# Rik Wehbring

> Rik Wehbring is a seed investor at Planetary Technologies (San Francisco) backing Solar and Energy. See 2 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Planetary Technologies](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bioeconomy-capital)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 2
- Last investment: Apr 2022
- Lead investor: 100%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rik-wehbring-731889

Rik Wehbring is a seed investor at Planetary Technologies in San Francisco focused on Solar and Energy. Rik Wehbring is the Managing Director at Bioeconomy Capital. He attended Cornell University.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Solar | 1 | 50% |
| Energy | 1 | 50% |
| Genetics | 1 | 50% |
| Biotechnology | 1 | 50% |
| Bioinformatics | 1 | 50% |

6 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 1 | 50% |
| Series A | 1 | 50% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Tandem PV | Mechanically-stacked perovskite+silicon tandem solar panels provide a unique opportunity for solar to reach new heights | $6M | Series A | Apr 20, 2022 |  |
| MicroByre | MicroByre is a platform for bacterial domestication. Their automated characterization pipeline gathers the oft-overlooked data that highlights unleveraged bacteria that meet functional industrial criteria. That is, they rapidly find the bacteria with naturally unfussy eating habits and evolution-honed metabolisms that have the potential to convertunrefined biomasses into commodity chemicals at vastly improved efficiencies compared to extant fermentation processes. They select from these functionally de-risked bacteria those which can be directly genetically modified to improve their cost profiles — even if they have never been engineered before. The data from our unique characterization pipeline informs the minimally precise genetic modifications necessary to increase pliability and yield, eliminate nutritional additives, maximize feedstock utilization, and improve contamination tolerance & phage resistance. MicroByre gives biomass conversion a truly competitive edge against petrochemical synthesis.MicroByre’s platform bridges the gap between the promising and the profitable in synthetic biology and bioengineering. A unique combination of resources and skills makes MicroByre a valuable potential partner for companies of all sizes and industries. They collaborate to define project scope to match a mutually agreeable business model, which could be a fee for service, license agreement, or joint development agreement. | $3M | Seed | Apr 26, 2019 |  |

2 of 2 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [PRIME Coalition](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/prime-coalition) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Prime Impact Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/prime-impact-fund) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Planetary Technologies

VC Fund · Seattle, United States

Bioeconomy Capital invests in early-stage companies with the goal of accelerating the biotechnology revolution. Based on its startup operational expertise, product development experience, and globally recognized strategic analysis, it has developed a blueprint for building and deploying technological capabilities that will become a criticalinfrastructure of the 21st-century economy.The company's proprietary blueprint is the distillation of the fund managers'​ five decades of combined experience in synthetic biology and other engineering fields and cannot be readily duplicated. Prior investments include Zymergen, Riffyn, Synthace, RoosterBio, Arzeda, Bellwether Bio, EdenWorks, and Lumen Biosciences.

2 contacts available at Planetary Technologies.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Rik Wehbring | Managing Director | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rik-wehbring |
| Rob Carlson | Managing Director & Co-Founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rob-carlson |

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## FAQ

### What does Rik Wehbring invest in?

Rik Wehbring invests primarily in Solar, Energy and Genetics startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 2 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Rik Wehbring last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Rik Wehbring closed in Apr 2022. Shizune tracks 2 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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