The Week in Cleantech: July 22 – 29
This past week saw a number of interesting financing rounds in the cleantech space. Although all were fairly small amounts, the variety of technologies represented is of interest. Cleanweb continues to grab headlines, although the more traditional Energy Efficiency and Solar sectors are also attracting financing.
Easy Taxi, a Brazilian app for ordering and pre-paying taxis, received $10 million from Millicom and Rocket Internet, in the form of the firms’ joint venture, Africa Internet Holding. The company will use the funding to expand into Africa, Asia and the Middle East, with Nigeria as the first new market. Easy Taxi joins Lyft, Hailo and other taxi and ride apps that have raised money recently.
Bidgely, a California-based developer of an online platform enabling home energy monitoring and management, received $5 million from Khosla Ventures. The company plans to use the funding to make hires in its business and engineering teams and commercialize its technology through energy carriers.
BrightSource Energy, the California-based developer of concentrating solar thermal technology used to produce high-value electricity and steam for power, petroleum and process markets, received $15 million of a targeted $35 million round. The company has previously raised over $620 million from BP Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures and VantagePoint Capital Partners, among others.
Check out i3 for more deals that happened this week.
