NexSteppe develops tailored crops—notably Palo Alto biomass sorghum and Malibu sweet sorghum—to provide scalable, sustainable feedstocks for the biofuels, biopower and biobased products industries. Its sugars and biomass are designed to be processed by biomass boilers, anaerobic digesters and biorefineries into power, first- and second-generation biofuels, plastics and chemical intermediates. The Palo Alto and Malibu product lines are already available to customers in Brazil and the U.S., and DuPont says its collaboration helped NexSteppe achieve its first commercial sales in those markets. NexSteppe plans to use new funding to improve existing product lines, launch additional lines, and expand market development globally. The company positions its crops as bankable, non-food-competing feedstock solutions as commercial-scale cellulosic biorefineries begin operations. NexSteppe is based in South San Francisco, Calif. NexSteppe is a Maliby, CA-based company developing sweet sorghum, high biomass sorghum and switchgrass through plant breeding as sustainable feedstocks for the biofuels, biopower and biobased products industries. Its bred crops are intended to be processed by biorefineries, sugar-to-ethanol mills and coal- or biomass-fired power plants into fuels, power, plastics and cosmetics. Led by founder and CEO Anna Rath, the company focuses on breeding programs to produce varieties suitable for industrial processing. NexSteppe raised $14M in a second round of funding to scale up its sugar and biomass programs and to advance its first products toward commercialization. The financing is intended to support scale-up of breeding and product development efforts. As part of the funding, a Braemar Energy Ventures partner joined the company's board of directors.

Total raised

$36M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Sep 2014