Climate change is real and countries around the world are taking steps to tackle the problem. However, governments and organisations also require ways to figure out climate change impacts on future projects. The London-based deep tech startup Cervest enables companies to assess climate change with its AI-powered Climate Intelligence (CI) platform. The startup has now raised a notable £22.1 million in its latest funding round.
“Climate Tech has grabbed a lot of attention recently, with good reason. But solutions come from understanding the problem – Climate Intelligence is a new $40 billion market category which seeks to provide us with answers,” said Vinoth Jayakumar, Partner and Fintech Practice Lead at Draper Esprit. “Cervest’s pioneering approach to quantifying risk, in a way that was never before possible, means we can better understand the economics of the problem and bring real-world market solutions to bear. We believe Iggy and the team’s deep science approach will provide the foundations of the Climate Intelligence market.” Jayakumar will join Cervest’s Board of Directors.
Raising funds and expansion plans
The latest funding round for Cervest was led by Draper Esprit while current investors Astanor Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and Future Positive Capital also participated in the round. New investors UNTITLED, Magnus Rausing’s venture fund, and TIME Ventures, the venture fund of Marc Benioff participated as well. With this latest financing, Cervest’s total funding comes up to £25.52 million.
The fresh funds will be utilised by the startup to expand ‘aggressively’ in the US and European markets. It will also be used to launch the company’s on-demand Climate Intelligence platform, EarthScan, later this year.
“Much of the spotlight is on decarbonisation today. While this is absolutely necessary, it is not sufficient to build asset-level resilience,” says Cervest Founder and CEO Iggy Bassi. “To succeed, we need a complete and unified view of climate risk. This is exactly what Cervest will do, enabling everyone to become climate intelligent by making fully informed climate decisions.”
Assessing and adapting to climate-risks
When the climate changes rapidly, it can cause unforeseen events. Australian wildfires, droughts in Europe, and the unexpected heavy snowfall in Texas being some examples. Such erratic climate events can put trillions of dollars worth of physical assets at risk. Organisations and governments around the globe should factor such risks and to help them get a ‘never before possible’ unified view of climate risk, Cervest offers its EarthScan platform.
EarthScan will be Cervest’s first product offering, which will enable access to current, historical, and predictive views on natural calamities or risks such as flooding, droughts, and extreme temperatures. The platform also helps companies and governments understand how this can impact their owned or managed assets. “Our platform delivers a standardised, science-based view of climate risk down to the asset level and across multiple time horizons and risk categories,” Bassi adds.
The company also sets itself apart from the competition by being a Climate Intelligence company. Its platform connects and de-risks decisions across millions of global assets, for companies around the world. Bassi notes, “our products generate dynamic, actionable insights which, over time, produce automated recommendations to not only quantify risk and safeguard assets, but identify new business opportunities.”
Cervest currently has a team size of 50 employees and is also hiring along various business verticals.