Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Materia Spins Off New Company With $40M In Funding

Pasadena-based Caltech spinoff Materia said today that it has created a new company called Elevance Renewable Sciences. The new firm, which is being created in partnership with Cargill, Incorporated, has raised $40M in new venture cpaital funding. The funding came from TPG STAR, L.P., and TPG Biotechnology Partners. Elevance is developing chemicals and materials using Materia's metathesis technology. The new company will be headed by K'Lynne Johnson, who was most recently at Innovene and has also served at BP and Amoco. Elevance's products will include commercial grade waxes and other materials based on renewable oils such as soy, canola, and corn oil.