June 10, 2005 — Nanosolar Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., developer of nanostructured solar cells, is expected to announce on Monday that it closed on $20 million in Series B funding last month.
Mohr Davidow Ventures led the round. New investors Mitsui & Co. of Japan and Onpoint Technologies also participated, along with existing investors Benchmark Capital and others. Onpoint Technologies is a strategic private equity arm funded by the U.S. Army.
Nanosolar previously announced raising $5 million in first round funding in June, 2003, in which U.S Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital and Stanford University participated along with unnamed individuals.
The company’s Web site also lists as individual investors CEO Martin Roscheisen, Sunil Paul and Carl Page as well as Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Roscheisen and Carl Page (Larry’s brother) previously co-founded eGroups, a company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2000.
Along with the funding, Nanosolar is also expected to announce that Erik Straser has joined its board of directors. Straser is a general partner at Mohr Davidow.
– David Forman