Two cleantech deals: Oryxe and Protonex
- Oryxe, a promising fuel-additive company, announced a $2.5m Series C add-on raise, apparently led by Ridgewood Capital. I haven't seen much information about the raise other than a brief mention, but here is Oryxe's website. They're strongly positioned in regulation-driven markets, specifically "non-attainment" air quality regions, where local regulations are mandating significant changes to fuel mixes. Instead of extremely costly changes at the refinery -- which supplies much wider regions than the regulatory-affected regions -- Oryxe's fuel additive enables similarly improved emissions performance, and can be added closer to the point of use. One interesting thing about this deal: Ridgewood Capital hasn't been a big cleantech investor to date, but in the last few months they've invested in Oryxe and Comverge. Another new entrant to the cleantech space...
- Protonex announced a $9m second round. The fuel cell company's round was led by existing investors Conduit Ventures Ltd., SAS Investors, Solstice Capital and Commons Capital. New investors are Parker Hannifin Corporation, Contango Capital Management and the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund. The company is as much a "homeland defense" play as a cleantech play, as the fuel cells are used mainly in military applications to date (although they claim to be targeting commercial applications as well).
