We take a look at the clean technology companies that have raised the most venture funding in the last few years. Overall, it is not light and pleasant reading.

Bridgelux, hoping to leapfrog competitors in the LED lighting business, is pioneering a new technology for LED chip making and betting the company on its success. The company that has received $296 million in venture funding took another step toward that goal by announcing a key deal with its new technology partner Toshiba

Van den Berg joined VantagePoint in 2006 from Venrock Partners and participated in the firm’s cleantech investing. He is a board member at Switch Lighting and Bridgelux, according to his LinkedIn profile

Bridgelux Inc. said that it raised $25 million from Kaistar Lighting (Xiamen) Co., Ltd. The money will allow the maker of LED chips for lighting to accelerate research, development, and production of its chips and packaging technology. PRESS RELEASE KAISTAR LIGHTING INVESTS $25 MILLION IN BRIDGELUX LIVERMORE, CALIF., February 13, 2012 – Bridgelux Inc., a [...]

Cleantech venture fundings have been slow as of late. In the second quarter, dollars invested in the emerging industry fell 23% to $942 million according to the MoneyTree Report put out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters, publisher of peHUB. For all of 2010, money placed with alternative energy, smart grid [...]

Global cleantech investing fell in the second quarter as cautious investors favored later rounds and chose smaller energy efficiency deals over big-ticket solar. Venture investors put $1.83 billion into 161 transactions during the three months, down 10% in dollars from last year and 33% from the first quarter of the year, according to data released [...]

Solar titan First Solar sent dark clouds over the cleantech markets last week when quarterly earnings fell by almost a third. Yesterday, skies cleared when JA Solar’s latest financial report beat Wall Street’s estimates with a nearly 90% rise in quarterly net income, even though Energy Conversion Devices conceded its third quarter sales tumbled 70%. [...]

Cleantech IPOs may be gaining momentum.

Solar plant developer BrightSource Energy filed what is certain to be an explosive initial public offering last week. A couple months earlier biochemical maker Gevo launched its IPO to what proved to be a warm reception. Experimental algae-to-fuel company Solazyme is waiting in the wings.

Which company will be next? In November, Venture Capital Journal published a list of the most likely and lucrative cleantech IPOs of 2011. At the top of our list was BrightSource, so we are off to a good start.

Watch our slideshow to see the other six cleantech companies VCJ believes have a very good shot of going public this year. Our investment data comes from Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog.

Semiconductor investing isn’t as trendy as it was, say, 30 years ago, but U.S. venture money going to chip startups rose 63% from the fourth quarter to the first. The increase followed two quarters of declines and came even as the number of deals slipped slightly. The uptick is due in large part to several [...]

LED lighting chipmaker Bridgelux has raised another $20.7 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The California company has now raised a total of $155 million from venture backers, including a $60 million round last March, according to Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog. Tuesday’s filing does not state what the [...]