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SynapSense Adds $7M To Second VC Round
3/10/2009 – Johnny Cash famously sung about a dreary life in a Folsom, Calif., prison, but Folsom-based energy efficiency company SynapSense Corp. isn't singing the blues now that it raised $7 million in cash in a tough credit environment.
The company reopened its second venture capital round, adding $7 million for continued expansion of its data center energy efficiency business.
SynapSense makes hardware and software that includes a wireless network and an electronic dashboard. The technology helps building operators more efficiently manage their data centers. Instead of having to build more space and use more energy, the technology allows a company to optimize efficiency by monitoring conditions in the data center such as temperature, humidity and how efficient the air conditioning is running.
The company said the technology can achieve up to 30% increased energy efficiency.
Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH joined previous SynapSense investors Emerald Technology Ventures, Sequoia Capital, American River Ventures, Nth Power and DFJ Frontier in this round extension.
The company's second round first closed with $11 million in September 2007, said President and Chief Executive Peter Van Deventer in an interview with Clean Technology Insight. SynapSense's first round raised $2 million when the company was founded in May 2006.
"We're kind of a good news story in a stormy weather environment now," Van Deventer said. "We have got an emerging technology that's ramping relatively quickly, and we're solving a problem that most every enterprise in the world has, and that's how they manage and optimize their data centers."
Van Deventer said the technology coordinates millions of data points in these computer centers.
He declined to release any revenue figures for the company. Its customers include International Business Machines Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Facebook Inc.
Rodrigo Prudencio, a partner with Nth Power, said in an interview that his firm has invested in SynapSense three times because "controlling and monitoring various end points of energy consumption at a scale that reflects the fact that we use energy all over the place is important."
He also said he thinks the company's technology can be expanded into related market segments.
San Francisco-based Nth Power invests in clean technology companies, including other energy efficiency businesses. For example, it invested in demand-response company Comverge Inc. before it went public in April 2007.
http://www.synapsense.com
By Sari Krieger