Troubles at Nanosolar?
Much-heralded -- and much-funded -- solar panel company Nanosolar seems to be going through some jarring high-level change. The $100m-funded company -- whose investors include Google's founders, Benchmark Capital, an Apax partnerWhy not? Because Eberspacher just joined Applied Materials:
Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT) announced today that Dr. Chris Eberspacher has joined the company’s Solar Business Group to lead advanced R&D programs. In this new role, Dr. Eberspacher will lead efforts for both silicon and non-silicon based solar materials and will report to Dr. Winfried Hoffmann, chief technology officer of Applied’s Solar Business Group. Before joining Applied, Dr. Eberspacher was most recently chief scientist at Nanosolar, Inc., a solar start-up focused on roll-to-roll processing of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) products.[Update] After posting this I received a note from Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen. He says that Eberspacher actually "disengaged" with Nanosolar "almost two months ago", well before joining AMAT. Martin went on to argue that Eberspacher's departure wasn't that big a deal, a point upon which we apparently disagree.
[via Businesswire]
