(Reuters) - Green is back in venture capital circles -- but call it light green.
Having placed big bets on capital-intensive industries like solar and ethanol just as the financial crisis quashed interest in risky new technologies, early-stage investors these days have a limited appetite for start-ups that need large amounts of cash to bring their products to market.
Biofuels maker KiOR raised $150 million (94 million pounds) in its initial public offering on Friday, the latest in a number of alternative fuels companies to tap public markets, but it took $182 million in venture backing over four years to get there. The company has no revenue and needs $350 million to build each of its planned commercial scale production facilities. A loan guarantee from the federal government will help cover those costs.
But despite the success of KiOR and other biofuels makers' IPOs, most venture investors are now shying away from clean-tech companies that require so much capital.
Instead, lower-capital companies like Opower and Hara, which make energy management software; Transphorm, which makes more efficient power-conversion modules; and Amprius, which is developing components for lithium-ion batteries, are among the new darlings of Sand Hill Road, the strip in Silicon Valley in California known for its concentration of venture capital VC.L companies.
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