LS9 Secures $15M Series B Funding

9 October 2007

LS9 Inc., a startup founded in 2005 to apply synthetic biology technology to the production of proprietary biofuels, has closed its Series B funding round with $15M in new investments. LS9 closed a $5M Series A round in March 2007. (Earlier post.)

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the financing, with additional contributions from existing partners Flagship Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The funding will support the company’ss continued talent acquisition and rapid commercialization of DesignerBiofuels products.

LS9 was the first company to focus on recombinant production of hydrocarbon biofuels. Building upon two years of R&D success, this financing will allow us to continue to attract top talent, begin construction of a pilot facility, commercialize on a massive scale and bring DesignerBiofuels products to market in the next two or three years.

—Robert Walsh, LS9 President

LS9 DesignerBiofuels are a family of fuels produced by microbes that have been specially engineered via recently developed methods of industrial synthetic biology. LS9 hydrocarbon biofuels have higher energetic content than ethanol or butanol and have fuel properties that are essentially indistinguishable from those of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.