San Diego’s SG Biofuels, an agricultural biotech developing the Jatropha plant to produce biofuels, says today it has raised $17 million in a Series B round of financing led by Thomas, McNerney & Partners. San Diego-based Finistere Ventures also joined the round, along with existing investors, Carlsbad-based Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) and Flint Hills Resources, the Kansas refining and chemicals business owned by Koch Industries.
Thomas, McNerney partner Pratik Shah, who moved his office to San Diego from San Francisco last year, has joined SG Biofuels’ board, along with Jerry Caulder, Finistere’s managing director and the former CEO of Mycogen, an agricultural biotech founded in San Diego.
SG Biofuels says it will use the additional capital to expand its research and development, advance commercialization efforts, and scale global operations. The company says it is working with an airline industry consortium to plant 250,000 acres of Jatropha. The agricultural biotech has focused on improving the jatropha plant to optimize its productivity in various climate zones. The shrub’s golf ball-size seeds produce oil that can be processed into jet fuel, biodiesel, and other fuels.
In a statement from the company, SG Biofuels CEO Kirk Haney says, “The funding comes at a time when we’re experiencing significant commercial adoption of our hybrid Jatropha and will be instrumental as we continue to expand our global footprint.”
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.
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