Dive Summary:
- According to a recent report from Mercom Capital Group, venture capital funding in the smart grid sector reached $434 million in 2012, which is up from 2011's total of $377 million.
- Last year, there were 66 total investors, while 92 investors contributed funding to the grid in 2011; overall, 40 deals were struck in 2012.
- The year's top venture capital deal was the $136 million raised by Alarm.com and 2012's top mergers and acquisition deal was the $11.8 billion acquisition of grid equipment company Cooper Industries.
From the article:
The top VC deal in 2012 was the $136 million raised by Alarm.com from ABS Capital Partners, Equis Capital Partners, NJTC Venture Fund, and Technology Crossover Ventures; followed by $30 million raised by Silver Spring Networks, a smart meter networking company, from Hitachi; $25 million raised by Tendril, an energy management company, from VantagePoint, Good Energies, RRE Ventures, General Electric and Siemens; $23.3 million raised by GridPoint, an energy management company; and $16 million raised by demand response company Comverge from Triangle Capital Corporation.
There were some huge M&A transactions in smart grid in 2012. Though none of them were pure play smart grid companies, they all have smart grid product and service lines. A total of 23 M&A transactions were executed in 2012, amounting to almost $17 billion; compared to 30 transactions for almost $5 billion in 2011 and 40 transactions for $1.3 billion in 2010. M&A activity has been slowing down over the last few years as exits have been sparse. ...