FloDesign Gets $3M, Plans to Expand

Wilbraham, MA’s FloDesign Wind Turbine will get $3 million in funding from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, as it plans to expand its operation in the state with the addition of a new corporate headquarters and product development center in Waltham, the state announced today. FloDesign, which is developing wind turbines with technology reminiscent of jet engines, will keep its Wilbraham location as an aerodynamics research center. The new funding will come in the form of a $600,000 convertible grant that could give the Clean Energy Center an equity stake in the company, $1.7 million from the center’s Renewable Energy Trust, and a $700,000 five-year forgivable loan, which requires FloDesign to add 150 jobs in the state over three years and maintain them for another two years. Wade caught up with FloDesign’s new CEO in January, days after the company announced it had raised $35 million in Series B funding.

Author: Erin Kutz

Erin Kutz has a background in covering business, politics and general news. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University. Erin previously worked in the Boston bureau of Reuters, where she wrote articles on the investment management and mutual fund industries. While in college, she researched for USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell’s book, Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. She also spent a semester in Washington, DC, reporting Capitol Hill stories as a correspondent for two Connecticut newspapers and interning in the Money section of USA Today, where she assisted with coverage on the retail and small business beats. Erin got her first taste of reporting at Boston University’s independent student newspaper, as a city section reporter and fact checker and editor of the paper’s weekly business section.