On Wednesday, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA), the largest subsidiary of Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo, announced its participation in a Series A funding round for Texas-based Cemvita, a provider of carbon negative synthetic biology solutions for the energy and mining industries. Cemvita’s Series A was led by 8090 Partners, with existing pre-Series A investors Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV), Seldor Capital, Climate Capital, and others re-upping their involvement. Sumitomo’s industrial peer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was also part of the Series A consortium.
In a statement announcing its own role, SCOA said it is strategically investing in companies like Cemvita to accelerate decarbonization within the industries in which it is a leading owner/operator.
Cemvita has said publicly that part of the Series A will be used to launch a bio-hydrogen solution, and to build and operator bio-ethylene pilot plant jointly with OLCV, applying a jointly developed technology using human-made CO2 instead of fossil-fuel sourced feedstocks.
“Identifying prescient solutions to the world’s challenges is core to our mission. This partnership will produce innovations that help our company and our customers meet ambitious sustainability goals while building new opportunities,” said Toshiya Kitamura, GM and SVP of SCOA’s Chemicals and Electronics Group.
The emerging field of synthetic biology applies the tools of engineering and computing to biology. While its applications are new, the approach has been used for a decade to optimize the work of enzymes and cells with the goal, for example, of accelerating the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines. Cemvita is among the first to employ this technology to support heavy industry in fighting climate change.
“We are excited to have Cemvita supported by strong corporate partners like SCOA,” said Cemvita Co-Founder and CEO Moji Karimi. “This capital will accelerate our growth and scale our carbon negative solutions to fight climate change.”
Cemvita’s technology was first developed based on fundamental research done by Co-Founder and CTO Dr. Tara Karimi, which she published in a Springer book. Cemvita was initially funded by a space agency to develop a biological pathway for converting CO2 to glucose as a food source to enable deep space exploration. Thereafter, the company developed 30 additional pathways from CO2 to other molecules targeted for the chemical industry, and launched a biomining vertical to grow into a synthetic biology platform to serve heavy industry.
Today, using its portfolio of micro-organisms to capture and convert CO2 into chemicals and alternative fuels, Cemvita helps oil and gas companies decarbonize, also transforming these industrial byproducts into valuable feedstocks. The technology is also used in climate-smart mining to reduce the environmental footprint of mining while meeting rising demand for key metals. According to research from the World Bank, and supplied by SCOA, climate mitigation targets by companies and countries will place significant demand on mining in particular. Lithium production, for example, must scale approximately 500 percent by 2050.
“Synthetic biology is now primed to revolutionize heavy industries because of its inherent low-carbon advantages, and Cemvita is taking the lead in identifying and derisking the key applications. We believe the adoption rate and market size growth of our target applications will only accelerate due to the urgency for a low-carbon energy transition. The future of manufacturing will be low-carbon biomanufacturing and the future of mining will be sustainable biomining,” Cemvita’s Karimi said earlier this summer when the Series A was first made public.
arlier this month, SCOA made an investment through its VC arm, Presidio Ventures, in Lilac Solutions, a company developing lithium extraction technology that is significantly more effective, faster to deploy, less expensive and more sustainable than conventional lithium production methods. This past summer, SCOA announced a sales agreement with EcoVap, a leader in sustainable wastewater elimination technology that can directly impact how wastewater is displaced at mine sites and other industrial applications.
