Viridos raises $25M in Series A funding from BEV, Chevron and United Airlines

In California, Viridos, Inc. has raised a $25M Series A equity investment. The Series A was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) and joined by Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and United Airlines Ventures. The funding will be used for R&D to further increase algae oil productivity to reach commercially deployable levels.

Viridos’ bioengineering technology consists of genetically engineering algae, combined with optimized production processes and systems to enable large scale production. The company’s unique approach combines several important and unique attributes contributing to scalability and sustainability, including:

·      Surface area oil productivities of Viridos algae far exceed any traditional oil crop, achieving high algae oil output on comparatively small areas

·      Viridos algae are grown in vessels containing seawater. This allows contained deployment in hot and dry locations without taxing scarce freshwater and arable land resources, while eliminating runoff

·      Viridos algae have extremely high oil contents facilitating downstream processing to algae oil

·      Viridos algae oil is a quality plant oil allowing existing bio-refineries to process the oil with high yields