Nanosolar, Inc., a company developing cost-efficient solar electricity, closed $20 million in Series B funding. This increases the total amount of funding secured by the company to $37 million (not including additional loans).
Led by MDV (Mohr Davidow Ventures), the Series B round also includes Mitsui, Japan’s largest distribution company, and OnPoint, the U.S. Army’s venture fund, in addition to previous investors which included Benchmark Capital and others. The funding will support the company’s move into commercial production. As part of the financing, MDV’s Erik Straser has joined the company’s board of directors. “Among all the companies working on next-generation solar technology, Nanosolar is the one that can deliver the very best cost efficiency, and it accomplishes this without having to compromise on energy conversion efficiency or durability,” said MDV’s Erik Straser.
Nanosolar has successfully developed a leapfrog aggregate of process technology innovations for solar panels that can match conventional silicon modules in both energy output and long-term durability yet deliver radically lower fully-loaded manufacturing product cost. A key aspect to this is the unprecedented throughput that Nanosolar’s process technology achieves: With more than an order of magnitude faster intrinsic process throughput over the best in conventional silicon or vacuum technology, Nanosolar can produce solar panels in a highly cost and capital efficient way.