Energy Lived Here

August 26 2020

"Energy lives here" is Exxon Mobil's slogan. Exxon, the longest-serving company in the Dow Jones Index, finally dropped out today. The new decade ushers in the era of clean energy, electric vehicles, and a focus on sustainability. For that corporate slogan, it might be more accurate to say that "energy lived there."

Exxon Mobil, which joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1928, is being removed from the blue-chip stock market index. Its replacement is enterprise software company Salesforce, signaling the end of an era, from "oil in the ground" to "data in the cloud."

Oil plays a much smaller role in the U.S. economy today than it did 50 years ago. While fracking has helped revive and grow the energy sector in the U.S., demand for fossil fuels has flatlined — and has dropped during the COVID-19 economic slowdown. In the 1980s, energy companies made up as much as a quarter of the Dow. After Exxon's exits on Monday, energy will account for just 2% of the index.

It is very telling that the replacement for Exxon is Salesforce.com, a company focused on SaaS products. The world economy is shifting away from industrial production to technology and data.

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Clean Energy Companies:

NextEra Energy, Inc. is a leading clean energy company headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida. NextEra Energy owns two electric companies in Florida: 1) Florida Power & Light Company, which serves more than 5M customer accounts in Florida and is the largest rate-regulated electric utility in the United States as measured by retail electricity produced and sold; and 2) Gulf Power Company, which serves more than 460,000 customers in 8 counties throughout northwest Florida.

Orsted is an integrated energy company with leading market positions in Denmark and other key areas of Northern Europe. Orsted is a full-value chain energy company, from wind farms, oil & gas exploration, power plants, and wholesale and trading to heat and electricity sales to business and private consumers. Orsted operates in Northern Europe and is headquartered in Denmark. Over the past few years, Orsted has shifted its focus from natural gas sourcing, wholesale, exploration, and gas and oil production to become an integrated energy company with activities across the value chain.

Cypress Creek believes solar makes the world cleaner and healthier. The company develops, builds, and operates solar facilities across the United States. With more than 3 gigawatts of solar developed and deployed in more than a dozen states, Cypress Creek Renewables is one of the country’s leading solar companies and tops PrivCo's list as the ‘Most Viewed’ renewable energy company.

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Arm Ltd. Halts Spinoff of Two Internet-of-Things (IoT) Businesses to SoftBank

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Since last week, PrivCo has added:
1,108 Companies | 175 M&A Deals | 160 Funding Activities

Funding & Deal Highlights:

Humanity, combining digital and biomedical biomarkers into a consumer app that will fully launch next year, announces its initial seed fundraise of $2.5M in a round led by Boston fund One Way Ventures and the legendary and long-time health tech angel investor Esther Dyson, among others.

Lootcakes has raised $2M in venture funding to reward VIP gamers who share their data about their playing habits in a privacy-safe way. It’s like a new kind of frequent flyer rewards program.

Checkerspot, Inc., a Berkeley, CA, and Salt Lake City-based materials innovation company, closes its Series B financing of $36M. The round was led by Viking Global Investors, with participation from other existing investors including Builders VC and Breakout Ventures. Wilbur Ellis’s Cavallo Ventures, a new strategic investor in Checkerspot, also participated. Including the Series B, Checkerspot has raised more than $50M.

Icon, an Austin, Texas-based developer of advanced construction technologies including robotics, software, and building materials, completes a $35M Series A round of financing.

Podimetrics, a virtual care management company with the leading solution to help prevent costly and deadly diabetic amputations, announces that Dr. Foluso Fakorede, Doug Ghertner, and David Joyner have joined the company's advisory board. This comes as the company closes its Series B-2 funding round with additional contributions from existing investors Polaris Partners, Rock Health, Norwich Ventures, and Scientific Health Development. The investment puts the total Series B funding at $24.6M.

Change Healthcare announces that it had acquired the Nucleus.io medical imaging platform, a product of San Diego-based NucleusHealth. The company says it will use Nucleus' technology to complete its own medical imaging platform and will leverage the more than 7,500 organizations Nucleus serves. The acquisition will speed Change's timeline for implementing cloud-based, end-to-end software for its own Change Healthcare Enterprise Imaging Network, officials said.

BlockFi, a cryptocurrency lender and financial services company, announces that it raised $50M in Series C funding led by Morgan Creek Digital. The previous series B round raised $30M in funding.

New York City-based Klara is using artificial-intelligence-driven automation to improve communication between patients and their doctors' offices. The startup's work to modernize medical practices has attracted Google's AI-focused investment fund Gradient Ventures, which co-led Klara's $15M financing round.

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