LS9 Completes $30 Million Financing Round

摘要

Synthetic biology start-up LS9 (San Francisco, CA) says it has raised $30 million in a Series D funding round, led by new investor BlackRock (New York). All previous investors, including Flagship Ventures (Cambridge, MA), Khosla Ventures (Menlo Park, CA), and Lightspeed Venture Partners (Menlo Park), also contributed. “We are very pleased that this outstandinggroup of new and existing investors has demonstrated their commitmentto LS9’s mission to bring renewable chemical and fuel products to market,” says Ed Dineen newly appointed president and CEO of LS9. “In particular with BlackRock the world’s largest asset manager joining our investor group, and given their increasing focus on renewables, we believe this will benefit LS9 in a number of ways. With this new round of funding, LS9 will be able to accelerate implementation of our plans to commercialize our technology and grow our product portfolio.” LS9 has developed microbes that convert fatty acid intermediates into petroleum replacement products via fermentation of renewable sugars. On the fuels side, the company can produce biodiesel and jet fuel. The technology can also produce a range of biochemicals, including fatty acids, fatty esters, fatty alcohols of different chain lengths and branching, linear and branched alkanes, alpha and internal olefins, and some aldehydes. LS9 is currently retrofitting a plant at Okeechobee, FL to serve as a demonstrationunit, which is expected to start up in 2012. Commercial-scale operations would likely start no earlier than 2013.