Fallbrook Technologies Spinoff Viryd Raises Another $5M for Wind Power Innovation

Viryd Technologies, a wind turbine technology startup spun out last May by San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies, has secured a $5 million investment that includes a Chinese maker of automotive components.

Viryd was founded near Austin, TX, to integrated Fallbrook’s proprietary transmission technology in power-generating wind turbines for the renewable energy. Unlike a conventional transmission, which uses a set of gears with specific fixed-speed ratios, Fallbrook’s continuously variable transmission uses a planetary mechanism that “shifts” seamlessly as a drive train accelerates and decelerates.

Fallbrook CEO William Klehm tells me that Viryd shares many of the true-believer angel investors who invested $25 million in Fallbrook after it was founded in 1998, and who joined in the $29.4 million raised last year in Fallbrook’s first round of venture funding. Neither Viryd nor Fallbrook has identified its individual investors, although Klehm has previously disclosed that Fallbrook’s angels include Gary Jacobs, son of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, and Gary Weiss, whose Weiss Group provides consulting and executive search services.

Viryd is announcing today it has raised another $5 million from its existing investors and China’s Ningbo Shentong Auto Decorations. Shentong also will name a representative to Viryd’s board of directors. The Texas company raised $5M from  individual investors last year. Viryd and Shentong Group plan to form a joint venture to manufacture wind turbines for markets worldwide, and especially in Asia and China, where the market for renewable energy is just emerging.

Viryd says the design of its drive train enables the rotors of a wind turbine to rotate more efficiently at any wind speed. Its design also allows for the use of an inexpensive generator that can be connected directly to the utility grid without power electronics and inverters, according to the company. Fallbrook, meanwhile, continues to develop its NuVinci continuously variable transmission for the automotive market, saying its transmission without gears operates more efficiently and at lower cost than conventional transmissions.

Viryd’s deal with Ninbo Shentong Auto could bear implications for Fallbrook as well. Based in Yuyao City in mainland China, the company’s customers include Shanghai General Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, FAW-Volkswagen, Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen AutoMobile (DPCA) and Beijing Mercedes-Benz (Daimler Chrysler).

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.