Industrial biotechnology · Bio-based chemicals
Industrial Microbes
An Alameda company engineering microbes to turn ethanol and methane into acrylic acid, the molecule behind paint, adhesives and diaper absorbent. It has run the process at 1,500 liters, collected awards from five federal agencies, and has not yet named a commercial customer.
The strain that did not break at 300 liters
Scale is where fermentation companies usually fail. A microbe that performs in a two liter benchtop reactor meets different physics in a large vessel: mixing, oxygen transfer and shear all change, and productivity often falls with them.
In 2024 a strain from Industrial Microbes went into a 300 liter fermenter operated by the Department of Energy, through its Agile BioFoundry and its Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit. According to DOE’s own account of the collaboration, it held.
“The strain scaled up beautifully and the key metrics at 300 L matched those from our lab,” said Elizabeth Clarke, the company’s chief technology officer.
What came out of the vessel was not the product the company sells. It was poly(3-hydroxypropionate), or P3HP, a biodegradable polymer that Industrial Microbes then converts chemically into acrylic acid. DOE researchers also ran proteomics on the strain and found too much expression of one pathway enzyme. The company dialed it back and performance improved.
Why acrylic acid
Acrylic acid is one of the least glamorous and most widely used molecules in industry. It goes into paints, coatings, adhesives, sealants and the superabsorbent polymer in disposable diapers. The Department of Defense, describing the company’s 2024 award, added lubricants, corrosion inhibitors and wound dressings. DOE notes the compound is typically sourced from petroleum.
The company puts the market at $18 billion by 2030, a figure that appears in its own release and in the trade coverage that reprints it. That is a company number, not an independent one. The pitch is also strategic: Industrial Microbes was one of seven firms named in an August 2024 Defense Department announcement on domestic bioindustrial manufacturing.
Three PhDs out of a biofuels wreck
Derek Greenfield, Elizabeth Clarke and Noah Helman met at LS9, a biofuels company that took more than $80 million in venture money during the cleantech wave and sold for up to $61.5 million in 2014, as TechCrunch reported when their new company launched. They hold doctorates from Stanford, UC Berkeley and UCSF.
Their read on why LS9 struggled was raw material cost. “Natural gases are 75 percent cheaper than sugar. They’re cheaper than oil and there’s tons of it,” Greenfield told TechCrunch in March 2015. The first target chemical that year was malic acid, the compound that makes apples tart.
The plan was to move genes from methanotrophs, bacteria found in peat bogs and swamps in the 1970s, into hosts that are easier to grow. A Berkeley Lab scientist working on the same organisms told the lab’s news office in 2022 that engineering a methanotroph can take one to two months to do what takes days in E. coli.
Titles have rotated. SBIR records and a 2017 profile list Greenfield as chief executive and Helman as chief scientist. By the November 2024 funding announcement, Helman was chief executive, Greenfield president and Clarke chief technology officer.
The feedstock quietly changed
The federal paper trail starts in 2015 with an NSF SBIR award to convert American natural gas into building block chemicals. Three more followed in 2016 from DOE, USDA and the EPA, all built on methane, biogas or carbon dioxide. In October 2019 DOE announced a $1 million Phase II grant for a joint project with Opus 12, pairing a carbon dioxide to methane electrolyzer with the company’s methane fermentation.
