LightSail Energy, a developer of energy-storage technology, received $37.3 in a Series D funding led by angel investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. The funding included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and venture firms Khosla Ventures and Innavacorp. LightSail was launched three years ago by Danielle Fong, a PhD student at Princeton, and has raised a total of $52.3 million, according to VentureWire.
LightSail, which applies thermodynamics, aims to solve the issue with the availability of economical energy storage at the megawatt level, and seeks to create reliable power from wind and solar and make it available at scale.
“This investment round will enable LightSail to bring its first grid-scale energy storage products to market,” said Steve Crane, co-founder and CEO of LightSail Energy.
Competitors include General Compression and SustainX, which are working on a similar technology and have secured DOE funding, according to the Wall Street Journal. LightSail was unable to secure government funding, says Crane.
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