ClimateAi – a company that pioneered applying powerful machine learning to climate risk forecasting to build end-to-end resilience to climate change – has announced the successful closing of an oversubscribed $22 million Series B funding round. This funding 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 funding round follows an oversubscribed Series A round in 2021, which brings ClimateAi’s total funding to date to $38 million. And over the last 18 months since the Series A fundraising, ClimateAi has rapidly grown annual recurring revenue by a factor of 5 with a four-fold increase in customers — including the likes of Dole, Driscoll’s, and Nuveen Natural Capital. Plus 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 AI 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, and portfolio management, demand planning, sales and marketing, and sustainability and TCFD reporting.
The funding round will be used to accelerate expansion into new territories, including India and Japan, and low-income countries in the Global South where climate adaptation is of the highest urgency. And 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.
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. And 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.
This 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. And customers range from processors and packers to seed and chemicals inputs companies, and financial institutions to manufacturers as well as policymakers, and other stakeholders.
There has been 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.
KEY QUOTES:
“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.”
– Himanshu Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder
“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.”
– Rebecca Mitchem, Partner at Neotribe
“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.”
– Sophie Gupta, Principal & Head of Responsible Investing at Yaletown Partners
“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.”
– Farouk Ladha, Managing Partner at Four Rivers
“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.”
– 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. 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.”
– Andrew Short, Managing Director of Advanta Seeds Australia
