Resilience Is the New Carbon: Khaki Is the New Green

Ten years ago, Visolis entered the federal innovation pipeline through Cyclotron Road—the DOE-backed fellowship that helped define the climate-tech generation. Founder Deepak Dugar was part of a wave of scientists trying to turn low-carbon chemistry into real industry. Today, Visolis is winning scale-up funding from the Department of Defense.

Same company. Same core science. Different patron.

That shift tells you more about where the bioeconomy is headed than any press release. Something changed in Washington. The conversation about biofuels and biochemicals didn’t stop—it moved. From emissions to readiness. From climate to continuity. From Independence Avenue… to the Pentagon. For a decade, bio pitched itself as cleaner; now it’s pitching itself as essential. This isn’t a story about one agency failing and another stepping in. The science didn’t lose relevance; the rationale changed. The station didn’t go off the air; it changed frequencies.

The Center of Gravity Has Moved

This isn’t about ideology; it’s about operating logic. For the last decade, the bioeconomy’s federal support lived primarily inside a climate-and-energy frame. Today, the immediate driver of large-scale deployment capital has shifted toward industrial resilience, supply chain continuity, and domestic manufacturing capacity.

DOE and USDA still matter, but their roles have narrowed. At the Department of Energy, the newly formalized Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation (CMEI) is steering attention toward baseload power, critical minerals, and grid stability. Meanwhile, at the USDA, support mechanisms like the Advanced Biofuel Producer Payment Program are focused largely on production continuity—paying for the “harvest already in motion” rather than underwriting deep-tech scale-up.

This isn’t just a change in tone; it is a massive reallocation of the American balance sheet. In early 2025, the newly minted Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) initiated a review that led to the restructuring, revision, or elimination of over $83.6 billion in Biden-era loan commitments—representing over 80% of that portfolio. While approximately $29.9 billion is being de-obligated, another $53.6 billion is being revised to align with a mission of “Energy Dominance”. This includes the elimination of roughly $9.5 billion in government-subsidized intermittent wind and solar projects in favor of natural gas and nuclear uprates.

The Valley of Death didn’t disappear. The sponsor changed.

From Carrying to Enabling

There’s another subtle shift happening inside this patron change—and it explains why many founders feel both encouraged and exposed at the same time. For years, federal bio funding often tried to carry technologies across the Valley of Death. The implicit model was that if the science was promising, government support could drag the project through early commercial risk until markets caught up.

The new logic is different. Programs like BioMADE and the Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP) aren’t structured to build your first commercial plant. They’re structured to make sure your technology is manufacturing-ready—ensuring that strains scale, processes repeat, and production can be trusted under operational conditions.

The focus has shifted from “commercial-scale” to “commercial-ready.” In other words: Can it run? Can it repeat? Can it meet specifications reliably? Can it be integrated into supply chains that don’t tolerate surprises? This still leaves the hardest step—financing and building a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plant—squarely in industry’s hands.

The lab is no longer the bottleneck. The plant is. And the technologies that move forward will be those that can demonstrate not just elegant chemistry, but operational reliability in environments where readiness matters more than promise.

Institutionalizing the Shift

This isn’t just a funding trend; it’s structural. The Department of Defense has elevated biotechnology as a critical domain for national advantage. By creating initiatives like the DBIMP, the Pentagon is treating biomanufacturing as an industrial capability with implications for logistics, materials performance, and operational resilience. In other words, biology has moved from “interesting” to “infrastructure” inside the defense technology stack.

When Technologies Grow Up, Their Patrons Change

This shift isn’t unusual. It’s how important technologies mature. In their early years, breakthrough fields tend to live under visionary mandates—science, exploration, transformation. But as they become foundational, their home moves from inspiration to infrastructure.

The U.S. missile program didn’t disappear when the space program emerged; its rationale expanded from weapons to satellites and GPS. The U.S. Air Force itself began as part of the Army. Air power didn’t change overnight; its strategic role did. Even Alaska changed departmental oversight—from Army to Treasury to Navy—not because the land changed, but because the nation’s reason for caring about it evolved from defense to trade to statehood.

The bioeconomy is going through the same maturation. For years, it lived under a climate transformation story. Now, as supply chains strain and geopolitics tighten, the same technologies are being evaluated through a different lens: industrial survival.

Why the Pentagon Cares

The military doesn’t fund bio because it’s green. It funds bio because it cannot operate on chemicals, materials, and fuels it doesn’t control. Solvents for aircraft maintenance, elastomers, specialty polymers, and fuels are industrial inputs that underpin readiness. The Pentagon is writing checks to ensure that when it counts, the materials are made here—not somewhere that might not answer the phone.

The Visolis Lesson

Visolis didn’t pivot its science; it pivoted its framing. In January 2026, the company secured a $2.86 million award expansion under the DBIMP, bringing their total program support to over $5 million.

What began as a sustainability story matured into a readiness story. Their non-toxic solvent technology isn’t just a “greener chemical” ; it is a specific tool designed to strip coatings from aircraft landing gear. This allows maintenance crews to inspect for damage and corrosion while significantly reducing exposure to harmful chemicals, thereby improving fleet readiness.

As CEO Deepak Dugar noted, this support allows the company to accelerate the scale-up of U.S.-based manufacturing for chemicals that are “essential to defense readiness and industrial resilience”. The pitch that resonates now isn’t “this reduces carbon.” It’s “this keeps operations moving”.

Resilience Is the New Carbon

For founders and investors, the implication is clear. The technologies that cross the Valley of Death will be those that can speak two languages:

• Sustainability, yes—but also sovereignty.
• Climate benefit, yes—but also continuity of operations.

The bioeconomy has not been sidelined. It has been absorbed into a different strategic frame: industrial survival in an uncertain world. The DOE still writes innovation grants. The USDA still supports the harvest. But when it comes to building factories, proving manufacturing at scale, and securing the supply chains of the 21st century, the Pentagon is writing the checks. The bridge over the Valley of Death isn’t painted green anymore. It’s khaki.