Better Place
In January 2008, the Israeli government announced its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between Better Place, Renault and its partner, Nissan Motor Company. Renault and Better Place are working on development of exchangeable batteries.
Agassi initially raised $200MM for this project, one of the largest and fastest seed rounds in history. Investors include VantagePoint Venture Partners, Israel Corporation, Israel Cleantech Ventures, Morgan Stanley, and private investors led by Michael Granoff of Maniv Energy Capital. In 2009 he raised an additional $135 million for Better Place Denmark, including an investment from DONG Energy the leading utility in Denmark. Following the announcement in Israel, Better Place had launched its network in Denmark, Australia and in two US locations - Hawaii and Northern California. The company has said it is in talks with more than 25 countries around the world. In early 2010, Better Place raised its Series-B round at an amount of $350MM led by new investors from HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Lazard, as well as all previous investors. In November of 2011, the company raised its third equity financing round of $200 million from a group of investors including GE, UBS bank and others. The last round's valuation of $2.25B is one of the highest valuations for pre-revenue companies in history.
In April 2008, Deutsche Bank analysts reportedly concluded that the company's approach could be a "paradigm shift" that causes "massive disruption" to the auto industry, and which has "the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine altogether." Charlie Rose interviewed Agassi on December 1, 2010 for his show where he discussed the electric car.
He resigned his position as CEO of Better Place in October 2012, as result of rumored differences of opinion with Israel Corp.
Read more about this topic: Shai Agassi
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