Israel’s Pythagoras Solar Raises $10M

Israel’s growing solar industry, early moves on electric vehicles (the home to Shai Agassi’s first electric vehicle infrastructure project) and recently funded water startups is making the state one of the front-runners of the cleantech revolution. And Israel keeps churning out new solar startups; on Monday a solar photovoltaic company called Pythagoras Solar said it had raised a Series A round of $10 million.

The release says that Pythagoras will use the funds, raised from Israel Cleantech Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital and Evergreen Venture Partners, for R&D and to bring its technology to market. The company’s web site has very few details about what makes Pythagoras’ technology any kind of breakthrough, only that it uses “innovative geometry to revolutionize the cost of solar,” and is working on “software models, optic design, semiconductor processes, materials science, and mass manufacturing techniques” to accomplish that task. The company’s website says they’ll release more details in 2009, but we’ll update the post if we get more solid answers from them.

Israel has been home to quite a few recently emerged solar startups, including next generation solar materials company Xjet Solar and solar power conversion startup SolarEdge Technologies (update: Israel Cleantech Ventures didn’t invest in those, see below). At the same time Israel has been aggressive about implementing its own solar laws. Avi Brenmiller, president of solar thermal company Solel, which also hails from Israel, told us that Israeli law has pushing the domestic solar industry forward with legislation like enforcing solar-powered water heaters on rooftops.