Founders Fund Leads Latest Funding Round for Emerging Company Seeking
to Decarbonize the Chemicals Industry with Bio-Based Technologies
HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Solugen Inc., an emerging specialty chemicals manufacturer and world’s
first and only producer of bio-based peroxide solutions, today announced
the closing of $32 million in Series B funding led by Founders Fund with
key participation from other venture capital investors such as Y
Combinator, Refactor Capital, Fifty Years and KdT Ventures. The capital
raise comes on the heels of the company securing $13.5 million in
October 2018 and will be used to continue fueling Solugen’s rapid growth
as it seeks to decarbonize the chemicals industry with its bio-based
technologies.
“Solugen is on track to become a major player in the chemical industry,”
said Brian Singerman, Partner at Founders Fund. “The company’s success
to date proves that there is significant demand for cleaner, greener
methods of chemical production. For customers, choosing between toxic,
petrochemical-based chemicals and cheaper, safer, environmentally
friendly bio-chemicals from Solugen is a no-brainer.”
Founded in 2016, Solugen produces bio-based solutions that are
fundamentally changing the chemicals industry. The company’s first
product, BioperoxideTM, was created using patented enzymatic
technology to convert plant sugars into hydrogen peroxide and led to the
manufacturing of a comprehensive line of products such as its flagship
BioSolTM and ScavSolTM solutions. Today, BioSol
and ScavSol help treat, clean and oxidize water uses with oil and gas,
waste water treatment and mining chemicals. Solugen’s solutions remove
the need for highly combustible and toxic petrochemical-based chemicals
to clean water as its products are more efficacious, cheaper, safer to
produce, and less hazardous for customers and their employees as well as
fully biodegradable.
“This is a momentous landmark in our company’s young history, and we
want to thank our investors for their support as well as for their
belief in our technology, team, and mission of decarbonizing the
chemicals industry,” said CEO Gaurab Chakrabarti, M.D., Ph.D. “Our
fundamental green chemistry and enzymatic technology have allowed us to
create both products and technologies that no one in our industry
currently has such as BioSol, ScavSol and our mini-mills. Innovations
like the mini-mill, which go beyond the product, are especially
important as we move forward since they illustrate how we understand the
needs of our customers who are operating in an environment where
freight, importer, and distributor margins for petrochemical-based water
treatment chemistries cost more than double our solutions. This
proprietary technology allows us to co-locate with large offtake
customers to provide the best price while a customer can also descale
its products and operate profitably at levels below 10,000 tons per year
in an environment where most petro-based chemical plants can only be
profitable at scales of more than 10 times that amount. Thanks to
innovations like this our customers are seeing results that save them a
tremendous amount of money, reduce their carbon footprint and minimize
the dangers associated with using traditional, often dangerous
petrochemical-derived products.”
Solugen’s revenue grew by nearly 10 times over the last year due to
multiple, multi-million dollar oil and gas contracts and it recently
began construction of a new state-of-the-art 200,000 square foot
headquarters in Houston that will be completed early next year, housing
its R&D and logistics operation as well as its commercial scale
mini-mill. The company also launched and sold its first national brand,
Ode to Clean, to Diamond Wipes last year, secured the Environmental
Protection Agency’s Safer Choice Award for Innovation and is working on
filing 10 U.S. patents.
It will use this latest round of funding to scale up its development of
other bio chemical solutions and its mobile micromanufacturing platforms
– mini-mills – as well as further deepen an already robust talent pool
of energy executives, chemists and award-winning scientists.
“There is no other company today developing enzyme technology at the
level Solugen is,” added Toni Lee, Solugen’s new Head of Enzymology who
most recently served as Principal Scientist at Provivi, Inc. and was a
member of the winning Nobel Prize in Chemistry team in 2018. “The things
happening inside Solugen’s labs really do have the potential to change
the world for the better as this company is dramatically altering the
way businesses use chemicals as well as the way they are made.”
About Solugen
Founded in 2016 by Gaurab Chakrabarti, M.D., Ph.D., and Sean Hunt,
Ph.D., Solugen is a specialty chemicals manufacturer and world’s first
and only producer of bio-based chemical peroxide solutions that applies
green chemistry principles to re-design the production of a variety of
ingredients. Solugen’s mission is to help the fight against climate
change by creating cleaner, greener, and safer chemical processes that
reduce reliance on non-renewable resources and energy-intensive
manufacturing, without sacrificing safety and efficacy. To learn more,
visit www.solugentech.com.
Contacts
Sylvester Palacios, Jr.
Pierpont Communications
+1 512-448-4950
[email protected]
