Posted on behalf of Yana Balling

Amyris Inc, a start-up biotech company specialising in biofuels, raised $85 million in its first public offering yesterday. An estimated 5.3 million shares were sold throughout the day on the NASDAQ Global Market.

The company, based in Emeryville, California, had hoped to raise $100 million. Analysts ascribe the disappointing performance to Amyris entering the market too early, before it has commercialised any of its renewable products. But Biofuels Digest declared the glass half-full, saying that the money raised was a ‘hallmark of faith’ in the potential of biofuel technology.

Amyris, now with 200 employees, was founded in 2003, based on technology developed by Jay Keasling at the University of California, Berkeley. Keasling found a method to genetically modify micro-organisms to produce a precursor of artemisinin. The company benefitted from a major grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2004 to develop this.

It has since extended the applications of the technology to biofuels. It uses genetically modified yeast to produce products like diesel from sugarcane grown in Brazil.