Battery Startup Stem Just Raised Money from Peter Thiel"s Mithril

Peter Thiel: being contrarian & right, AI, Elon, drug reform, overrated trends & wealth polarization

While billionaire investor Peter Thiel has been grabbing headlines for his reported support of Hulk Hogans lawsuit against Gawker (as well as his backing of Donald Trump), one of his investment firms has shown interest in something thats a lot less contrarian: batteries.

On Wednesday, battery startup Stem announced that its raised a new round of $15 million, led by Mithril Capital Management, a fund co-founded by Thiel and Ajay Royan to invest in tech startups that are growing quickly. Mithril is reportedly out raising a second fund of $600 million.

A battery from Stem to help building owners lower electricity bills.Photo courtesy of Stem.

Stem buys batteries from battery giants like Panasonic and Samsung, then installs them in the basements or backyards of companies buildings. The startup then uses smart software to shift the energy load of the building over onto the batteries when the power grid rates are high.

With this battery tech, Stems customers like Wells Fargo WFC, Safeway SFY, Whole Foods WFM, and Reliance Steel RS can lower their monthly energy costs significantly. Energy geeks call this type of battery application behind the meter, and its seeing growing interest from businesses with a lot of facilities and high energy costs.

For more on new battery technology watch our video.

Utilities can also work with Stem so that they can shift the energy loads of buildings that plug into their grid over onto batteries during peak times of day, like a hot summer afternoon. In this way, they have another option for how to manage the demand on their grids.

Stem is one of only a couple startups that won huge deals to work with utility Southern California Edison to use batteries to help the utility manage its grid. Stem plans to deploy a whopping 85 megawatts of batteries to Southern California Edison customers by 2021. For comparison, there were only 221 megawatts of energy storage deployed in the U.S. in 2015, according to GTM Research.

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Stems business model relies on the recent drop in the costs of lithium-ion batteries, which began when these rechargeable batteries became the de facto choice for most cell phones, laptops, and many gadgets. Now battery giants like Samsung and Panasonic are investing in growing their manufacturing, and dropping the costs, of these batteries to be plugged into the grid, paired with solar panels and used to power vehicles, like Teslas electric cars.

With this funding Stem has raised $105 million to date ($68 million in the Series C round). Other investors in Stem include Japanese conglomerate Mitsui, Germanys RWE Supply & Trading, the Angeleno Group, power giant Iberdrola, GE Ventures, the investment arm of GE GE, Constellation New Energy, and Total Energy Ventures, the investment arm of French oil giant Total TOT.

Stem will use the funds to grow its customer list. The company says its battery tech has been installed at 440 facilities in California and Hawaii.

Other companies that are competing with Stem include Green Charge Networks, Greensmith Energy Management Systems, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Tesla TSLA, and even GE. Earlier this month, French power company Engie acquired an 80% stake in Green Charge Networks.

Updated at 9:30 AM PST on May 25th to correct that Stem raised $68 million in its series C round and $105 million in total.

Source: http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/battery-startup-stem-peter-thiel/

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Peter Thiel is a Trump delegate

Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, the State of Our Technology, and Artificial Intelligence

Another surprise from the endlessly surprising US election cycle: billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has beennamedas one of Donald Trump"s delegates in California.

Thiel co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, and was the first outside investor in Facebook. Locally, he"s bought stakes in Xero and Vend. Along the way, he"s racked up around $US2.6 billion in wealth, according to Forbes.

With Trump the only Republican candidate contesting the state, the primary vote will be a formality and Thiel is pre-destined to be one of those casting his ballot for Trump when the Californian delegation attends the Republican Convention in June.

A number of traditional big money Republican donors have been wary of Trump, or even said they will vote for Hillary Clinton to keep him out of office. And the tech sector has been chilly. Microsoft, for example, has said it won"t donate money to support the Republican convention this year. Calls by Trump for Apple to hand over its encryption keys to the State, and bring low-skilled, low margin hardware assembly back to the US have many in Silicon Valley up in arms.

