Khosla invests $15M into eco-friendly chemistry company, Segetis

Segetis, a private company in Plymouth, Minn. that provides ways to build materials from low-cost renewable sources rather than fossil materials such as petroleum or gas, has raised $15 million in a first round of capital from Khosla Ventures.

It is just the latest in a spree of investments by well-known investor Vinod Khosla into alternative energy and environmentally friendly companies.

See the company’s announcement here.

A snippet:

The Series A funding will be used to further the development of Segetis’ portfolio of high value renewable chemical products for industrial and consumer applications using inexpensive feedstocks from agriculture and forestry…

“For decades, the production of many products of every day life from plastic table tops to shampoo bottles to car seat cushions has been dependent on fossil materials such as petroleum, gas and coal,” said Sergey Selifonov, President, CSO and Founder, Segetis. “Green chemistry can deliver novel cost-competitive products that perform at par with or better than the existing petrochemical goods.”

Segetis’ bio-based chemical products from renewable agricultural and forestry feedstocks can be used for production of novel bio-plastics, surfactants, plasticizers, adhesives, coalescent solvents and other compounds for specialty chemical applications. Segetis’ chemistries offer distinctive opportunities for product enablement and synergies for industries engaged in chemical processing of vegetable oils, manufacturing of biodiesel, processing of starch and sugar crops, processing of wood, cellulose and paper pulp, and manufacturing of linear alpha-olefins and other compounds. “The world’s petroleum reserve continue to decline, and now is the time to start investing in the development of sustainable technologies, including renewable energy and bio-derived feedstocks for the chemical industry,” said Samir Kaul, General Partner, Khosla Ventures.”