Summary of Fair Value of Warrant Liability Using Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model (Detail) (Solazyme Bunge JV [Member], USD $)	12 Months Ended
Dec. 31, 2013	Dec. 31, 2012
Solazyme Bunge JV [Member]
Fair Value Measurements, Recurring and Nonrecurring, Valuation Techniques [Line Items]
Stock price	$ 10.89	$ 7.75
Exercise price	$ 13.50	$ 13.50
Expected life in years	7 years 4 months 2 days	8 years 4 months 2 days
Risk-free interest rate	2.45%	1.48%
Estimated stock volatility	50.00%	55.00%

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Agreed upon price for the exchange of the underlying asset.

+ References

Reference 1: http://www.xbrl.org/2003/role/presentationRef

-Publisher FASB

-Name Accounting Standards Codification

-Topic 820

-SubTopic 10

-Section 50

-Paragraph 2

-Subparagraph (e)

-URI http://asc.fasb.org/extlink&oid=25499696&loc=d3e19207-110258

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- Definition

Period the instrument, asset or liability is expected to be outstanding, in 'PnYnMnDTnHnMnS' format, for example, 'P1Y5M13D' represents the reported fact of one year, five months, and thirteen days.

+ References

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Measure of dispersion, in percentage terms (for instance, the standard deviation or variance), for a given stock price.

+ References

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Risk-free interest rate assumption used in valuing an instrument.

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- Definition

Price of a single share of a number of saleable stocks of a company.

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