Ceres, Inc.

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]

A major early (2000) accomplishment was the development of an expression library for Arabidopsis in collaboration with Keygene NV. [11] In 2006, Ceres began a collaboration with the Noble Research Institute to develop switchgrass [12] Ceres sold sweet sorghum, switchgrass and high biomass sorghum seeds,[1] starting in 2009.[13] 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.[14] USAID funded Ceres' research on biotech traits and trait stacks in rice for Asia.[15]