Eric McAfee

Mr. McAfee is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who founded eight companies that were taken public, creating a combined high market value in excess of $5 billion. He has funded more than twenty-five early stage companies, of which six became public companies. Mr. McAfee was awarded the 2023 Global Bioeconomy Leadership Award in Washington, DC by the world’s largest bioeconomy publication.  

Since 1995, Mr. McAfee has been an elected member of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association Board of Directors representing more than 500 industrial companies. In 2009, Mr. McAfee was selected to advise the US Environmental Protection Agency on technology commercialization. In 2012, he was appointed as a GlobalScot to advise the Scottish Government on renewable energy and economic growth. In 2019, Mr. McAfee was selected by the US Department of Energy to serve as a Commercialization Expert to review proposals for DOE Technology Transition venture funding. 

A frequent speaker at bioeconomy conferences and universities worldwide, Mr. McAfee serves on the Editorial Board of Ethanol Producer Magazine and was one of the three panelist experts on the show “The New Voices” on BioChannel.TV.

Mr. McAfee is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis (Nasdaq: AMTX), a $250 million revenues renewable natural gas and advanced biofuels company operating 125 million gallons of ethanol and biodiesel production capacity in California and India, commercializing technologies to produce advanced fuels and chemicals from renewable feedstocks. Aemetis has signed $7 billion of supply agreements with ten airlines and a national truck stop chain for a $500 million sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel plant to be built at a 125-acre US Army base in Riverbank, California that Aemetis acquired. Aemetis has completed a significant portion of a $400 million dairy biomethane digester, biogas pipeline and RNG production system in California to build 65 digesters to reduce methane emissions and displace diesel in trucks. To sequester CO2 from its operations, Aemetis is building a $250 million CO2 sequestration project with two injection wells that has received the first CO2 characterization well permit issued by the State of California. 

Energy-related public companies founded by Mr. McAfee include co-founding Pacific Ethanol in 2003 (grew to $1.8 billion high market value, $1.6 billion revenues and $100 million cash flow); founder of Evolution Petroleum (bought 13,000 acre oil field and built $350 million CO2 flood project that found 80 million barrels of oil worth $3 billion to the company in 2008); and co-founder of the public company that built a municipal waste processing facility and acquired Vertex (grew to $2.6 billion revenues and $161 million cash flow in 2022 from oil refining and renewable diesel production). 

Mr. McAfee and his brothers founded McAfee Farms in 1978 as teenagers and then Raw Farm in 1998 on their family farm near Fresno, California. Located on 400 acres, Raw Farm is now the largest non-processed dairy brand, creamery, bottler, cheese producer and distributor in the world.  

Mr. McAfee graduated as the Dean’s Medalist from Fresno State University with a B.S. in management with a statistics emphasis. He is an alumni of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program and the Harvard Business School Private Equity & Venture Capital Program. Mr. McAfee served as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Wharton MBA Program and is a member of the advisory board of the University of California Merced School of Engineering.