Gevo, biofuel company, gets money from Branson's Virgin Fuels
Gevo, a biofuel company seeking to create replacements for gasoline and jet-fuel, has raised an undisclosed amount in a second round of financing from Virgin Fuels and Khosla Ventures.
Entrepreneur Richard Branson formed Virgin Fuels last year to make investments in renewable energy companies.
The investment in Pasadena, Calif. Gevo is part of an effort to find an alternative airline fuel for his Virgin Airways. Branson burns $1 billion of fuel a year, and feels bad about its environmental effects, and sees biofuels as a good alternative. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Branson together recently converted Google co-founder Larry Page of the need to support biofuels too.
Gevo is focusing on news ways to make butanol and other fuels. Khosla Ventures has invested in several biofuel companies, from Amyris, which is also making butanol and other renewable diesel fuels, and Ls9, which is making renewable petroleum. We wrote about the Gevo and Ls9 investments here.
Gevo chief executive Patrick Gruber, who joined the company last month, said the company is still very much in the development phase. He said the attractive thing about this area is that there’s no intellectual property that blocks the company from developing anything (we took this as a thinly veiled swipe at rival start-up entrepreneur Craig Venter’s patent claims). “It’s a freakin’ free for all,” he said. “Outsiders are going to win. There is no possibly way for these big [incumbent energy] companies to shed their baggage.”
Gevo has licensed technology in the labs of Frances Arnold at Caltech.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
