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Kleiner Perkins bets big on green tech firms
Deborah Gage, SF Chronicle, May 2, 2008
Excerpts from the article:
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said Thursday it will invest $500 million in green technology companies that have passed their earliest stages of growth and are maturing.
The venture capital firm also will invest in green-tech startup companies as part of another investment fund it introduced Thursday, which will invest $700 million over the next three years in startups.
The $500 million later-stage fund, called Green Growth, is a departure for Kleiner Perkins, which has traditionally invested in early-stage companies.
But John Denniston, the Kleiner Perkins partner who is co-managing the fund, said the firm now gets more than one business plan a day involving green technologies, and he expects that number to increase as oil prices rise and demand increases for products that can help slow global warming.
"We're seeing a great opportunity to build large, high-impact global companies," Denniston said.
...But it's also hard these days to find any Silicon Valley investor that's not into green technology. Foundation Capital, Khosla Ventures and the Palo Alto Research Center, to name a few, are all working with green companies, and researchers and engineers are flocking to green-tech startups from other industries.
In 2007, investments in green technologies by U.S. venture firms jumped to nearly $2.7 billion - over 9 percent of all venture money invested - said Ron Pernick, co-founder of the research firm Clean Edge.
Pernick said the green-tech sector is maturing and many firms besides Kleiner Perkins are looking at ways to get capital to growing companies.
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