GE and its venture capital partners recently announced the first round of winners in its ecomagination challenge. This first round of investment included $55 million of the total $200 million available and was awarded to the 12 companies listed below.
- ClimateWell
- Consert
- FMC-Tech
- The Fu Foundation School for Engineering and Applied Science, Columbia University
- JouleX
- OPOWER
- Scientific Conservation
- SecureRF
- Sentient Energy
- Soladigm
- SustainX
- SynapSense
VC partners participating in this round included Foundation Capital (joint investment in Sentient Energy) and RockPort Capital (joint investment in SustainX). GE invested a total of $45 million and the VC partners invested $10 million. GE says that it received nearly 4,000 applications from companies and individuals in more than 150 countries.
If you assume that each company received roughly an equal amount of the total investment then, with the exception of the two companies receiving VC joint investments, each company will receive around $3.75 million. This is on the low end of the scale compared to recent smart grid VC investments (e.g., Coulomb Technologies $14m, ecobee $6.7m, Energate $7.2m, Tantalus Systems $14m) but it comes with the benefit of being associated with GE - one of the biggest names in the smart grid market. If all goes as planned, at least some of these companies will be able to take advantage of the GE relationship through distribution or partnership agreements or even acquisitions in the future.
Another interesting aspect of this investment round is the market segments where GE and its VC partners placed their bets. Smart buildings was the winner with five companies covering various smart building technologies (ClimateWell, JouleX, Scientific Conservation, Soladigm and SynapSense). Distribution management (Sentient Energy, FMC-Tech) and home energy management (OPOWER, Consert) each scored two winners. Utility-scale energy storage (SustainX), PEV charging (Columbia University) and security (SecureRF) each scored one winner.
Although more VC funding is always a good thing for the smart grid market, the real challenge lies in support for commercialization of the technologies emerging from smart grid start-ups. This is where GE can clearly provide support beyond funding - but will this happen? It's certainly worth following.
