Applied Materials may not be a sexy company, but it is playing big in GreenTech and that's sexy to me.  It has created its own venture capital arm and has plopped down $100's of millions to make big changes in its future.

Recently Applied Materials, one of the least sexy companies in the world, just starting showing off some of its efforts to give itself a make over.  For quite some time now Applied has been one of the world's largest manufacturer of factory equipment for the semiconductor industry (boring right?)  Recently, the management has decided to take the company in a bold new direction that in solar, nanotechnology and host of other things that add up to Applied Materials making a big and I mean BIG bet on Green.

Earlier this week, they made headlines for acquiring its 3rd solar company, Baccini, for $334 million dollars, but everyone missed the real story behind the acquisition:  A complete makover of Applied Materials.

I took a deeper look at what Applied Materials has been up to and its quite fascinating.  With 17 investments, including the recently announced Fat Spaniel, Applied Materials' VC arm has been quite active and quite bold.  Could a corporate VC arm like the one at Applied Materials actually have an advantage over traditional "smart" VCs.  Do they understand the supply chain of Green better than the professional investors?  Time will tell, but one thing is for sure - as I mention in almost every article I write, there will be a lot of new players in the Green investment industry and that will cause some interesting power shifts.

Take a look at their portfolio and you will get a sense of what I am talking about.  Many if not most of these companies represent incredibly speciifc pieces of the supply chain of a complex system of components that are all part of Green in one way or another.

	Adesto Technologies is a Silicon Valley fabless semiconductor company.
	ClearEdge Power is manufacturing cutting edge fuel cell systems for back-up and continuous power markets by developing and commercializing innovative, low cost fuel cells that draw on the company's expertise in application, design, and integration. The goal – clean, reliable, efficient, and cost competitive electricity for commercial, government and individual consumers' world wide. ClearEdge Power is building a variety of strategic relationships to become a profitable leader in the fuel cell market through the production and distribution of silicon-based fuel cell systems that are clean, quiet, and low cost and that can be customized for specific customer needs.
	Devicescape provides the only complete wireless software suite that empowers device manufacturers and organizations to deliver on the promise of life without wires to their end users. The Devicescape suite is the industry's first and only comprehensive set of software solutions that enable the creation of a broad range of wireless devices that can be easily connected and seamlessly managed on a home or office network.
	Fat Spaniel Technologies, Inc. provides monitoring and reporting services for distributed, renewable energy systems - enabling more efficient diagnostics and maintenance, more compelling visualization, and more usable revenue-grade data for billing, REC trading and performance-based incentives. Fat Spaniel acts as an independent monitoring service provider and delivers information that is used by system owners, system installers, power purchase agreement (PPA) service providers, equipment manufacturers, project financing firms, renewable energy credit markets and energy utility regulatory agencies. Fat Spaniel products are presently deployed in over 1000 locations in 12 countries worldwide.
	Glimmerglass manufactures automated fiber management solutions based on its family of intelligent optical switches. These solutions transform the way customers manage fiber-optic connections at the physical layer. Glimmerglass continues to grow because its customers achieve significant ROI in applications such as testing optical products and networks, monitoring fibers and RF signals, provisioning and protecting high-speed connections for grid computing and more. Glimmerglass sells its solutions to the defense, intelligence, super-computing, test & measurement, Internet infrastructure, video and telecommunications industries.
	Develop & license ultrahigh-density nonvolatile memory solutions, based on proprietary technologies derived from cutting-edge research in spintronics.
	Group IV Semiconductor is developing revolutionary silicon-based solid-state light emitters. These devices will be the building blocks of solid-state lighting products that are more efficient than fluorescent lights, have a much longer life than conventional bulbs, and enable production costs low enough to promote rapid, widespread adoption.
	Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN) provides Digital Optical Networking systems to telecommunications carriers worldwide. Infinera's systems are unique in their use of a breakthrough semiconductor technology: the Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC). Infinera's systems and PIC technology are designed to provide optical networks with simpler engineering and operations, faster time-to-service, and more flexible networking.
	Infinite Power Solutions, Inc. (IPS) develops, manufactures, and markets ultra-thin, flexible, rechargeable lithium micro-batteries under its LiTE*STAR™ brand and serve applications such as biometric smart cards, active RFID tags, implantable medical devices, embedded micro-controllers and wireless sensor markets. The LiTE*STAR family of solid-state thin-film lithium batteries are unrivaled in overall thinness, rechargeability, and power capability, yet remain safe and environmentally friendly. These batteries operate over extreme temperatures and can be embedded within rigid and flex printed circuit boards or other lamination processes.
	Menara Networks Inc. is focused on developing and marketing high performance, low cost universal Small Form Factor 10 Gbps transceivers and WDM sub-systems. Our standard-compliant products, offer over 10x cost/performance improvement over current solutions and target all applications of 10G optical transceivers. Menara proprietary technologies enables high performance and extended reach within a pluggable form factor for frictionless adoption by network equipment OEM vendors.
	Plextronics, Inc. is a leading innovator of technology for printed electronics, comprised of next-generation light, power and circuitry products.
	SAGE Electrochromics is a smart glass technology company, and focused solely on the development and commercialization of electrochromic technology for the building window industry. SAGE’s patented technology, SageGlass®, is used to manufacture windows and skylights that can be darkly tinted to block sunlight and heat, or cleared, depending on the needs of the end user.
	Semprius, Inc. is commercializing a newly invented process for printing high-performance single crystal semiconductors on any substrate, including glass, plastic and other semiconductor materials.  Initial applications of the technology include high frequency radio frequency semiconductors for mobile communications, TFT backplanes for flat panel displays and flexible digital X-ray detectors. The overall result is vast gains in performance for these types of devices at lower manufacturing costs.
	Solaicx is a manufacturer of low-cost, high-quality silicon wafers for the photovoltaic (PV) industry. By designing and building equipment optimized for the high volume, continuous manufacture of high-performance, single crystal silicon ingots, Solaicx creates significant competitive advantages, in terms of cost and quality, which are then passed through the value chain of the silicon-based solar cell manufacturing market.
	Takumi provides revolutionary DFM (Design for Manufacturing) tool chain that dramatically reduces the yield ramp up time and the mask cost for the state of the art LSI.
	TDI pioneers a high resolution, large area, patented patterning process called MxL - molecular transfer lithography - for emerging markets in energy, optoelectronics, and advanced displays.
	Zia Laser is the leading innovator and developer of Quantum Dot semiconductor lasers for the electronics industry. Quantum dots, a key area of nanotechnology, confine electronic carriers in all three dimensions which lead to dramatically more efficient generation of light not achievable with other semiconductor based optoelectronic technologies. Zia's mode locked lasers offer superior performance at a lower cost for optical clock distribution in emerging high growth markets. The company is ISO certified and has established operations in all areas of laser development, including epitaxial growth, wafer processing, testing and packaging.

Posted by Steve Newcomb on February 5, 2008 02:25 PM | Permalink