Verdezyne Raises $3M in Venture Funding to Advance Industrial Biotechnology

Carlsbad CA-based Verdezyne, which just disclosed a $1.7 million government grant, has raised nearly $3 million of a planned $15.2 million round of venture capital, according to a regulatory filing yesterday.

The company, which was previously known as CODA Genomics, is developing genetic engineering techniques and processes for producing industrial chemicals and fuels from microbes. When Verdezyne announced two weeks ago it had received the $1.7 million Small Business Technology Transfer grant, the company said the funds would be used to develop gene libraries for its computational and bioinformatics programs.

Details about Verdezyne’s latest venture round are not available, as CEO William Radany is out of the country. In an interview four months ago, Verezyne’s vice president of business development, Damien Perriman, said the company is directing its activities at both improved ethanol fermentation and new ways of producing chemicals. Perriman said the company’s technology could help ethanol producers now sitting idle by improving yields, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and speeding up the ethanol fermentation process.

Verdezyne’s existing investors include Monitor Ventures, which has offices in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, CA, Seattle-based OVP Venture Partners, Southern California’s Tech Coast Angels, and the Life Science Angels. While the company does not list San Diego’s Enterprise Partners Venture Capital as an investor, managing director Drew Senyei sits on the company’s board of directors.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.