Proterra, the Tesla of electric buses, closes in on $1 billion valuation

Proterra has authorized shares to raise $75 million, a new round of funding that would push the electric bus maker’s valuation past $1 billion, TechCrunch has learned.

The company authorized the sale of 10,857,762 shares at a price of $6.91 in a Series 8 round, according to a securities filing that was obtained by the Prime Unicorn Index, a company that tracks the performance of private U.S. companies, and reviewed by TechCrunch. If all of the shares are issued, the company’s total valuation would be $1.04 billion, pushing it into “unicorn” territory, according to Prime Unicorn Index.

Proterra declined to comment.

Efforts to raise capital come as the company explores an IPO, according to a report last month by Reuters that said Proterra had hired underwriters from Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.

Prior to this August 2 filing, Proterra had raised a total of $551.77 million in funding from investors that include G2VP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Constellation Ventures, Mitsui & Co. as well as BMW i Ventures, Edison Energy, the Federal Transportation Administration, General Motors’s venture arm and Tao Capital Partners.

Proterra produces electric buses for municipal, federal and commercial transit agencies; it has a line of electric buses, hundreds of which have been sold, that can travel 350 miles on a single charge. The Burlingame, Calif. company, which has a number of former Tesla employees in leadership positions, including CEO Ryan Popple, has since diversified its business.

Proterra rolled out in April a $200 million credit facility backed by Japanese investment giant Mitsui & Co. to scale up a battery leasing program aimed at lowering the barrier of entry of buying an electric bus.

And just this month, the company announced it has added a new business line called Proterra Powered that will sell its vehicle battery systems, powertrain technology and charging infrastructure to commercial truck and manufacturers of heavy-duty vehicles like garbage trucks.

This new business line stems from its previous relationships with companies like Van Hool and Daimler . Proterra announced last year it was working with Daimler to electrify the company’s Thomas Built Buses division, which makes a line of school buses. That relationship comes with some financial backing and an agreement to share technologies.

Daimler co-led a $155 million funding along with Tao Capital Partner. Proterra is lending its battery and drive train expertise; Daimler will show Proterra how to scale its manufacturing business even further.

The partnership has already been fruitful. Thomas Built Buses received certifications from the California Air Resources Board and the Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project for an electric bus, known as the Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley, which uses Proterra technology. Electric school bus production for demonstration and innovation vehicles begins in 2019 and commercial production begins in 2020.

Source. Techcrunch News, Kirsten Korosec, August 8, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

Workhorse gets $25 million needed to finish electric delivery van

By Kirsten Korosec

Workhorse Group, the electric vehicle company that grabbed headlines last month over a proposed deal to buy General Motors’ Lordstown, Ohio factory, has raised $25 million from a group of unnamed investors.

The money will not go toward the factory. Instead, it will be used for the more pressing matter of keeping the company running. Under terms of the deal, investors will receive preferred stock and warrants to buy shares. An annual dividend will be paid out in shares of Workhorse stock.

The Cincinnati-based company is small, with fewer than 100 employees. Its biggest problem isn’t ideas or even product pipeline; it’s capital.

Workhorse has struggled financially at various points since its founding in 1998. The company reported just $364,000 in revenue in the first quarter, down from $560,000 in the same period last year. As of March 30, 2019, the company had cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $2.8 million, compared to $1.5 million as of December 31, 2018.

Workhorse borrowed $35 million from hedge fund Marathon Asset Management earlier this year.

Workhorse, which was once owned by Navistar and sold in 2013 to AMP Holding, has a customer pipeline for its electric trucks that includes UPS. It’s also hoping to win a contract with the United States Postal Service.

But it needs capital to scale up. The funding gives Workhorse the capital to deliver on its existing backlog and produce its N-GEN delivery van, according to CEO Duane Hughes.

“We now have all necessary pieces in place to bridge Workhorse into full-scale N-GEN production and are looking forward to commencing the manufacturing process, in earnest, during the fourth quarter of this year,” Hughes said in a statement.

Meanwhile, GM has been in talks since early 2019 to sell its Lordstown vehicle factory in Ohio to Workhorse Group. GM’s Lordstown factory stopped producing the automaker’s Chevrolet Cruze in March; without any new vehicles slated for the factory, workers were laid off.

Under the potential Lordstown deal, a new entity led by Workhorse founder Steve Burns would acquire the facility. Workhorse would hold a minority interest in the new entity. This new entity would allow Workhorse to seek new equity without diluting existing shareholder value.

Workhorse would build a commercial electric pickup at the plant if the deal goes through, Hughes has said.

Source. Techcrunch, Kirsten Korosec,  June 9, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Halifax.

GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from SoftBank and Honda

By Kirsten Korosec

GM Cruise has raised another $1.15 billion in new equity from a group of investors that includes T. Rowe Price Associates, Honda, SoftBank Vision Fund and its parent company GM, as the self-driving vehicle company pushes to launch a commercial autonomous ride-hailing service this year.

This investment increases Cruise’s post-money valuation to $19 billion, inclusive of SoftBank’s previously announced investment commitment. Cruise has secured capital commitments totaling $7.25 billion in the past year, according to the company.

