US-based agricultural company Monsanto has helped Algae-based fuel company Sapphire Energy raise $144m.
Monsanto was joined in the series C round on Monday by venture firm Arrowpoint Partners, all the "major backers" of Sapphire’s B round, and other undisclosed investors.
The round takes the total funding raised from public and private sources to "substantially" more than $300m.
The company said the funding would be used to support Sapphire Energy’s commercial demonstration in Luna County, New Mexico. The company added some proceeds from the round had already been invested in the company.
Jason Pyle, chief executive of Sapphire Energy, said: "It is amazing to see that what started from an idea scribbled on the back of napkin is now a leading force in support of the goal to improve energy security for the country. Today, Sapphire Energy has a widely admired technology platform, outstanding leadership team, and significant ongoing support from the investment community, making it well positioned to achieve the goal of bringing domestically produced Green Crude oil to commercial scale."
Monsanto backed Sapphire in March last year with an undisclosed sum. Monsanto also agreed at the time to use Sapphire’s algae-based research to discover genes that could be applied to agriculture, particularly in the field of yield and stress.
Robb Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer, said: "We face a common goal in looking for ways to improve upon an organism’s ability to achieve greater productivity under optimal and sub-optimal environmental conditions. Together with Sapphire, we can identify genes affecting such traits in algae that might also be applied to corn, cotton, soybeans and other crops."
Robert Shapiro, Monsanto’s former chief executive, joined Sapphire’s board of directors in April 2010.
In December 2009, Sapphire was awarded nearly $104.5m as part of US President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Biorefinery Assistance Program, authorized through the 2008 Farm Bill.
In September 2008, Sapphire closed its series B round to take its then total funding to "substantially more than $100m" from Wellcome Trust, a quasi-corporate venturing group run by the UK’s largest charity, and venture capital firms Arch Venture Partners, Venrock and Cascade Investment, an investment holding company owned by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.