附近上门

Software and data company is using a $3.5 million seed round to launch its new business-centric sustainability reporting platform.

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The Tempe, Arizona-based company was founded in January by , and to develop a carbon footprint management platform that uses artificial intelligence to give companies a detailed picture of their organizational carbon footprint and automates sustainability reporting.

The seed round, the company鈥檚 first institutional funding, was led by with additional participation from and five angel investors. As part of the investment, Rice Investment Group co-founder and Partner joined Persefoni鈥檚 board of directors.

Sustainable investment

Annual sustainability reports are becoming 鈥渁 need to have,鈥� with more institutional investors asking for them as conditions for funding, Kawamori told 附近上门 News.

Last September, ahead of the , more than 500 institutional investors鈥攎anaging $35 trillion in assets鈥� and achieve the Paris Agreement鈥檚 goals.

Persefoni will use the funding on continued development of the platform, to add new features to meet demand from large companies, add new hires to its 18-employee base, and to move forward with its Series A.

鈥淲e need to focus on those clients that are already serious about sustainability, and we will do our Series A to focus on them,鈥� Kawamori said. 鈥淔ull availability will happen in the fourth quarter, which is when we will open the floodgates. We anticipate several million in sales by the end of the year.鈥�

Market validation

Persefoni鈥檚 funding comes on the heels of climate app鈥檚 announcement last week that it launched its new beta app with help from a $5.8 million seed round. Klima鈥檚 vision is similar to Persefoni’s, but is designed for individuals to offset their carbon footprint.

Other indirect competitors have come online, as well, Kawamori said. One of those is , 1which last September created , a carbon accounting product for businesses to keep track of their environmental impact and receive data-driven insights on ways to move toward carbon neutrality.

Meanwhile, in June announced the first-stage product release for its Climate 21 program called , providing carbon emission insights for a company鈥檚 products by plant, profit center or cost center.

鈥淪alesforce, which is progressive on sustainability, had a team looking for a tool like ours before we came on the scene, and when they couldn鈥檛 find one, they developed their own version in their CRM,鈥� Kawamori said. 鈥淐ompared to us, they are limited in capabilities, but it is great validation of the market. SAP, whose product is in the supply chain space, is complementary to us, and we are looking at them as a potential partner.鈥�

Travel dashboard courtesy of Persefoni
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