SAN FRANCISCO, April 13, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ClimateAi, a pioneer in applying powerful machine learning to climate risk forecasting to build end-to-end resilience to climate change, today announced the successful closing of an oversubscribed $22 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Four Rivers Group, with participation from Neotribe’s Ignite fund and Yaletown Partners. Existing investors, Radical Ventures, Neotribe Seed Fund, and Academy Investor Network, also participated in the round.
This new round follows an oversubscribed Series A round in 2021, which brings ClimateAi’s total funding to date to $38 million. Over the last 18 months since the Series A fundraise, ClimateAi has rapidly grown annual recurring revenue by a factor of five, with a four-fold increase in customers — including the likes of Dole, Driscoll’s, and Nuveen Natural Capital. The company was also selected as TIME Best Invention of the Year for 2022 in the sustainability category and awarded Agri-Investor’s Global Innovation of the Year in 2022.
As the global market size for both artificial intelligence and climate solutions expands, ClimateAi’s climate resilience platform helps companies and governments minimize near- and long-term climate risk exposure — across operations, sourcing and supply chain, risk management, asset diligence & portfolio management, demand planning, sales and marketing, and sustainability and TCFD reporting.
The funds will be used to accelerate expansion into new territories, including India and Japan, as well as low-income countries in the Global South where climate adaptation is of the highest urgency. Additionally, the funding will help expand the team and continue its tradition of artificial intelligence breakthroughs, at a time when such actionable innovations are much-needed.
Climate change is quickly accelerating — climate change’s impacts, from changing weather patterns to intense heat waves and catastrophic flooding, are decimating food production, destroying infrastructure, snarling supply chains, and claiming lives. In the EU, for example, droughts hitting Spain’s farmlands have led to both food shortages and skyrocketing food prices across the continent — threatening food security in one of the most high-income places in the world. As March’s UN IPCC report said, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
Meanwhile, new technologies like artificial intelligence are rapidly expanding, with the potential to aid climate adaptation for businesses, communities, and governments in the transition to a sustainable future that protects the lives and livelihoods of people across the globe.
ClimateAi’s unique platform uses AI technologies for good – combining advanced machine learning and data points from multiple sources to generate actionable weather, climate, and water insights for businesses. The technology can identify new locations for climate-smart expansions for specific crops, commodities, and manufacturing sites, assess an investment portfolio for climate and water risks, better manage inventory to avoid shortages, and forecast pressures from certain pests or diseases to inform commodity sourcing strategy. Customers range from processors and packers to seed and chemicals inputs companies, and financial institutions to manufacturers – as well as policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Himanshu Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, said of the funding news: “As the IPCC’s report released last month highlights, we need swift and drastic action to tackle climate change — but even with it, we are locked into at least twenty years of climate change’s impacts, so adaptation measures are urgent and necessary to prevent the worst impacts. Our platform creates unparalleled climate intelligence, reducing long-term forecast uncertainty by average 85% relative to best-available alternatives, generating significant alpha to incentivize companies to act now on climate change.”
The latest IPCC report, for instance, lists India as one of the nations at the highest risk of damages from climate change, with elevated exposure to extreme weather events that threaten its infrastructure and food security. At the same time, India has a massive opportunity to become a leader in climate adaptation. One of its new initiatives from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, aims to encourage the production and consumption of the climate-resilient grain millet. Japan, similarly, as a resource-poor island nation, has the opportunity to fortify its world-class manufacturing facilities, energy systems, and civil infrastructure to leverage climate resilience as a competitive advantage.
As Rebecca Mitchem, Partner at Neotribe said: “Neotribe is thrilled to double down on its investment into ClimateAi. We continue to be impressed by the team’s accomplishments and the ability for them to truly impact their customers’ operational planning around the impacts of climate change.”
Sophie Gupta, Principal & Head of Responsible Investing at Yaletown Partners, said: “We’re proud to support ClimateAi’s innovative, impactful work equipping decision-makers with knowledge and tools to prepare for and respond to extreme weather and climate change impacts. Their solutions facilitate systems-level change, enabling companies and governments to move beyond planning into implementation of critical climate resilience.”
Farouk Ladha, Managing Partner at Four Rivers, said: “With Four Rivers’ deep experience in helping build SaaS companies, we see a significant market opportunity for ClimateAi’s technology and believe that the team and its product are extremely well-positioned to seize the moment in the world of climate change that calls for more AI.”
There is a renewed need and focus on global food security as well as identifying and protecting against water risk, making ClimateAi’s mission to become the world’s go-to forecasting and mitigation platform more important and valuable than ever.
“Driscoll’s recognizes that climate change is impacting our berry growing regions. In order to better prepare for these changes, we are exploring opportunities to better inform our how we breed our proprietary berry varieties to be more resilient while prioritizing flavor. ClimateAi’s platform has provided us unique insights in understanding the magnitude of weather-related risks our growing regions will face in the future,” said Soren Bjorn, Driscoll’s President of the Americas.
“As a vital partner to Advanta, ClimateAi serves as a crucial part of our due diligence and strategic climate risk processes,” Andrew Short, Managing Director of Advanta Seeds Australia said. “ClimateAi’s platform enables us to make better-informed decisions that improve the outcomes of our seed production crops, optimize our R&D, prevent losses, capture new sales, and assess capital expenditures. Our use of the ClimateAi platform has provided huge value to our business and supported our own growers, driving customer loyalty.”
ABOUT CLIMATEAI:
ClimateAi is a technology company focused on using machine learning and AI to address climate change. The San Francisco based company is made up of a team of passionate entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers who all believe that climate change is the most important problem of our generation. Its platform combines advanced analytics with data from multiple sources to generate actionable insights for policymakers, businesses, and other stakeholders to help build resilience against the effects of climate change.
For more information, please visit: https://www.climate.ai and follow ClimateAi on LinkedIn and Twitter.
ABOUT CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, HIMANSHU GUPTA:
Himanshu Gupta is the co-founder and CEO of ClimateAi, a supply chain resilience company that was recognized in 2022 by TIME Magazine as one of the best innovations of the year. He has worked in the climate space for over 15 years, including working with former Vice President Al Gore, as well as serving as the lead modeler for the Emission Pathways project for India. He holds a joint MBA/MS in environment and resources from Stanford.
