend, OR-based InEnTec, said today it plans to build a waste-to-fuel facility at a landfill in Arlington, OR. The plan is for the plasma gasification plant to convert municipal solid waste into clean fuels and renewable energy. Construction is slated to begin early this summer, creating up to 28 jobs; the facility, once operational (around the end of 2010) will employ up to 16 permanent workers. S4 Energy Solutions was formed in May 2009 and is led by CEO Jeff Surma.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Portland, OR-based ShopIgniter, a startup working to unify the worlds of e-commerce and social media, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group. As part of the deal, former Madrona venture partner Matt Compton has joined ShopIgniter as CEO.

ShopIgniter was founded in 2008 by Alan Wizemann, Dan Warner, and Jason Glover. Their idea was to greatly extend online retail capabilities by offering a customizable e-commerce software platform. By adding some social-media features, the company found that “customers could create online stores that self-generated traffic,” Wizemann said in a statement.

The new VC funds will be used to accelerate sales and marketing, and to build out the company’s product into both social websites and the physical retail experience. ShopIgniter’s software enables retailers, wholesalers, and brands to do things like sell products through Facebook, find customers through Twitter, and manage their online stores through a simple Web interface.

One interesting angle is that Madrona co-founder and managing director Tom Alberg is leading the investment and will join the ShopIgniter board. This is Alberg’s first new board position in some time. He also serves on the board of directors at Impinj, SinglePoint, Physware, Mercent, and—oh yeah—Amazon.com. (See this in-depth interview with Alberg in Xconomy last year.)

“We are investing in ShopIgniter because its flexible Web services based platform significantly improves the ability of retailers to better manage and present their Web store to customers,” Alberg said in a statement. “The founders have deep domain expertise and the company has built a platform that incorporates new opportunities for retailers to serve and reach customers through social networks and other innovative features.”

Compton, an Oregon native and former Yahoo exec, has helped Madrona evaluate more than 100 early-stage companies in Oregon. Meanwhile, you have to figure Amazon will keep a very close eye on this baby, thanks in no small part to Alberg.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Seattle-based venture capital and private equity firm Buerk Dale Victor announced today it has changed its name to Montlake Capital. The new name recognizes the firm’s evolution from a local partnership (founded in 1999) to a regional investment team with partners in Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. Montlake Capital has $100 million under management, and says in 2010 it will invest in and seek partner companies with revenues between $2-20 million. The firm previously backed Halosource, the Bothell, WA-based water purification company that raised $10 million last week.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

We hope to make this a regular feature in our Xconomy cities. It’s a look at small financings of private companies in tech, life sciences, and cleantech. These are deals in the roughly $100,000 to $1 million range, and they’re increasingly where the action is for local entrepreneurs, yet they’re often harder to track than the bigger deals we tend to report on.

And there were at least 12 of these smaller financings in the Northwest in October (see table below), according to ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information services company tracking VC, angel, and other investments in private companies. ChubbyBrain gets its data from regulatory filings, user submissions, and other sources, and this is the second monthly installment of “under the radar” deals in the Seattle area (you can see the previous deals for September here). The data didn’t include the investors or the stage of financing.

A few quick observations: Like the previous month, most of the financings were in Washington (7 out of 12), but a significant number (5) were in Oregon. Most were equity deals (7), with the rest (5) being debt financings. The majority of financings (9) were in software, Internet, or tech, while a much smaller number (3) were in life sciences and healthcare, and no cleantech or energy deals made the list.

If nothing else, these lists are a cool way to hear about emerging startups we otherwise wouldn’t know about. For example, I’ve heard of Teranode, Nearlyweds, and 1000Museums before, but Zapproved and Intellisist are completely new to me.

Here are the 12 “under the radar” deals from last month:

Comments (3) | Reprints | Share:          

They are the deals that slip through the cracks unnoticed. They are worth less than $1 million, but at least $100,000. Though small in size, these investments need to be included along with the bigger deals that get more press, if you want a more complete picture of the funding landscape in the innovation community. And there were at least 16 of these deals in the Northwest in September (see table below), according to ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information services company tracking VC, angel, and other investments in private companies.

It’s probably too soon to talk about trends, because this is the first month we’ve had access to ChubbyBrain’s data on these smaller deals, which were compiled from regulatory filings, user submissions, and other sources. But here are some quick observations.

