Solazyme vs Cobalt Technologies: Who's the Best?

Background: This is a Sweet Sixteen (third round), Western  Regional match-up between #1 seed Solazyme and #4 seed Cobalt Technologies, in the 2011 Transformative Technologies tourney, from Biofuels Digest.

Voting: Open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

The winner gets: Most votes advances to the Elite Eight (round of 8), and a shot at the Biofuels Final Four.

The loser: Goes home.

Laurels: Solazyme is the 2nd ranked company in the 2010-11 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. Cobalt is currently #14.

The match-up: It’s another West Coast SynthBio Shootout. Solazyme defeated OakBio in the first round, 79-21, and esily handled Genomatica in round two, 62-38. Cobalt beat Verenium 60-40 in round one, and edged by Ceres 53-47 in its second-round match.

Cobalt is aiming to demonstrate its cellulosic biobutanol technology, using woodchips as a feedstock, as soon as 2012 in a partnership with American Process. Cobalt, which makes n-butanol is aiming at the chemicals markets.

Solazyme is coming off a series of partnership announcements with Roquette and others, and a celebrated IPO. It’s path of growing algae in the dark and producing renewable oils has seen the company sell out its capacity through 2015 as it scrambles to raise $$ to meet the demand. Solazyme took 79 percent of the vote in its first-round match-up against OakBio.

Deep dive data on Cobalt Technologies

Cobalt’s complete Hot 50 / Transformative Technologies profile is here.