Seal Beach-based Amonix Inc. said it raised $129 million in a second funding round in what’s likely one of the biggest venture investments to date in Orange County.
Amonix designs and makes solar power panels that are used to generate energy by operating in sunny, dry climates.
Because of their size, the panels typically are used in deserts.
The privately held company doesn’t disclose financials.
The most recent investment was led by Menlo Park-based Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, which is known for alternative energy investments and counts former vice president Al Gore as a partner.
Other participants included Adams Street Partners, Angeleno Group, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund, Vedanta Capital LP, New Silk Route, The Westly Group and current investor MissionPoint Capital Partners.
Amonix said it’s set to use the money to ramp up deployments of its solar power systems and expand its manufacturing capacity.
Including the most recent round, Amonix has raised nearly $200 million to date from both private and government sources.
A few years ago, it raised $25 million in an initial round of funding from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and MissionPoint Capital.
It also received $16 million in grant funding through the Department of Energy Solar America Initiative.
Earlier this year, it landed some $10 million in stimulus funding as part of the federal Recovery Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit.
The federal money is earmarked to add some 400 manufacturing jobs in clean energy at two plants in Nevada and Arizona.
Amonix’s funding ranks among the biggest in the area.
Irvine’s Fisker Automotive Inc., a maker of electric cars, has raised about $200 million in private financing, including from Kleiner Perkins.
In January, Fisker raised about $115 million in private equity funding on top of a $529 million U.S. Department of Energy loan it received.
Irvine’s Specific Media Inc., an online advertising startup, raised $100 million in late 2008.
Broadcom Patents
A patent dispute between Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. and CSR PLC is set to resume after an appeals court ruled against the British chipmaker in an ongoing case involving global positioning system chips.
The case stretches back to 2006, when Broadcom alleged that San Jose-based Sirf Technology Holdings Inc. infringed on its patents for GPS navigation chips for cell phones.
Sirf was acquired by CSR for $136 million last year. The patent dispute predates the deal, which was struck in June.
In 2008, an International Trade Commission judge ruled that Sirf infringed on six of Broadcom’s patents for global positioning in cell phones.
A federal appeals court a few weeks ago affirmed the ruling that said Sirf had infringed on three Broadcom patents and banned imports of its GPS chips.
The GPS-related patents all apply to older products that aren’t currently on the market.
Sirf has since redesigned the GPS chips in question.
CSR specializes in Bluetooth chips and competes with Broadcom, which has the biggest market share for Bluetooth chips that go into Internet-connected devices.
Both companies supply chips to the top cell phone makers, including Nokia Corp., Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd.
StrataCare Buy
Irvine’s StrataCare LLC, a maker of Internet-based software that helps companies process medical bills from workers’ compensation claims, recently struck a deal to acquire a strategic business unit of New York’s Marsh Inc., one of the world’s biggest insurance brokerages.
StrataCare picked up the “MedBillPro” division of CS Stars LLC, which is itself a unit of Marsh that’s based in Austin, Texas.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The deal is set to add some 45 products, support and compliance workers to StrataCare’s ranks.
StrataCare, which started in 1998, helps companies cut down on their workers’ compensation costs by helping to automate the filing, tracking and reimbursement of medical bills.
The company’s customers include Safeway Inc., Budget Rent A Car System Inc.’s Ryder Services Corp., Sempra Energy, city governments and the school districts of Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Santa Barbara.
Bits and Pieces
Want to keep your new shiny iPad touch screen from getting scratched? Anaheim’s Targus Inc., a maker of computer bags and related accessories, this month launched a new lineup of cases to protect Apple’s new do-all toy. Prices range from $25 to $60 … The Semiconductor Industry Association reported that worldwide chip sales in February were $22 billion, down 1% from January’s totals but up 56% from a year earlier … PC sales during the first quarter blew estimates out of the water, according to Stamford, Conn.-based market tracker Gartner Inc. PC makers shipped 84 million units worldwide, up 27% from a year earlier and beating Gartner’s estimate of a 22% rise.