“Developing and deploying self-driving vehicles at massive scale is the engineering challenge of our generation,” said Cruise CEO Dan Ammann . “Having deep resources to draw on as we pursue our mission is a critical competitive advantage.”

GM Cruise has one of the most aggressive timelines among companies hoping to deploy a commercial self-driving vehicle service. GM’s self-driving unit has stuck to its previously stated timeline to launch a commercial service “sometime in 2019.”

Cruise has grown from a small startup with 40 employees to more than 1,000 today at its San Francisco headquarters.

And Cruise isn’t curtailing that rate of growth; it’s accelerating it.

Cruise announced in November plans to expand to Seattle, in pursuit of more engineering talent to develop its technology. GM Cruise aimed to hire between 100 to 200 engineers by the end of 2019. The company, now led by Ammann, who left his post as president of GM to take the job, plans to hire at least 1,000 more engineers and other personnel by the end of the year. (Kyle Vogt, a Cruise co-founder who was CEO and also unofficially handled the chief technology officer position, is now president and CTO.)

Arden Hoffman, who helped scale Dropbox, left the file-sharing and storage company to head up human resources at Cruise and help the company scale quickly.

The GM subsidiary is expanding its office space in San Francisco to accommodate the growth. GM Cruise will keep its headquarters at 1201 Bryant Street in San Francisco. The company also will take over Dropbox headquarters at 333 Brannan Street some time this year, a move that will triple Cruise’s office space in San Francisco.

GM Cruise received a $2.25 billion investment by SoftBank’s vision fund in May 2018. That first SoftBank investment was cut into two parts, with the first tranche of $900 million made at the closing of the transaction. Once Cruise’s autonomous vehicles are ready for commercial deployment, SoftBank will complete the second investment of $1.35 billion, the companies said at the time.

A few months later, Honda committed $2.75 billion as part of an exclusive agreement with GM and Cruise to develop and produce a new kind of autonomous vehicle.

As part of that agreement, Honda will invest $2 billion into the effort over the next 12 years. At the time, Honda made an immediate and direct equity investment of $750 million into Cruise. Honda’s investment gives the automaker a 5.7% stake in Cruise.

Source. TechCrunch, Kirsten Korosec, May 6, 2019

***

This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the Canadian private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

Serving Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa 

Linear Labs’ next-gen electric motor attracts $4.5 million in funding

By Kirsten Korosec

Linear Labs, a startup developing an electric motor for cars, scooters, robots, wind turbines and even HVAC systems, has raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by Science Inc. and Kindred Ventures.

Investors Chris and Crystal Sacca, Ryan Graves of Saltwater Ventures, Dynamic Signal CEO Russ Fradin, Masergy executive chairman and former-CEO Chris MacFarland, as well as Ustream co-founder Gyula Feher also participated in the round.

The four-year-old company was founded by Brad and Fred Hunstable, who say they have invented a lighter, more flexible electric motor. The pair came up with the motor they’ve dubbed the Hunstable Electric Turbine (HET) while working to design a device that could pump clean water and provide power for small communities in underdeveloped regions of the world.

Linear Labs currently has 50 filed patents, 21 of which are issued, with 29 patents pending.

The founders come with a background in entrepreneurship and electrical engineering. Brad Hunstable is former CEO and founder of Ustream, the live-video-streaming service that sold to IBM in 2016 for $150 million. Fred Hunstable, who comes with a background in electrical engineering and nuclear power, led Ebasco and Walker Engineering’s efforts in designing, upgrading and completing electrical infrastructure, environmental and enterprise projects as well as safety and commercial-grade evaluation programs.

The HET uses multiple rotors that can adapt to varying conditions, according to the company. It also produces twice as much torque density and three times the power density than permanent magnet motors. Linear Labs says its motor produces two times the output per given motor size, and minimum 10 percent more range.

The HET design makes it ideally suited for mobility applications such as electric vehicles because it produces high levels of torque without the need for a gearbox. This helps cut production cuts, the company contends.

“The holy grail in electric motors has always been high torque and no gearbox, and the HET achieves both in a smaller, lighter and more efficient package that is more powerful than traditional motors,” Linear Labs CTO Fred Hunstable said in a statement.

The upshot could be electric vehicles with better range and more powerful electric scooters.

The commercialization of the electric motor will result in substantial leaps in terms of energy savings, reliability enhancement, and low-cost manufacturing, according to Babak Fahimi, founding director of the Renewable Energy and Vehicular Technology (REVT) Laboratory at the University of Texas at Dallas.

The company plans to use the seed funding to market its invention to customers. It’s also hiring talent and recently added new people to its leadership team, including John Curry as their president and Jon Hurry as vice president. Curry comes from KLA-Tencor and NanoPhotonics. Hurry has held positions at Tesla and Faraday Future.

Source. Techcrunch, Kirsten Korosec, March 26, 2019

Note. This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications. We are you communications partner in the private equity & startup markets. We offer strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices and startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.