Cobalt Biofuels raised $25 million in equity to accelerate the commercialization of biobutanol, the company said in a release. The Series C equity round was co-led by LSP and Pinnacle Ventures and included both new and existing investors.
Biobutanol is a biofuel that can be used as a
standalone transportation fuel, as an additive to gasoline or diesel
fuel and as an additive to improve the properties of ethanol.
Biobutanol can be used at full strength in today’s automobile engines
and can be distributed through existing pipelines, in both cases unlike
ethanol. Butanol can also be sold into the industrial chemical market,
where it has numerous applications.
Cobalt’s says its technology allows
it to profitably produce biobutanol from a diverse range of non-food
feedstocks. As a result, Cobalt Biofuels has the flexibility to site
its facilities in a wide range of geographies and use the feedstock
available locally. These advantages reduce the cost of the fuel and
also increase environmental sustainability across the Cobalt Biofuels
value chain.
"With this round of funding Cobalt Biofuels will move aggressively toward commercial production of cost effective, non-food based biobutanol," said Pamela Contag, President and CEO of Cobalt Biofuels.
The Series C round had strong participation from Cobalt Biofuels’ existing institutional investors, including Pinnacle Ventures, Vantage Point Venture Partners, The Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund and @Ventures. New investors included LSP and Harris and Harris. Fouad Azzam, General Partner of LSP, will be joining the Board. Cobalt Biofuels’ investor group provides the company access to deep expertise in process scale up and the commercialization of biofuels.
"Closing a funding round of this size in this economic environment is a testimony to the strength of Cobalt Biofuels’ technology and the tremendous potential that biobutanol has as a next generation biofuel," said Ken Pelowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Pinnacle Ventures and a Cobalt Biofuels director.
"We looked at many biofuels opportunities before deciding to invest," said Fouad Azzam, General Partner of LSP, a leading international life sciences venture capital firm with offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston. "We are firmly convinced that with this funding, Cobalt Biofuels is on a clear path to be the first next generation biofuels company to successfully commercialize biobutanol."
About Cobalt Biofuels
Based in Mountain View, California, Cobalt Biofuels is developing biobutanol. Cobalt has proprietary technologies in microbial physiology, strain development, fermentation and low-energy fuel separation, which make possible a new generation of fuels that burn cleaner, are more cost-effective, and enhance environmental sustainability, according to Cobalt.
Loading...