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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (39373)	8/28/2008 9:55:02 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218074

64.233.169.104 Applied Materials may not be a sexy company, but it is playing big in GreenTech and that's sexy to me. It has created its own venture capital arm and has plopped down $100's of millions to make big changes in its future. Recently Applied Materials, one of the least sexy companies in the world, just starting showing off some of its efforts to give itself a make over. For quite some time now Applied has been one of the world's largest manufacturer of factory equipment for the semiconductor industry (boring right?) Recently, the management has decided to take the company in a bold new direction that in solar, nanotechnology and host of other things that add up to Applied Materials making a big and I mean BIG bet on Green. Earlier this week, they made headlines for acquiring its 3rd solar company, Baccini, for $334 million dollars, but everyone missed the real story behind the acquisition: A complete makover of Applied Materials. I took a deeper look at what Applied Materials has been up to and its quite fascinating. With 17 investments, including the recently announced Fat Spaniel, Applied Materials' VC arm has been quite active and quite bold. Could a corporate VC arm like the one at Applied Materials actually have an advantage over traditional "smart" VCs. Do they understand the supply chain of Green better than the professional investors? Time will tell, but one thing is for sure - as I mention in almost every article I write, there will be a lot of new players in the Green investment industry and that will cause some interesting power shifts. Take a look at their portfolio and you will get a sense of what I am talking about. Many if not most of these companies represent incredibly speciifc pieces of the supply chain of a complex system of components that are all part of Green in one way or another.