Visit and Conversation With Executives at Solazyme

Consumer Energy Report
Posted by Robert Rapier on Sunday, October 23, 2011

On October 13, 2011 I paid a visit to Solazyme’s headquarters in San Francisco. For those who are unfamiliar with Solazyme, they produce oil from genetically modified algae. The company was founded in 2003 by two college friends, Jonathan Wolfson and Harrison Dillon. I had previously visited with Dr. Dillon at the 2009 Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy in Honolulu. Harrison is Solazyme’s Chief Technology Officer, and he filled me in on some of what the company was doing at that time.

This time I was going to have a chance to interview Solazyme CEO Jonathan Wolfson. A lot has happened since that meeting with Harrison in 2009. Solazyme has delivered hundreds of thousands of gallons of algae-based fuel for testing to the U.S. military (which I wrote about here and here). I don’t believe any other algal oil company can make that claim. They also took their company public earlier this year, and raised nearly $227 million with the IPO. Solazyme had also announced that they were diversifying away from a primary focus on fuels and into chemicals, nutritional products, and into skin care products.

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