Every scaled result announced since 2024 runs on ethanol. The DOE collaboration converted ethanol. The Defense Department award funds a plan for an ethanol to acrylic acid plant. The September 2025 milestone used ethanol. Methane is still on the website and still in the patents, but the company has not said whether that route is paused or simply behind.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| NSF SBIR Phase I | Award 1520425, $179,999 obligated, Jul 2015 to Jun 2016, PI Derek Greenfield. | Public record |
| EPA SBIR Phase II | Contract EP-D-17-020, $300,000, Mar 2017 to Feb 2019. The abstract claims a well-to-gate analysis showing a 6-fold cut in carbon dioxide emissions against the incumbent process. | Public record |
| DOE and USDA SBIR | 2016 DOE Phase I, $150,000, on biogas. 2016 USDA Phase I, $100,000, on manure biogas. 2019 DOE Phase II listed at $1,200,000; announced as $1 million. | Public record |
| Defense Department award | $1.55 million under the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program, Aug 19, 2024, to plan a commercial-scale ethanol to acrylic acid facility. Site undetermined. Successful projects may negotiate access to up to $100 million to build. | Public record |
| 300 liter scale-up | DOE reported in October 2024 that P3HP production reached 300 liters with lab metrics preserved. | Public record |
| 1,500 liter run | Announced Sep 9, 2025: gram scale to 20 kilogram batches, 2 liter to 1,500 liter reactors, a 750x increase, with BioMADE backing. | Company-stated |
| Carbon footprint | CEO Noah Helman said in 2024 the company is confident of getting past a 75% reduction, possibly to net zero. No published life cycle assessment for the ethanol route was found. | Company-stated |
| Patent portfolio | Justia lists six granted US patents and three published applications, the earliest filed Apr 2015. The company states 22 patents in Nov 2024 and 23 in Sep 2025. | Claim exceeds the US record |
| Grant total | SBIR listings add to about $2.0 million. In October 2019 the company said it had raised more than $3.5 million in grants to date. | Claim exceeds the SBIR record |
| Customers | Four commercial partners claimed on the about page, multiple letters of intent claimed in Sep 2025. None named. No revenue published. | Company-stated |
| Peer-reviewed papers | None authored by the company found in PubMed searches run for this profile. | Not found |
Read plainly: the process exists, it has run at meaningful volume inside federal facilities, and the government has now paid the company to draw up a factory. The commercial half is missing. No offtake agreement, no named customer, no published price, and the carbon numbers that make the product attractive rest on company statements rather than a published assessment.
What to watch
- Whether the $1.55 million planning award converts into a follow-on award. That is the gate to up to $100 million for construction.
- A named offtaker. Letters of intent and four unnamed partners are the current commercial evidence.
- A published life cycle assessment for the ethanol route, which would test the 75% and net zero claims.
- Whether methane comes back after a decade of federal awards built on it.
- Any SEC filing at all. As of September 2026 there is none under either company name.
In their words
“Natural gases are 75 percent cheaper than sugar. They’re cheaper than oil and there’s tons of it.”
Derek Greenfield, co-founder, TechCrunch, March 2015 · Independent
“In the early days of this type of work, maybe 20 years ago, a company might have spent several million dollars building their own pilot plant and training people,”
Noah Helman, CEO, in a Department of Energy report, October 2024 · Public record
“The proteomics showed that we had too much expression of one of the pathway enzymes. Once we adjusted that, the performance improved,”
Elizabeth Clarke, CTO, in a Department of Energy report, October 2024 · Public record
“By continuously optimizing our process, we are confident that we can get to greater than a 75% reduction in carbon footprint, and possibly get to a net zero product,”
Noah Helman, CEO, in a Department of Energy report, October 2024 · Public record
“This project is a great example of how U.S. bioindustrial manufacturing can deliver critical materials without relying on foreign inputs,”
Ashley Arnell, Technology Program Manager, BioMADE, September 2025 · Partner-stated
“Through this lens, iMicrobes looks less like a bet and more like a build. The road ahead is long. But the structure is promising.”
Jim Lane, Biofuels Digest, May 2025 · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordNSF award 1520425, SBIR Phase I
- Public recordSBIR award 160064, EPA Phase II, contract EP-D-17-020
- Public recordDoD Releases Five Awards for Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program
- Public recordAgile BioFoundry and ABPDU Partner with Industrial Microbes to Scale Up Bio-Based Process
- Public recordPatents assigned to INDUSTRIAL MICROBES, INC.
- Public recordEDGAR company and Form D full text search
- Public recordCompany profile, SBIR award history by agency
- IndependentYC-Backed Industrial Microbes Is Engineering Bacteria To Produce Chemicals From Natural Gases
- IndependentIs This Built to Last? A Systems-Based Toolkit for Evaluating iMicrobes’ Biomanufacturing Strategy
- IndependentiMicrobes closes seed round of $10M
- IndependentIndustrial Microbes Scales 100% Bio-Based Acrylic Acid
- IndependentUsing Microbes to Convert Greenhouse Gases to Valuable Chemicals
- Independent17 New BioMADE Projects Aim to Boost U.S. Bioeconomy
- CompanyIndustrial Microbes announces seed round funding
- CompanyiMicrobes produces 100% bio-based acrylic acid through its scaled-up bioprocess
- CompanyIndustrial Microbes and Opus 12 Awarded $1M to Turn Waste Gas into Valuable Chemicals
- CompanyTechnology and About pages, patent count, advisors, partner count
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
