Fifty Years

A look back at our Bioforge Marshall groundbreaking in April! 👷♂️ Solugen leadership was joined by government officials, business leaders, and community partners to officially break ground on our new 500,000 sf biomanufacturing facility in Marshall, Minn. In support of the project, Solugen has received conditional commitment for a $214M loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development also awarded the project $760K in financial incentives from the department's Job Creation Fund, and an additional $15M from the Minnesota Forward Fund. A special thank you to the City of Marshall for helping us pull off an epic event, and for their invaluable support as we expand our footprint.

Today, we’re proud to announce that Antora has been selected by ARPA-E for a $14.5M award to accelerate the launch of our combined heat and power thermal battery product. This funding unlocks commercial-scale manufacturing for Antora’s pioneering heat-to-power technology and paves the way for gigaton-scale decarbonization impact in the industrial sector. Over the past five years, Antora, supported by ARPA-E, has transformed thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology into a reliable, scalable, and simple solution to convert heat to electricity with no moving parts—a job historically handled by complex and costly turbomachinery. Having demonstrated breakthrough heat-to-electric conversion efficiency and opened the world’s first dedicated manufacturing line for TPV, Antora is on a path to rapidly bring our combined heat and power product to market. As part of the award, Antora will work to ensure that its combined heat and power product fully addresses the needs of industrial and utility customers. Antora will partner with Con Edison, the utility that serves New York City and Westchester County, to help meet its ambitious clean heat and power goals for New Yorkers. In addition, Antora has signed a letter of intent with Shell to evaluate potential opportunities to deploy the product in industrial processes such as chemicals production. Learn more about this transformative funding: https://lnkd.in/e2anrUpv

If you are among the best in the world at cloning, plasmid prep, viral vector prep, sequencing prep, construct design, genome assembly, etc, please DM me or reach out to [email protected]. We want to hire you, especially if you can lead a project.

$25m more to fuel Molten Industries in their mission to decarbonize the world’s chemical and heavy industries. When we first met the founders in 2021 they had built a white-hot chemical reactor in a literal garage at Stanford. Soon after Fifty Years led the seed round with our friends at Union Square Ventures. Molten is building the future of 🇺🇸 made sustainable graphite. Why does it matter? America has a supply chain issue. 97% of battery grade graphite currently comes from China. With increasing geopolitical tensions, they've been restricting exports. This puts the supply chain for Li-ion batteries at risk. And tensions go both ways. To promote supply chain resiliency, the Biden administration is eliminating the $7500 tax credit on EVs if they source graphite from China. Enter Molten, who built a reactor that cracks methane at extremely hot temperatures into hydrogen and graphite using renewable electricity. They turn natural gas and renewable power into battery grade graphite. With amazing technoeconomics. The best part? Molten's cost structure beats natural graphite (the cheapest on market) with higher performance than synthetic graphite (the best & most expensive on market). Lowest cost, highest performance, sustainable domestic process -- a dream come true! Kevin Bush, Caleb Boyd, and the rest of Molten are a wildly talented team on a mission to decarbonize the world’s chemical and heavy industries. And they're hiring!

Breakthroughs don't happen overnight and they certainly don't happen without many hard lessons along the way. For the past few years at Alpine Bio, we've spent countless hours figuring out how to accumulate casein in plants as well as building a closed loop farming system. After testing over a 1,000 strategies, we not only mastered how to grow casein but also unlocked a range of proteins in plants. Today, I'm proud to share that our plants are in the hands of growers in the Midwest and that we've completed our largest planting to date. Farming offers us an opportunity to take care of the land, our planet and the people who grow our food. It's an honor to be partnering with growers and other sustainability focused companies like NEXAT to maximize our mission of bringing delicious and sustainable ingredients and products to market. #farming #sustainability #climate #innovation

HUGE news in climate x bio! Solugen gets "the Tesla Loan" from the DOE. At $213.6m it's almost exactly half the size Tesla got. I think this means Solugen is not far from half of Tesla's market cap 😎. Proud that Fifty Years was Solugen's first investor. Just getting started!

We run Fifty Years more like a startup than a VC fund -- OKRs, daily stand-ups, bi-weekly sprints. We build tools and programs and focus on flywheels. We're out to build one of the world's most indispensable companies.

Decarbonizing industrial processes will require reliable clean energy that doesn't increase costs. Antora Energy’s thermal battery makes it possible—and profitable—to use excess solar and wind electricity to do just that.

This is what synthetic biology looks like at scale. Solugen's Bioforge behind a truckload of glucaric acid it produced. Beautiful!

Over the last decade, companies like Tesla have changed the limits of what we once thought possible, demonstrating a path to rapidly decarbonize entire sectors of our economy. With recent turbulence, many are asking what's next for those looking to make the biggest impact on climate. I'm so proud of the team we've built at Antora Energy, focused on eliminating the single biggest source of global emissions. With incredible team members who have built world-changing technology before, we're working to build a future where every industrial facility, everywhere on earth, is powered by abundant, low-cost, zero-emissions energy. To make this future a reality, we’re hiring people who put team and mission first, value connection through laughter and joy, and build with humility and openness. If this sounds like you, be sure to apply: https://lnkd.in/g9Vwpprz Or connect with us directly to learn more: https://bit.ly/44xGEYM