Solugen

Solugen makes chemicals with biology instead of petroleum. Its Bioforge process feeds plant sugars into a cell-free enzyme reactor and then over engineered metal catalysts, producing a ton of product for every ton of feedstock at low temperature and pressure, with almost no downstream steps. Bioforge plants are modular, so they can be built close to customers, and supply chemicals for oil and gas, water treatment, agriculture, concrete, cleaning, renewable fuels and defense.

Physician-scientist Gaurab Chakrabarti and engineer Sean Hunt met over a poker game and founded Solugen in Houston in 2016, going through Y Combinator's Winter 2017 batch. It has raised $855.8M, including a $213.6M Department of Energy loan for its first commercial-scale Bioforge in Minnesota.