LanzaTech has developed the technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial applications and ferment them using bacteria to produce ethanol, which can be used in industrial chemicals and biofuel production. As of March 2022, LanzaTech held over 1,000 patents, but was yet to commercialize its technology.

In 2018, LanzaTech partnered with Shougang Group (a leading Chinese iron and steel producer) to develop the world’s first commercial facility to convert industrial emissions to ethanol. The facility is located at the Jingtang Steel Mill in Hebei Province, China. In December 2020, LanzaTech announced that its Chinese facility had produced over 20 million gallons of ethanol from recycled steel mill emissions. Since then, the company has been exploring several pathways to convert its sustainable ethanol into valuable commercial products, from cleaning products to product packaging to sustainable clothing. 

In June 2020, LanzaTech announced a new venture, LanzaJet, to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using low carbon intensity ethanol (including some of its own fermented ethanol as well as low carbon ethanol from outside suppliers). LanzaTech will initially build a demonstration plant in Georgia that can produce around 10 million gallons of aviation fuel per year, which is expected to be completed by 2022. In June 2021, LanzaJet announced the world’s first commercial-scale ethanol-SAF production facility in South Wales to produce around 330 million liters of blended SAF per year. The company also plans to deploy a commercial SAF plant in Illinois.

LanzaTech is reported to be focusing on two more spin-off technologies: 1) using ethanol to produce ethylene, which is used to make both polyethylene for plastic bottles as well as clothing fibers, and 2) using bacteria used in the fermentation process to produce commercial proteins. 

Key customers and partnerships

LanzaTech’s sustainable ethanol has been used in Swiss company Mibelle’s cleaning products, L’Oreal’s hair product packaging, Unilever's laundry capsules, Coty’s fragrance products, and On and Borealis’s running shoes. LanzaTech has also partnered with the German chemical company BASF to develop n-octanol at laboratory scale, the carbon transformation startup Twelve to develop polypropylene from carbon emissions, Spray Engineering Devices Limited (SED), a leading Indian engineering company, to convert bagasse to ethanol in India and SHV Energy , a Netherlands-based renewable energy solutions provider, to develop renewable propane. 

LanzaTech has partnered with Mitsui & Co (a Japanese conglomerate), Suncor Energy (a Canadian oil and gas producer), and All Nippon Airways (the largest airline in Japan) for its LanzaJet venture. LanzaTech has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Vattenfall (a Swedish utility company), Shell, and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) to explore the production of synthetic SAF. LanzaJet has partnered with Carbon Engineering to investigate the feasibility of a commercial facility in the UK to produce more than 100 million liters of SAF per year. LanzaTech partnered with Woodside and ReCarbon to examine the feasibility of building a CCU facility in Perth, Australia.  In April 2022, LanzaTech also collaborated with Bridgestone Americas for tire recycling. 

Funding and financials

In March 2022, LanzaTech entered into a SPAC deal to list on Nasdaq, at valuation of USD 2.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2022. In January 2022, LanzaJet secured an investment of USD 50 million from Microsoft to deploy its planned SAF plants. In December 2021, the company raised USD 30 million led by ArcelorMittal . In May 2021, LanzaTech received USD 4.1 million from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to improve its existing technology to enable direct conversion of carbon dioxide to ethanol. In July 2021, LanzaTech was also among five other projects to have been selected by the US DOE to receive combined federal funding of over USD 5 million.