Ceres, Inc.

Ceres, Inc. was a biotechnology company based in Thousand Oaks, California, United States that operated from 1996 to 2016, when it was acquired by Land O'Lakes. The company was a spinoff from UCLA researchers. Its ultimate commercial products were seeds of genetically modified crops used for biofuel production.[1][2] In addition to its operations in the United States, Ceres had a subsidiary in Brazil called Ceres Sementes do Brasil.[3]

History

The company was founded in 1996 by UCLA professor Bob Goldberg and corporate partners with an initial capital of $50 million and an off-campus laboratory site overlooking Malibu, CA.[4] In 2002, the company signed a $137 million licensing agreement with Monsanto for their technology.[5]

Richard Flavell was Chief Scientific Officer from 1998 until the 2012 public offering.[6] From its 2012 initial public offering that raised $65 million until its acquisition, it was listed on the NASDAQ exchange.[7][1][8] In 2012, the largest shareholders were Artal Luxembourg, Warburg Pincus, Ambergate Trust, and Oxford Bioscience, while biotechnology company Monsanto had 4.8% stake.[1] The company's president and CEO was Richard Hamilton.[9]

A second public offering in 2014 raised an additional $20 million [6] at $1 per share compared to the 2012 IPO at $13.

On June 21, 2016, Ceres was acquired by Land O'Lakes for $17.2 million.[10]

Products and research

A major early (2000) accomplishment was the full-length cDNA-sequencing of Arabidopsis thaliana in collaboration with Genset [11] with subsequent publication of the sequencies in TIGR and NCBI and submission to US PTO, and the characterization of Arabidopsis AFLP fragments in collaboration with Keygene NV. [12] In 2006, Ceres began a collaboration with the Noble Research Institute to develop switchgrass.[13] Starting in 2009, Ceres sold sweet sorghum, switchgrass and high biomass sorghum seeds.[1][14] It tested biofuel production from switchgrass and miscanthus.[8] In 2010, Ceres started to cooperate with Novozymes to improve the enzyme cocktails for biorefinery switchgrass and sweet sorghum.[15] USAID funded Ceres' research on biotech traits and trait stacks in rice for Asia.[16]