A password will be e-mailed to you.

Makani_image21-600x400

After previously investing in the company, Google has now acquired Makani Power, a green energy startup founded by Saul Griffith and Don Montague  — former World Cup windsurfer and Naish’s first kite designer.  Makani Power currently builds airborne wind turbines.

The acquisition was first reported in Brad Stone’s Businessweek story about Google X, and judging from Stone’s story, the team will join Google X. Google invested $10 million in the Alameda, Calif.-based company in 2006 and another $5 million in 2008. As far as we can see, this also marks the first time Google has acquired a company specifically for its Google X skunkworks.

Stone reports that Google CEO Larry Page approved the acquisition, but as Google X’s director Astro Teller notes, Page said that X “could have the budget and the people to go do this, but that we had to make sure to crash at least five of the devices in the near future.”

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Congratulations to Don and the crew at Makani!

Get the complete story here: https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani-power-and-its-airborne-wind-turbines/

Check out TKB’s feature on Don Montague and Makani in the Volume 9, No 4 issue from December 2012.