Lygos closes $13m funding to make synthetic chemicals from sugars
Bio-based specialty chemicals company Lygos has won $13m in Series A funding from investors including IA Ventures and OS Fund. The California-based firm uses engineered microbes with sugar and water to create high-value specialty chemicals, in a cleaner, greener alternative process to the dirty petrochemical industry. The funds raised will be used to continue "building our team, our manufacturing and QC infrastructure", said Eric Steen, co-founder and CEO of Lygos.

Lygos, Inc., a bio-based specialty chemicals company, has announced the closing of US$13 million in Series A financing led by IA Ventures and OS Fund. Other investors include First Round Capital, the Y Combinator Continuity Fund, 50 Years and Vast Ventures, along with notable angel investors.

Lygos produces high value specialty chemicals – traditionally produced in oil-based petrochemical processes – in a process that uses domestic sugars instead of dirty and dangerous oil, and has pioneered the world's first bio-based production of malonic acid. Lygos has already engineered and is shipping to customers the first Bio-malonicTM acid-producing microbes that are a replacement for the dangerous cyanide-based process that manufacturers currently use in this quarter billion dollar annual market.

"Chemicals are an essential ingredient for human progress, but their oil-based production process often has disastrous side-effects," said Brad Gillespie, general partner at IA Ventures. "We invested in Lygos because they harness the power of machine learning, microbes, and American manufacturing to deliver these essential chemicals in a clean sustainable way, and create manufacturing jobs in the process. Today they are already the world leader in sustainable scalable chemical production."

Most specialty chemicals manufactured from oil today can also be made using Lygos' technology of engineered microbes with sugar and water – similar to the simple and safe production processes perfected by humans for brewing beer, wine and making bread over the last 5000, or so, years.

"This is the industrial revolution of synthetic biology," said Jeffrey Klunzinger, managing partner at venture capital firm OS Fund. "We look at synthetic biology as a greenfield opportunity. Lygos uniquely has the technology to produce a stable supply of industrial chemicals with no environmental impact and at lower cost. They are building better products that are clean, sustainable and have cost and quality advantages over their petrochemical counterparts."

Operated similar to breweries, Lygos' production technology and its facilities for manufacturing specialty chemicals have the potential to transform the global manufacturing environment for this product and for manufacturing growth in the US, Europe and beyond. Because Lygos' production technology uses microbes – not oil and explosive and toxic chemistries – it can run in facilities that meet even the most stringent safety and environmental controls of Europe and the US.

"These investors have enabled us to deliver on the promise of our technology through new and existing products. We are delivering metric ton quantities of our Bio-malonic acid products to customers using Lygos' technology that requires no fossil fuels, no cyanide, and no environmental degradation," said Eric Steen, co-founder and CEO of Lygos. "We are excited to enter this next phase of growth and continue building our team, our manufacturing and QC infrastructure, all while providing more fuel for our innovation engine to develop the next new products using our microbial manufacturing technology."