Cobalt Technologies vs Verenium: Who's the Best?

Background: This is a first round, West Regional match-up between #4 seed Cobalt and #13 seed Verenium in the 2011 Transformative Technologies tourney, from Biofuels Digest.

Voting: Open to all Biofuels Digest subscribers. Voting links are in the Biofuels Digest daily newsletter. To subscribe (free), visit here.

The winner gets: Most votes advances to the second-round (round of 32), and a shot at the Biofuels Sweet Sixteen.

The loser: Goes home.

Laurels: Cobalt is the 14th ranked company in the 2010-11 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. Verenium is currently #41.

The match-up: Verenium completed a sale of its cellulosic ethanol business to BP after struggling too long to raise the financing of its share – and has gone back to its original Diversa business of making high-performance enzymes. Cobalt is aiming to demonstrate its cellulosic biobutanol technology, using woodchips as a feedstock, as soon as 2012 in a partnership with American Process. Cobalt, which makes n-butanol is aiming at the chemicals markets.

Deep dive data on Cobalt Technologies

Cobalt’s complete Hot 50 / Transformative Technologies profile is here.