Financial services firm Wells Fargo invested an additional $20m in its $10m cleantech and startup incubator, the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²), on Tuesday.
Launched by Wells Fargo and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2014, IN² aims to accelerate the development of early-stage cleantech, and initially concentrated on technology that could reduce the environmental impact of buildings.
Participants are eligible to receive up to $250,000 in non-dilutive funding from Wells Fargo as well as technical assistance from NREL experts and beta testing access at a facility run by Wells Fargo or one of the initiative’s strategic partners.
So far, 20 companies have secured funding from the incubator. The decision to increase the capital available to IN² was made as it widens its focus to take in sectors such as transport, microgrid technologies and sustainable agriculture.
Ashley Grosh, IN² co-lead for Wells Fargo, said: “We are very excited to leverage this additional funding to extend the successful IN² program model beyond the commercial building space to support innovation in other important cleantech verticals, and to nurture an ecosystem where more startups and innovators receive the technical support and encouragement they need at their earliest stages in order to advance toward commercialisation of their technologies.”