Madison-based renewable chemical startup Pyran LLC has received a $120,000 investment from new angel investor group Wisconsin River Business Angels.
Established a couple of years ago and based in Plover, WRBA is a subsidiary of Midwest Wealth Ventures LLC. This is its second startup investment, having last year invested in Madison personal finance software firm CountAbout. It also recently invested in gener8tor Fund VII, said Leon Ostrowski, chairman of MWV.
Pyran makes a compound that can be used to make environmentally-friendly paint and plastic chemicals. The technology, which uses catalytic engineering to convert a feedstock derived from corncobs, was developed by University of Wisconsin student Kevin Barnett and his professor, George Huber, with a three-year, $3.3 million U.S. Department of Energy grant that concluded in April 2018. The company was formally established in 2017 as part of gener8tor’s gBETA program, said Barnett, president. It has also received a total of $675,000 in funding from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and the SBIR program since inception.
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