So how did Thiel come to join Camp Trump?

The tech investor is a long time Republican supporter, but has previously been described as a libertarian -- a reasonable assumption given he was the largest donor to Ron Paul"s campaign in 2012.

According to the Guardian, Thiel is "very hawkish on immigration," and has previously donated $US1 million to Numbers USA, a group that lobbies for reduced intake.

It"s been noted that there"s some irony in Trump lobbying for restrictions, given he is the son of a German immigrant (and his construction company"s enthusiasm for hiring undocumentedimmigrants, according to New York Times reports).

Thiel was born in West Germany, making him the latest in a long list of immigrant"s who have contributed to US success in the tech industry that includes Andy Grove (Intel), Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX) and Sergey Brin (Google) and many others. And that"s not to mention the children of immigrants such as the SyrianAbdul Jandali, who foisted the layout Steve Jobs on the Californian education system. Perhaps a wall could be built around Silicon Valley to keep them out.

Source: http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/peter-thiel-trump-delegate

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Battery Startup Stem Just Raised Money from Peter Thiel"s Mithril

Peter Thiel: successful businesses are based on secrets

While billionaire investor Peter Thiel has been grabbing headlines for his reported support of Hulk Hogans lawsuit against Gawker (as well as his backing of Donald Trump), one of his investment firms has shown interest in something thats a lot less contrarian: batteries.

On Wednesday, battery startup Stem announced that its raised a new round of $15 million, led by Mithril Capital Management, a fund co-founded by Thiel and Ajay Royan to invest in tech startups that are growing quickly. Mithril is reportedly out raising a second fund of $600 million.

A battery from Stem to help building owners lower electricity bills.Photo courtesy of Stem.

Stem buys batteries from battery giants like Panasonic and Samsung, then installs them in the basements or backyards of companies buildings. The startup then uses smart software to shift the energy load of the building over onto the batteries when the power grid rates are high.

With this battery tech, Stems customers like Wells Fargo WFC, Safeway SFY, Whole Foods WFM, and Reliance Steel RS can lower their monthly energy costs significantly. Energy geeks call this type of battery application behind the meter, and its seeing growing interest from businesses with a lot of facilities and high energy costs.

For more on new battery technology watch our video.

Utilities can also work with Stem so that they can shift the energy loads of buildings that plug into their grid over onto batteries during peak times of day, like a hot summer afternoon. In this way, they have another option for how to manage the demand on their grids.

Stem is one of only a couple startups that won huge deals to work with utility Southern California Edison to use batteries to help the utility manage its grid. Stem plans to deploy a whopping 85 megawatts of batteries to Southern California Edison customers by 2021. For comparison, there were only 221 megawatts of energy storage deployed in the U.S. in 2015, according to GTM Research.

Get Data Sheet, Fortunes technology newsletter.

Stems business model relies on the recent drop in the costs of lithium-ion batteries, which began when these rechargeable batteries became the de facto choice for most cell phones, laptops, and many gadgets. Now battery giants like Samsung and Panasonic are investing in growing their manufacturing, and dropping the costs, of these batteries to be plugged into the grid, paired with solar panels and used to power vehicles, like Teslas electric cars.

With this funding Stem has raised $105 million to date ($68 million in the Series C round). Other investors in Stem include Japanese conglomerate Mitsui, Germanys RWE Supply & Trading, the Angeleno Group, power giant Iberdrola, GE Ventures, the investment arm of GE GE, Constellation New Energy, and Total Energy Ventures, the investment arm of French oil giant Total TOT.

Stem will use the funds to grow its customer list. The company says its battery tech has been installed at 440 facilities in California and Hawaii.

Other companies that are competing with Stem include Green Charge Networks, Greensmith Energy Management Systems, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Tesla TSLA, and even GE. Earlier this month, French power company Engie acquired an 80% stake in Green Charge Networks.

Updated at 9:30 AM PST on May 25th to correct that Stem raised $68 million in its series C round and $105 million in total.

Source: http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/battery-startup-stem-peter-thiel/

Continue Reading ..