About two-thirds of the deals (11 of 16) were equity investments, while one-third (5 of 16) were debt financings. Half the investments (8) were in software companies, while about a quarter each were in biotech/medical (4) and cleantech (3) firms. The majority of the deals were in the Seattle area (10), but a significant number were near Portland or in Oregon (6). Anecdotally, all those breakdowns seem consistent with the deal flow we’ve been seeing and reporting on in the Northwest for the past year or so. The data didn’t include the investors or the stage of the investments.

Without further ado, here are the 16 “under the radar” deals from last month:

Vantos (Seattle)                                            Equity        $873,487
Investigation software

InEnTec (Bend, OR)                                     Equity        $800,000
Cleantech fuels

WA 32609 (Redmond, WA)                           Equity         $800,000
Biotech

Inson Medical Systems (Bellevue, WA)      Equity         $642,536
Biomedical drug delivery

Napera Networks (Mercer Island, WA)         Debt           $600,000
Networking software

Acucela (Bothell, WA)                                    Equity         $439,603
Biotech drugs

Adometry (Kirkland, WA)                               Equity         $400,000
Analytics software

Smilebox (Redmond, WA)                              Equity         $399,999
Consumer software

Asemblon (Redmond, WA)                             Debt            $386,000
Cleantech/materials

Ohio River Clean Fuels / Baard Energy (Vancouver, WA)    Debt            $245,000
Cleantech fuels

Safetec Compliance Systems (Vancouver, WA)                    Debt            $235,000
Software for chemical compliance

Second Porch (Portland, OR)                          Equity         $225,000
Social software

SynapticMash (Seattle)                                    Equity         $200,000
Educational software

Silere Medical Technology (Kirkland, WA)      Debt            $120,000
Medical devices

BallLogic (Portland, OR)                                   Equity         $100,000
Consumer devices

Site 9 (Portland, OR)                                          Equity         $100,000
Web development software

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:          

The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) has announced its lineup of 12 presenting companies for the Venture Northwest 2009 investment forum, to be held on Oct. 29 at The Nine’s Hotel in Portland, OR. The Seattle-area companies are Calidora Skin Systems, Doxo, Lucid Commerce, and MicroGreen Polymers, while the Portland-area companies are Advanced Inquiry Systems, Cularis, DesignMedix, Elemental Technologies, Giftango, Prolifiq, Second Porch, and Wicked Quick.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) announced the winners of its 2009 Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards on Thursday night. Ray King, founder and CEO of Portland, OR-based AboutUs, won the award for individual achievement. The award for development-stage company of the year went to Portland-based Jama Software. Portland-based Monsoon and Medford, OR-based Motorcycle Superstore won in the “working capital” and “growth” company categories, respectively.

Comments | Reprints | Share:          

Like many metropolitan areas, the Portland, OR, startup scene has had its share of ups and downs this summer. Some folks started new ventures, some won new customers and garnered funding, and some closed up shop. All in all, it was fairly balanced—especially given the economy.

But win or lose, there are still lessons to be learned—for startups everywhere. So we thought it would be wise to take some time to walk through some of the high points and low points.

Sure, Dave Chappelle inspired a gigantic Twitter flash mob, and Portland was named one of the most entrepreneurial cities. But if I had to tag the summer with one word, it would be this: mobile. Mobile development—be it iPhone apps, Android apps, or geolocation apps that span multiple platforms—has been on a tear in Portland, as of late. Fueled by early successes like Fieldrunners, the work of Spotlight Mobile, and iPhone-agency Small Society, we’ve seen more and more folks diving into the mobile space.

One of the most promising mobile companies isn’t a sexy app; it’s a company working to provide infrastructure that makes those apps run. Founded in June 2009, Urban Airship makes integrating Apple push notifications and in-app purchases easier on mobile developers by handling the heavy lifting and integration with Apple services. They’ve had some early wins with products like Tap Tap Revenge, Yowza!!, and Where—and they continue to gain traction in the development community.

Around here, iPhone development remains the dominant platform—at least as far as noise and interest goes—but there’s still a great deal of Android experimentation happening through Mobile Portland and some Android specific user groups.

Some more themes from the summer:

—Newer startups continue to gain traction

Mobile isn’t the only space that’s doing well. We’re still seeing a number of companies gaining traction.

Reductive Labs—the guys behind the open source configuration management solution, Puppet—garnered $2 million in Series A and promptly announced they were moving to Portland. … Next Page »

Comments (1) | Reprints | Share: