A clean-tech start-up that thinks it has solved a problem that has vexed engineers for decades–how to effectively store energy generated by wind and sunshine–has gained some heavyweight financial backers.
An investment group that includes Bill Gates‘ Cascade Investment and Thiel Capital, a firm run by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook Inc. FB +0.94%, has poured $37.3 million into LightSail Energy, a three-year-old start-up dreamed up by a Princeton graduate school dropout. The investment was led by Thiel Capital and Founders Fund.
Danielle Fong, now 25, said it took LightSail about a year to raise the Series D funding because investors are more wary of clean technology since solar power company Solyndra spectacularly failed in 2011. Solyndra burned through nearly $1 billion from private investors and more than $500 million in Department of Energy loans before declaring bankruptcy.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, Khosla Get Behind Energy Storage Start-Up LightSail in $37M Deal - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ
