The 102-year-old car company General Motors (GM) is set to go public on Thursday after a government-forced bankruptcy and bailout in November 2008. The bailout cost taxpayers about $50 billion. Analysts estimate the stock price would need to hit $53 dollars before the government can recoup its investment. GM plans to sell about half-a-billion shares for $33 each in its IPO. The company stands to raise an estimated $20.1 billion to $23.1 billion.
…In other company news, GM unveiled its 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible at the Los Angeles auto show today. Earlier in the week its new, electric vehicle (EV) the 2011 Chevy Volt won the title of car of the year from two trade magazines, Motor Trend and Automobile magazines. → Read More
Advocates for environmentally sustainable business are having a rough week. Two products beloved by the movement, the Tesla Motors Roadster, an all-electric vehicle, and PepsiCo Frito-Lay’s SunChips, the snacks sold in biodegradable bags, are suffering setbacks.
Tesla voluntarily recalled Roadster models 2.0 and 2.5 due to a fire risk… and PepsiCo Frito-Lay announced it would scale back the use of plant-based, biodegradable plastic packaging for SunChips due to complaints about the bags making noise. → Read More
According to an Ernst & Young analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capital investment in US-based cleantech companies hit $1.5 billion for the second quarter, in 68 financing rounds. That translates to an increase of 63.8 percent in capital and a 4.6 percent increase in deals compared to the same period last year.
The $1.5 billion mark also means the highest level of venture funding for the cleantech industry was reached since the third quarter of 2008 (i.e. two years ago). → Read More
SolarCity today announced that it is taking a $21.5 million round of funding led by Mayfield Fund, and the company’s previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DBL Investors and Generation Capital. The company’s prior funding totaled approximately $134 million, and included investors First Solar, JP Morgan and Elon Musk.
SolarCity helps businesses, home owners and government agencies adopt solar power. It designs, installs and provides finance options for appropriate solar systems with a goal of helping its customers generate savings from clean power versus electricity generated from non-renewables. → Read More
Tesla Motors Founder and CEO Elon Musk isn’t a man that backs down when facing the press. When the New York Times wrote an error-filled article, Musk lashed out at the author, saying “What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you’ve got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?” He added “He’s a huge douchebag…and an idiot.”And that was just when a journalist was poking at Tesla. Get into Musk’s personal life and he’ll take off the kid gloves.
Valleywag’s Owen Thomas, now writing for VentureBeat, has for some reason become fascinated with Musk’s personal life and continues to write about the man’s marital woes. He’s called Musk a liar on multiple occasions and seems delighted to get into the sordid details of Musk’s divorce. Musk wrote his side of things on the Huffington Post. Thomas hit him again.
Musk is now responding yet again, below. What bothers me about this exchange is that Silicon Valley press, VentureBeat in particular, is so focused on an entrepreneur’s personal life. A divorce isn’t anything that our readers want to know about. This isn’t Hollywood and these individuals aren’t out there trying to get lots of press about their personal lives. If they were, they’d hire agents and publicists and make the best of it. Instead they are focused on imagining and building the future. There’s no place in our community for these kinds of attacks. VentureBeat should apologize and move on, and let Tesla continue to disrupt the car industry.
Below is Musk’s response: → Read More
One day before its scheduled IPO, Tesla Motors is increasing the allotment of shares that will be sold to the public from 11.1 million to 13.3 million, according to an amendment to its S1 filing. The additional shares are being sold by existing shareholders looking to cash out at the IPO, including Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk who is selling an additional 909,212 of his personal shares. Other selling stockholders include VantagePoint Venture Partners (238,748 shares), Bay Area Equity Fund (88,586), Westly Capital Partners (72,625), Compass Venture Partners (22,931), as well as friends and family like Elon’s brother (and OneRiot CEO) Kimball Musk (12,692). Tesla itself won’t make any additional money from the bump in shares, but more shares will be available to the public.
If Tesla shares open at the high end of its expected range of $14 to $16, the Silicon Valley electric car company will debut with a $1.5 billion market cap (based on 93.5 million total shares outstanding after the IPO and a concurrent $50 million private placement with Toyota). After the offering, Tesla’s largest shareholder will still be founder Elon Musk, who will own 28.4 percent of the company (worth $426 million at that valuation, versus a potential windfall of $14.5 million for the shares he is selling). The second largest shareholder will be Daimler (through an investment arm called Blackstar Investco) with 8 percent of the shares, and the third largest will be the government of Abu Dhabi (through Al Wahada Capital Investment) with 7.8 percent of the shares. The two biggest VC shareholders will be Vantage Capital Partners with 6.6 percent and Valor Equity Partners with 5.25 percent. → Read More
A small Cessna twin-engine plane crashed in East Palo Alto today, killing three Tesla Motors employees and taking out power in parts of the city. The plane took off from Palo Alto airport and reportedly hit some electrical lines. The names of those who were on board have not been released. The plane was registered to Doug Bourn, a senior engineer at Tesla. It is not clear if he was the “high ranking official at Tesla” piloting the plane or if he was even on it. Nobody on the ground is reported to be injured.
Eric Savitz at Barron’s has been blogging updates about the accident all day. It appears to be responsible for a widespread power outage in Palo Alto, which affected Facebook’s offices and many startups. For example, power is still out at TechCrunch HQ in Palo Alto (although our site is still up because our servers are not there). → Read More
Last month SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. They’ve now released last month’s data as well.
A total of a little more than $13 million in sales occurred, with the average transaction size of around $2 million. There continues to be very strong demand for consumer products and services startups (which includes companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.). But the sellers are spread out more evenly across all categories, particularly consumer, IT, Healthcare, energy and cleantech.
36% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, and we’ve heard from independent sources that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). That’s a substantial price increase from less than a month ago. Tesla took 29% of the transactions, and sales of Solyndra stock were 28% of the total. Gridpoint rounded the group out with 7% of the total. → Read More
Right off the heels of filing for a $100 million IPO, electric car company Tesla Motors this morning announced that it has hired former Toyota production engineering GM Gilbert Passin to lead the company’s vehicle manufacturing operations as Vice President of Manufacturing.
Passin has 23 years of international automotive experience under his belt, most recently serving as general manager of production engineering for Toyota in North America. Previously, Passin was vice president of manufacturing at Toyota’s plant in Cambridge, Ontario, which produces over 200,000 automobiles per year. → Read More
SecondMarket opened up its private company stock marketplace in early 2009 and gave employees at hot startups something they never had before – an organized place to sell their stock even before the company went public or was acquired. For the first time the company is releasing information on private company buy/sell demand and completed transactions.
Most companies don’t like SecondMarket one bit, at least at first blush. Companies don’t want random outsiders holding their stock before they’re public. And they don’t like some employees having liquidity events before others, it tends to screw around with morale. And there are also legal and tax issues. Stock options must be priced at “fair market value” or both the employee and company face tax consequences. The board of directors usually sets the common stock price at a fraction of the preferred price. But when there are verified third party purchases on places like SecondMarket, the companies have to use those sales as a guide. The result is higher priced options for all employees.
But we’ve seen a big evolution in startup stock dynamics over the last year. Companies like Facebook and Zynga have created controlled secondary markets for their employees to sell stock, generally at around 65% of the preferred price. Yelp seems to be doing the same. Giving employees a way to “take some money off the table” isn’t such a bad thing after all. Think of it as releasing some of the steam in the pressure cooker.
So about that data. → Read More
It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the floodgates for others to follow.
Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter). I conducted an informal survey of some top VCs and angel investors. These are the names whispered about the most in the Valley and other tech circles. The hope is that the economy will swing back and the public markets will become receptive to IPOs, especially towards the second half of the year. The stock market in general is finding its legs already. The S&P 500 is up 24 percent this year. If the bull market continues, that will be good for the prospects of seeing these potential IPOs. And if it doesn’t, there’s always M&A. → Read More
Tesla Motors is planning an IPO soon according to a Reuter’s report. However at this point it’s still not clear when that will be although the company had previously stated it won’t happen in 2009. In fact, this rumor has been around for sometime, but in case you didn’t notice, the stock market wasn’t doing that well until recently.
Tesla has been ramping up development of its all-electric Model S sports sedan and building selling Tesla Roadsters as quick as they can make ‘em. Of course the $597.5 million in funding that the company raised this year probably helps. → Read More
Remember that whole sour grapes law suit filed against Tesla Motors and Elon Musk by co-founder and former CEO Martin Eberhard? According to Eberhard’s lawyer, he has dropped the suit but doesn’t give any clarification as to why Eberhard dismissed the legal action, according to the San Jose Business Journal.
We reported earlier this summer that Eberhard filed a lawsuit against Tesla and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, citing allegations of slander, libel and breach of contract. Eberhard made many outrageous accusations, alleging that Musk “compromised Tesla Motors’ financial health.” Eberhard also said that Musk began a smear campaign against Eberhard on media outlets, accusing Musk of pushing him out of the company that he founded and taking full credit for developing the first electric car the company produced, the Roadster. Eberhard also claimed that Musk not only falsely said that he was the founder of the company, but has also misrepresented his past roles, including the extent of his involvement with the company he founded, PayPal. → Read More
Silicon Valley’s electric car company, Tesla Motors, says that it hit profitability in July. The private company reports that it made “approximately $1 million of earnings” on revenues of $20 million, and that it shipped 109 Roadsters, its $109,000 all-electric sports car. The revenues reflect GAAP accounting standards and are only for the month of July.
Founder and CEO Elon Musk predicted in June that the company would soon hit profitability at the end of a lengthy blog post dealing primarily with a lawsuit brought on by Tesla’s ousted co-founder Martin Eberhard. In June, Tesla was also awarded a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy, which will help it manufacture its more reasonably priced Modern S sedan. → Read More
Tesla, which has now delivered 500 Roadsters, will be opening several new sales showrooms this summer, the company says. Currently the company has showrooms only in California. Three of the new showrooms will be in Europe – London, Monaco and Munich. New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami are also on the list.
The company says that the first Roadsters will be delivered to European buyers this summer. At least three Tesla buyers have exported their cars to Europe already, though (one each to Germany, Norway and Spain).
The company, which is now more valuable than General Motors, recently unveiled its second model, the Model S.
The company also says that it’s looking for showroom locations in Washington DC and Toronto. → Read More
Silicon Valley electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors got another shot in the arm today from German auto giant Daimler, which took a 10 percent stake in the company and expanded its partnership with Tesla to equip future Mercedes-Benz vehicles with electric lithium-ion batteries. Mercedes has been testing Tesla’s batteries in a fleet of 100 smart cars, and is already moving into limited production. But with this agreement, Mercedes now expects to roll out its first battery-powered Mercedes-Benz in 2010, and offer battery-powered vehicles for all of its models by 2012.
The amount invested was not disclosed, but even more valuable to Tesla is the vote of confidence from one of the world’s leading auto companies. In a press release, Daimler proclaims: “Tesla is the only production automaker selling a highway capable electric vehicle in North America and Europe.” → Read More
Mike and I were the first journalists to ride in the new Tesla Model S sedan yesterday and we were captivated by the massive 17-inch touch screen (so was Gizmodo) featured in the center console of the car. Both Tesla CEO Elon Musk and chief designer Franz von Holzhausen didn’t say much about the on screen system, except that it does have touch capability, it is an “entertainment center” and that it is a prototype which is still undergoing changes and improvements (see what both Musk and von Holzhausen said in our video).
Tesla says that 520 S Model all electric sedans have been reserved by customers in first week since it was announced. At that announcement, Tesla debuted the screen but it wasn’t much to look at (see right). Now it looks much better (Thanks to Nik_Nik for the picture above). → Read More
PayPal cofounder, SpaceX Founer and Tesla CEO Elon Musk takes the stage today at the Web 2.0 Summit to talk with John Battelle.
What do space flights and electric cars have to do with Web 2.0? Absolutely nothing. Still, there will be lots to talk about. In September SpaceX put a Falcon rocket into Earth orbit, the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach earth orbit from the ground. More recently, his Tesla Motors has gone through layoffs and raised another $40 million, and Musk took over the CEO role. There have also been some spectacular Tesla crashes.
Our live notes of the interview are below. → Read More
Don’t pull the plug quite yet on Elon Musk’s electric sports car startup Tesla Motors. After laying off 18 percent of its workforce two weeks ago (69 people out of 384, we have confirmed with the company) and reportedly burning through all but $9 million in cash, Tesla is getting another lifeline in the form of a $40 million convertible. That is convertible as in debt, not convertible as in riding with the top down. Investors have now sunk $186 million into the company.
Add to that the tens of millions of dollars in deposits that Tesla has already collected for 1,200 vehicles (only 50 of which have been shipped). These are $110,000 machines, some of which already have been paid in full and others which have deposits on them ranging from $5,000 to $60,000. → Read More
Tesla Motors has been hit hard with credit crunch of late, but the billionaire founder of Telsa and PayPal has personally guaranteed that all of the 1,200 battery-powered Tesla Roadster pre-orders will be filled. So far, only 60 of the 1,200 cars have been delivered and the company seems to be consolidating after shutting down and laying off 90% of the Detroit, MI office. However, with this latest round of financing of $20 million and $200 million from a U.S. Department of Energy loan, the company hopes to be continue operations. Hopefully, operations will continue enough to not only build all the Roadster pre-orders but also the sexy BMW 5 series, sports-sedan Model S. recently announced. (Pictured above) → Read More
