Apple (AAPL) is now the world’s most valuable company, surpassing Exxon Mobil (XOM) around 1:22pm today trading at more than $367 a share with a valuation of more than $341 billion. [Mashable]

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has surpassed $300 billion in market cap today. Currently Apple is trading at $329.57 per share and is up $7.01 since the close of the last day. Apple is not too far from the world’s most valuable company Exxon Mobile Corporation (NYSE:XOM), which has a market cap of $375.92 billion. Market capitalization is the number generated by the stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding. Apple passed Microsoft as the most valuable tech company last May. [Fortune-CNN]

Martek Biosciences is a company that has been growing algae in order to convert it into biofuels.  The company recently made a $10 million deal with BP for joint development of their technology.  Martek uses fermentation to derive the fuels.  BP and Martek hope to make their research commercial in order to solve today’s biofuel problems.

Martek will pass on the research already conducted over to BP in order to scale both of the company’s efforts.  Both of the companies will return the I.P. throughout the partnership course.  However Martek will have an exclusive license to market the technology to other sectors in order to remain competitive.

This deal is similar to what deals that other major oil companies have made with biofuel companies. For example, Exxon Mobil signed a $600 million deal with Synthetic Genomics. And last year Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels partnered to find out how algae can turn CO₂ into ethanol.

[via VentureBeat]