Lucid Energy announced that the company has received funding from OurCrowd, Israel’s hybrid venture capital/crowdfunding platform. OurCrowd links accredited investors with early-stage companies seeking venture capital. Lucid Energy, based in Portland, Ore., is the first U.S. company to be featured in OurCrowd.
OurCrowd was founded by veteran high tech venture capitalist Jonathan Medved and ten other Israeli investment professionals. Medved was invited as a keynote speaker last year at the newly formed Oregon-Israel Business Alliance (OIBA), an organization that was created to expand business and economic relations between the state of Oregon and Israel. It was at this event that Medved met Lucid Energy president and CEO Gregg Semler and became aware of the company’s LucidPipe technology and his desire to explore opportunities in Israel.
“In Israel, we are passionate about clean water and renewable energy technologies,” said Medved, founder of OurCrowd. “Water is our most critical resource, and as a result we have become a global leader in smart water by necessity. When we saw considerable interest in the LucidPipe technology from a major Israeli water agency, we realized that Lucid Energy is a game-changer for water agencies who constitute one of the world’s largest consumers of energy.”
Lucid Energy is using the OurCrowd funding to globally roll out the LucidPipe Power System, which is a hydroelectric system that generates low-cost, renewable energy from fast-flowing water inside of large-diameter municipal, agricultural and industrial pipelines. The first commercial installation of the system in Riverside, Calif. has been in operation since January 2012 and the company is currently installing systems in Portland, Ore., San Antonio and Haifa, Israel.
“We are thrilled to be working with OurCrowd,” said Gregg Semler, CEO of Lucid Energy Inc. “The speed and efficiency of the OurCrowd platform—which has brought entrepreneurial investors to us from as far away as Israel, New York, Brazil and Australia—is amazing.”
“Lucid Energy has provided a unique solution to a fast growing market,” commented Elan Zivotofsky, OurCrowd general partner. “Water usage worldwide is growing rapidly, and in order to meet this demand, thousands of miles of water pipelines are being built in fast-developing countries while, at the same time, many of the world’s existing pipelines are aging and in dire need of repairs.”
Source: Lucid Energy
