The Week in Cleantech: Sept. 23 – 29

The cleantech space produced several new financing rounds, partnerships, and acquisitions last week. Here’s a recap of some of the top deals:

Khosla Ventures announced that it would invest a further $50 million privately into publicly-traded biofuel maker KiOR. The company has missed production targets in the past but the investment is intended to help the company double capacity. KiOR’s stock price jumped 50 percent on the news.

Local foods start-up Good Eggs raised $8.5 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital and joined by Baseline Ventures and others. The round will fuel expansion beyond the company’s current coverage areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and New Orleans.

Synthetic biology-to-chemicals start-up Synthace raised £1.3 million in seed money from Soffinova Partners‘ Green Seed Fund and angel investors. The company indicated that the funding would help it demonstrate production of chemical products prior to approaching the chemical industry to form partnerships.

Zoltek, a publicly traded manufacturer of advanced carbon fiber products for wind power, efficient vehicles, and other industries, was acquired by Toray for $584 million.

Ormat secured a contract with eBay to construct a recovered energy generation power plant in Utah to support that company’s data centers.

Solazyme secured an important new customer in Unilever, which said it would purchase algae-derived oils from the start-up for its line of personal care products.