Calysta
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| Private | |
| Industry | Biotechnology |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founder | Josh Silverman |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, California, US |
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Key people
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Alan Shaw (CEO) |
| Products | Protein for animal and fish feed |
| Website | calysta |
Calysta is a multinational biotechnology firm based in Menlo Park, California. The company is chiefly involved in the development of industrial processes that utilize microorganisms to convert methane into protein for seafood and livestock feed and other useful products like fuel and plastics. Calysta operates a demonstration plant in Teesside, England, that uses methanotroph organisms to convert methane into protein currently approved for use in fish and livestock feed in the European Union.
Calysta was formed in 2012 in Menlo Park, California. Calysta was founded by Josh Silverman. and is led by CEO Alan Shaw, a chemist who previously worked to turn waste from crop production into biofuels.
By June 2013, Calysta began working with NatureWorks to use methane fermentation to produce lactic acid. However, Calysta's main technological development is based on a method originally developed in the 1980s by Statoil, an unrelated and state-owned energy company in Norway. In 2014, Calysta purchased the technology and further developed it in an effort to use the methanotroph microbes to convert methane gas into other useful products like protein for animal feed. In March 2015, Aqua-Spark (an aquaculture investment firm based in the Netherlands) initially invested $2 million into Calysta. Using the ten-million-dollar total funding from investors including Aqua-Spark, Calysta began "an engineering and feasibility study" to determine the viability of a mass production facility.
In January 2016, Calysta began building its first production facility in Teesside, England. The production center is being developed with a supplemental grant of £2.8 million ($3.7 million) from the UK Government. Also in early 2016, Calysta announced it had raised $30 million in funding led by Cargill, an American agribusiness corporation.
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