Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos is lending his support to fusion, the power source of the sun, H-bombs, and, starting 30 to 50 years from now, local utilities. His personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions, contributed an unspecified fraction of a $19.5 million venture capital fund raised by General Fusion, a company that is developing an approach to fusion that combines two leading fusion designs, magnetic confinement of plasma and inertial confinement. The company had previously raised $13.75 million.
BP and DSM have also invested in Verdezyne, a biotech startup that is engineering yeast to make ethanol and adipic adic, a basic chemical used to make polyester, and that companies have been trying for decades to make from sugar rather than oil. Several other biofuels companies are trying to break into chemicals markets, since their biofuels are too expensive to compete with conventional fuels.
A123 Systems, a company that’s developed batteries with nanostructured electrodes and is one of the poster-children for DOE investment in R&D, says it’s got a new customer: Smith Electric Vehicles, which sells cars to the likes of Frito-Lay.
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