Financial Backers and Manufacturing
Nanosolar was started in 2002 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. The company has received financing from a number of technology investors including Benchmark Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. Nanosolar received the largest amount in a round of Venture Capital technology funding amongst United States companies during Q2 2006, with 100 million USD of new funding secured. It also received the largest amount of financing of any private company in 2008 (USD 300 million in Q1).
Nanosolar planned to build a large production facility in San Jose and in Germany, with an annual capacity of 430 megawatts. Nanosolar is also building a panel manufacturing plant in Luckenwalde (Berlin). Several German energy and venture capital companies have heavily invested in this company as a consequence of the favourable economics for solar energy in Germany due to government subsidies.
On December 12, 2007 the company announced that it had started solar cell production in its San Jose factory, with its German facility slated to go into operation in the 1st quarter of 2008. The company said in 2006 that the San Jose factory, when fully built, would have the capacity to produce 430 megawatts of cells each year.
On December 18, 2007 the company began shipping its first solar panels for a one-megawatt municipal power plant in Germany.
As of 2008 Nanosolar has raised about 500 million USD in total funding by private investors Benchmark Capital, Mitsui Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, OnPoint, Capricorn Management, Firelake Capital Management, GLG Partners, Grazia Equity, Swiss Re, Beck Energy, Omidyar Network, Lone Pine Capital, Energy Capital Partners, Riverstone Holdings, EDF, The Skoll Foundation, EDS (HP) and The Carlyle Group.
On February 17, 2012 Nanosolar announced they have achieved 115MW capacity, $20 Million in additional funding to further expand manufacturing capacity and a NREL Thin-Film Solar Aperture Efficiency of 17.1%. This capacity is just over one quarter of the 430 megawatts predicted five years previously.
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