On Tuesday, Seattle’s BlueDot Photonics, a maker of perovskite materials increasingly used in state-of-the-art solar cells, announced that it has received seed-round financing from VoLo Earth Ventures, a Colorado-based early-stage energy technology VC fund. Besides VoLo’s leadership in the financing round, other BlueDot investors include Boston’s Clean Energy Venture Group and Seattle angel investors E8.
In a statement on the funding round, BlueDot CEO Jared Silvia said the company plans to use its seed round to accelerate its prototyping cycles and shorten its time to market. The company, which began as a spin-out from the University of Washington, has already received industry and academic plaudits. In 2019, BlueDot received the Grand Prize and Potential for Impact Award at the 2019 Pacific Northwest Cascadia CleanTech Accelerator Program. In 2020, the firm was one of 50 selected from an applicant pool of more than 600 energy technology companies from 60 countries to join the inaugural cohort of the Third Derivative program, Cohort 417, a joint venture between the energy transition non-profit RMI and energy startup incubator New Energy Nexus.
BlueDot is an innovator in the emerging field of perovskite technologies–named after the perovskite mineral whose crystal formation is similar to the manufactured cell–used in solar energy production. The U.S. Department of Energy has pointed to the potential of perovskite as a solar cell input for high performance and low production costs, although challenges to large-scale implementation remain due to issues with stability in different weather and light environments, scalability, efficiency, technology validation and manufacturability.
BlueDot says its own perovskite application can lower the cost of solar power by up to 10 percent, by improving energy yield in solar panels by up to 16 percent.
“The cost of solar has come down tremendously in the past two decades, making it cheaper than or competitive with most non-renewable energy generation in the U.S.,” said Kareem Dabbagh, Managing Partner of lead investor VoLo Earth Ventures. “Our investment in BlueDot and their quantum-cutting technology is really exciting as it will accelerate this downward solar cost trend by making solar even more efficient with minimal changes to the existing supply chain and manufacturing process.
“As a leader in perovskites, BlueDot is at the forefront of research and development in this exciting new field and their products will help make solar energy ubiquitous throughout our communities,” Dabbagh added.
VoLo Earth Ventures has a partner affiliation with RMI and Third Derivative, as well as Voloridge Investment Management and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The company has previously invested in Banyan Infrastructure, wireless EV charging company HEVO, and power-purchase agreement software firm HST.
