USA: Nth Power raises second venture capital fund

Advanced Battery Technology, Nov 2000

Nth Power Technologies, Inc., a pioneer in the field of energy and power industry venture capital based in San Francisco, California, has raised $120.5 million from new and existing investors for its second venture capital fund. Investors in its $63 million first venture fund - ABB, Cinergy, Energy East, Electricte de France, and Hydro Quebec - are participating in Fund II. They are joined by new strategic and financial investors, including Alliant Energy, Avistar, Ballentine Capital, Bank of America Capital, Central Hudson Gas and Electric, CBIC World Markets, First Energy Corp., Itochu International Inc., Lehman Brothers Venture Capital, Meridian Energy (New Zealand), NiSource Development, Norsk Hydro (Norway), PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd., and Pacific Venture Capital (a unit of PGE Corp.). Nth's investment focuses on distributed generation and storage; energy-related communications, information technology, and business services; power quality; and transmission and distribution automation.

Two of Nth's portfolio companies, Capstone Turbine Corp. and Proton Energy Systems, Inc., had their initial public offerings of common stock this year. Also, Nth currently has significant investments in Allconnect.com, Electronic Power Conditioning, Evergreen Solar, Inari, MainStreet Networks, Metallic Power, NanoGram, Nexant, Pentech Energy Solutions, Silicon Energy, UtilConnect, and Water Management Services. Co-investors in Nth portfolio companies include Crosspoint Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Integral Capital, Morgan Stanley Ventures, Sevin Rosen, Bill Gates, and Paul Allen.

Nancy Floyd, Nth Power co-founder and co-managing director with Maurice Gundrson, said, "We are greatly encouraged both by the strategic and financial success of our first fund and by the enthusiastic investment interest we generated for our much larger second fund. We have seen and continue to see to an even greater degree - strong and timely interest from major investors throughout the fundraising process, along with excellent deal flow from attractive start-ups."

Gundrson added, "We first observed the trends that would create tremendous opportunities for growth and innovation in the energy space in 1993, stimulated by our assessment that deregulation in the energy industry was coming and would produce significant opportunities for entrepreneurs, their customers, and for investors. In fact, we expected that the growth curve would track what happened when deregulation hit the telecommunications industry, and even we have been impressed by how much more rapidly attention and capital is flowing into this arena."

For more information, visit http://www.nthfund.com