LanzaTech has been ranked as Number 48 in the Top 100 list of America’s “most promising privately held companies” by FORBES magazine.
LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from gases, is the only clean energy or bioscience firm in the top 50.
Now headquartered in the United States, LanzaTech was founded in New Zealand and retains an extensive research and development base in that country.
Dr Jennifer Holmgren, chief executive of LanzaTech, says it is a huge honour to be selected by the editors at FORBES and to be listed alongside so many incredible companies.“The recognition is validation of our approach to reducing emissions through innovative technology and solid partnerships with major players in industries around the world,” Dr Holmgren says.
LanzaTech has developed game-changing technology that converts local, highly abundant, waste and low-cost resources into sustainable, valuable commodities. The patented process uses a microbe to convert gas containing CO or CO2 (from industrial sources like steel mills and processing plants) or synthetic gas generated from any biomass resource (e.g. municipal solid waste, organic industrial waste and agricultural waste) into fuels and chemicals.
LanzaTech reached key development milestones last year when it became the first company ever to scale gas fermentation technology to a pre-commercial level. Working closely with Baosteel, a major Chinese steel producer, LanzaTech successfully operated a facility with an annualized production capacity of 100,000 gallons of ethanol. The partners are now planning construction of a commercial facility.
The success with Baosteel also helped accelerate the development and commissioning of a second facility (also 100,000 gal/year), with Capital Steel near Beijing.
Forbes Magazine says the final assessment for its Top 100 most promising list was determined by variables including growth, quality of management, team and investors, margins, market size and key partnerships.
Forbes also teamed up with CB Insights, a Manhattan-based data firm that tracks investment in high-growth private companies. CB Insights’ MOSAIC software mines millions of online documents and extracts company-specific data such as hiring, customer and partner signings, product sentiment and financing information. By marrying that information with industry data – competitors, growth rates and merger activity – the software evaluates and scores each company. From there, Forbes editors verified sales numbers, spoke with each company, internally debated “merits and blemishes” and produced a final ranking.
