Biofuel startups target revenue

Kiverdi CEO Lisa Dyson.

Biofuel and biochemical startups have wised up about market forces. Many first-generation companies that produced advanced fuels and products shot for the moon, targeting transportation fuel markets that required years of research and development as well as massive scale up and capital. Such companies included South San Francisco-based Solazyme, Emeryville-based Amyris Biotechnologies, and South San Francisco-based LS9 plus other companies such as Kior and Gevo that formed between 2003 and 2006.

Lawrence Berkeley Lab's JBEI spins out first biofuels company: Lygos

The Joint BioEnergy Institute of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has spun out its first business, a cellulosic biofuel company named Lygos.
Emeryville’s JBEI is led by Jay Keasling, who is one of the five men who started Lygos. The JBEI itself was started in 2007 and will likely be moved from Emeryville into the lab’s new campus, now planned for the Richmond Field Station along San Francisco Bay.
Lygos has so far used sugar as a feedstock to create fuel -- or “petrochemical replacements” -- on a laboratory scale. The process it uses to make the chemicals is itself “nearly carbon neutral,” the lab said.