• Amyris

  Participated · Equity · Oct 2009

  Amyris Biotechnologies produces and supplies renewable chemicals and transportation fuels. The company will use a $47.8M investment from Temasek Holdings to support commercial plant design and construction activities and ongoing operations in the U.S. and Brazil. Amyris was founded in 2003 and is based in Emeryville, California. Since inception it has secured $244M in private funding, including capital invested into Amyris Biotechnologies and its subsidiary Amyris Brasil S.A. Investors in the company have included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, TPG Biotechnology, Votorantim Novos Negocios, Advanced Equities Inc., DAG Ventures, Grupo Cornélio Brennand, Naxos U.K., The Westly Group, and Stratus Group. The new capital is intended to advance commercialization efforts tied to plant design and construction while supporting ongoing operations. Amyris engineers microbes to convert feedstocks such as switchgrass and sugarcane into compounds that can be processed into gasoline, diesel and jet-fuel analogs. The company is advancing from pilot-scale demonstrations toward commercial production and is building its first commercial-scale biofuel plant, slated to begin production in 2011. It has partnered with Brazil’s Crystalev to convert sugar cane and plans to produce 200 million gallons by 2011, and it is working on a jet fuel product targeted for market readiness in 2012. Amyris is based in Emeryville, California, and has attracted top-tier cleantech backers including Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as well as DAG Ventures, Votorantim Novos Negocios and TPG Biotech. The company reported a valuation of $470 million last summer and has been building capital through multiple financing rounds to fund scale-up and commercial construction.

No current team members are available.