Cervest — a startup with a platform that claims to quantify climate risk across multiple decades and threats down to the asset level — has raised a $30 million Series A round led by Draper Esprit. Previous investors Astanor Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital (Chris Sacca) and Future Positive Capital also participated in the round and were joined by new investors UNTITLED, the venture fund of Magnus Rausing, and TIME Ventures, the venture fund of Marc Benioff. Cervest’s total funding now stands at $36.2 million. It previously raised $5.2 million in 2019.
Cervest’s competitors include Jupiter Intelligence, which has raised $35 million to Series B level, but Cervest claims it has a more data + AI approach.
The company will use the new funding to expand in the U.S. and European markets through its freemium model. It’s widely accepted now, with unpredictable weather patterns and clear climate “weirding” that these weather events are of huge risk to trillions of dollars of physical assets.
Cervest says its “climate intelligence” platform has been built through peer-reviewed research over the five years and combines public and private data sources (e.g., NOAA, ECMWF, CMIP6), machine learning and statistical science to come up with a view of climate risks to assets.
“EarthScan” will be its first product, giving enterprises and governments a view on how flooding, droughts and extreme temperatures can impact the assets they own or manage, going back 50 years and looking forward 80 years.
Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest said: “Climate intelligence is business intelligence for managing climate risk. Climate volatility has thrown us into a new era where climate intelligence needs to be integrated into all decisions. Organizations that fail to do so risk being blindsided by climate events such as the recent floods and fires in Australia, the droughts in Europe and the winter freeze in Texas. Much of the spotlight is on decarbonization today. While this is absolutely necessary, it is not sufficient to build asset-level resilience.”
Vinoth Jayakumar, partner and Fintech Practice Lead at Draper Esprit added: “Climate tech has grabbed a lot of attention recently, with good reason … 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.”