Solazyme Raises $52 Million

The South San Francisco company that pioneered the idea of using algae to make biofuels, Solazyme, said today that it has raised $52 million in Series D financing. New investor Morgan Stanley and Braemar Energy Ventures led the round, which also included all of the company’s major existing investors—CTTV Investments, Harris and Harris Group, Lightspeed Venture Partners, the Roda Group, San-Ei Gen, VantagePoint Venture Partners, and Zygote Ventures. As Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman reported in a recent profile of Solazyme, the 90-employee company uses molecular biology techniques to engineer strains of algae that convert high-cellulose materials such as sugarcane into different varieties of oil inside large fermentation tanks.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/