Top investors back ClimateAi to tackle $1.3 trillion in climate risk across supply chains

ClimateAi, a pioneer in applying artificial intelligence to climate risk modeling, has announced the launch of its Enterprise Climate Planning (ECP) platform. The ClimateAi ECP platform offers enterprises actionable insights around climate risk tailored to their supply chains. The launch coincides with the closing of a $12 million Series A round led by AI-focused Radical Ventures, with participation from Finistere Ventures and Robert Downey Jr.'s FootPrint Coalition Ventures to meet mounting market demand for ClimateAi solutions, along with participation from prominent angel investors including Raj Kapoor, Josh Felser, Toby Brzoznowski, and Sherman Williams. Existing investors including Neotribe, AMECloud and ThirdStream Partners also joined the oversubscribed round, which brings ClimateAi’s total funding to date to $16 million. 

“Adapting to the impacts of climate change is critical to the future of our economy and essential to our future as a species,” said Jon Schulhof, co-founder of FootPrint Coalition Ventures. “ClimateAi is a platform that provides long-term insights into weather and climate impacts, providing businesses the information they need today to take the actions needed now to adapt to the climate disruptions of tomorrow. As economies navigate the realities of climate change, the ClimateAi platform brings much-needed resiliency to our fragile global supply chains – from food and agriculture to industrial, energy and beyond.” Launched by actor, producer, investor and philanthropist Robert Downey, Jr. in 2021, FootPrint Coalition Ventures’ mission is to accelerate groundbreaking technologies that are addressing the world’s largest environmental challenges, via a unique rolling fund model in partnership with AngelList.

With ClimateAi, customers can optimize supply chain operations - production planning, demand estimation, and inventory management - and improve strategic supply chain planning to minimize climate risk exposure and identify new locations for climate-smart expansions for specific crops and ingredients. It is the only climate planning platform that can assess climate risk on specific business metrics, properly forecast extreme weather more than two weeks in advance, and provide actionable insights across a supply chain or down to a specific asset. ClimateAi’s vertical SaaS solutions have helped more than 15 processors, producers, seed companies and agriculture finance leaders substantially improve the profitability and sustainability of their business operations with respect to climate change.

“We approached ClimateAi because we've seen the impact that climate change has already had on our business, in terms of driving production volatility. ClimateAi's machine learning models link climate forecasts to the metrics we care about: expected inventory size and quality of our offering,” noted Doran Yonay, global seed production director, Hazera. “We expect our partnership to continue to grow as we focus on adapting to climate change and are readily exploring the potential for ClimateAi’s platform to become the AI-backend of our enterprise.”

According to the CDP, the global supply chain faces $1.26 trillion in environmental risks over the next five years. With global temperatures continuing to climb at alarming rates and the most recent World Meteorological Organization forecast expecting more erratic weather and yet another “warmest year on record” to hit by 2025, record-breaking heat, extreme weather events, rising sea levels and other environmental impacts will put a severe strain on our critical supply chains if organizations cannot adapt.

“ClimateAi offers best-in-class extreme weather and climate prediction combined with industry-specific operational insights,” said Parasvil Patel, partner at Radical Ventures. “ClimateAi is a game changer for companies looking to better predict production, supply and demand challenges. With its AI-based solutions, businesses can make operational decisions that adapt to near-term weather changes and long-term climate shifts.”

Accelerating the global rollout of its initial solutions for food and ag companies with the strategic funding, ClimateAi aims to be deployed across half a billion acres of farmlands worldwide within the next three years – increasing resiliency for farmers and profitability for companies throughout the food supply chain. Based on intense market demand, ClimateAi also plans to expand its platform to support solutions across other industry supply chains with the funding.

Spencer Maughan, co-founder and partner, Finistere Ventures, added, “Across the Finistere portfolio, we’ve seen dramatically disrupted supply chains. The convergence of climate volatility and a shift in consumer demand have left inventory management and supply planning in utter disarray. This is ClimateAi’s sweet spot, and we are excited to partner with Himanshu and the team to empower global supply chains to better manage climate risk.”

“Historically, generalized linear models have been used to forecast the impacts of climate on supply chains, but have been proven to be a woefully inadequate planning basis for the significant majority of industries worldwide already impacted by climate,” said Kittu Kolluri, ClimateAi board member and founder and managing director of Neotribe Ventures and former board member of Climate Corporation. “Applying cutting-edge AI techniques to solve these problems, ClimateAi is poised to become the enterprise climate platform for businesses worldwide.”

“We’ve reached an inflection point on climate adaptation, and there's a growing sense of urgency around preparing supply chains to quickly adapt to the impacts of climate change. The pandemic – timed with the hottest year to date – put the focus squarely on the vulnerabilities of our food system infrastructure,” said Himanshu Gupta, CEO of ClimateAi. “ClimateAi is already helping major players across the agrifood supply chain better understand, manage and communicate climate risk to improve transparency and increase profitability. Our platform aims to accelerate the transition to climate adaptation across supply chains – similar to what Fairtrade did to responsible sourcing. In the future, we plan to launch the world’s first climate resilience rating scheme for supply chains based on data gathered by our platform and the trust we have built with our customers and partners.”

ClimateAi actively collaborates with top minds in AI, climate change, data modeling, supply chain efficiencies and across key industries like food and ag. Parasvil Patel of Radical Ventures will join the Board of Directors.

About ClimateAi

ClimateAi helps companies better manage climate risk with actionable intelligence to design and protect global supply chains. Leveraging proprietary AI modeling, ClimateAi delivers unmatched weather and climate predictions and conversion into business impact with best-in-class accuracy, precision and scale. Its first-of-its-kind enterprise climate planning platform quantifies climate impacts, providing business-specific insights, reducing risk, and creating new value opportunities for customers. Headquartered in San Francisco, ClimateAi is committed to working with industry leaders to standardize climate risk assessments across supply chains to help businesses adapt and bring climate resilience to our global economy. Learn more at www.climate.ai and follow ClimateAi on Twitter and LinkedIn.