Climate Tech SaaS Startup Persefoni announced $101M in Series B and launch of free carbon accounting product

TEMPE, Ariz., Oct. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Persefoni, the leading Climate Management & Accounting Platform (CMAP) for enterprises and financial institutions, today announced it has raised $101 million in its Series B financing round. Prelude Ventures and The Rise Fund led the round with first-time participation from Clearvision Ventures, Parkway Ventures, Bain & Co., EDF Group through its corporate venture arm EDF Pulse Holding, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), The Ferrante Group, Alumni Ventures Group, and New Valley Ventures. Existing investors including NGP Energy Technology Partners, Sallyport Investments, and strategic angels also returned to participate. The round is the largest in Climate Tech history for a SaaS company.

As first-to-market with category creating end-to-end digital calculation capabilities for financed emissions, Persefoni has quickly cemented a leadership position helping asset managers, banks, and other financial institutions calculate their financed emissions footprint in a manner that is fully auditable and compliant with both Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) methodologies. Today, four of the 10 largest global Private Equity firms and four of the world's 20 largest banks already use Persefoni to calculate and disclose their financed emissions footprint, along with several global insurance companies and pension/endowment funds.

Simultaneously, Persefoni is working with companies in the corporate sector across a wide number of industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, energy, apparel, retail, software, and business services. Persefoni's approach as the market's first "ERP for Carbon Data", is enabling companies worldwide to calculate and disclose their global carbon footprint at a fraction of the traditional manual and consulting-based cost, while radically increasing trust and transparency in the outputs.

Persefoni's platform focuses on the world's gold standards of sustainability frameworks, avoiding proprietary approaches to calculation and data sourcing that create gaps in trust and ultimately disclosure problems due to lack of auditability.

"Carbon and climate disclosures will be the biggest compliance market since the advent of Sarbanes Oxley and GDPR, but with even greater complexity," said Kentaro Kawamori, CEO & Co-Founder of Persefoni. "The market is rife with data and software solutions that create new proprietary methodologies every day, and our customers are exhausted with that approach. We work daily with the world's preeminent industry standards setters and regulators to enable transparency and trust at the highest levels. As disclosure requirements continue to accelerate, every CEO, CFO, and Board Director is looking for a solution they know was purpose-built for the enterprise first - like Persefoni."

By enabling clients to treat their carbon transactions with the same rigor and confidence as they manage their financial transactions, Persefoni continues to accelerate its leadership position in the Climate Tech industry, with the goal of tackling climate change worldwide. The Series B investment brings total capital raised to $114.2 million and will support the company's expansion plans beyond its existing organization across 18 U.S. states and eight countries. As part of the financing, Victoria Beasley, General Partner at Prelude Ventures, and Steve Ellis, Co-Managing Partner of The Rise Funds, have joined the Board of Directors.

"Persefoni is very much mission-aligned with Prelude, where our focus is on enabling a net-zero carbon emissions future," says Victoria Beasley, Prelude General Partner and Persefoni board member. "Ever since our founding in 2013, we have been looking for a solution that meets the needs of enterprises that want to take ownership of their carbon footprint. I've evaluated more than two-dozen startups aimed at this problem, but none of them could match the Persefoni team's conviction, market strategy and long-term vision."

Ellis added, "Tech enabled impact solutions like Persefoni are becoming vital tools for companies looking to execute on their sustainability goals. By streamlining, digitizing, and automating the previously arduous manual accounting process for emissions data, Persefoni is enabling better reliability and comparability of sustainability information at a time when climate disclosures are becoming legally-mandated financial disclosures. Kentaro and the team have built the preeminent global SaaS business in the Climate Tech vertical and we look forward to supporting them as they continue to scale the platform."

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

Persefoni's Series B also marks the first time the company has executed strategic corporate partnerships with Bain & Co., EDF Group (EURONEXT: EDF), and SMBC (TYO: 8316).

On the back of Bain & Company and Persefoni's first-of-its-kind partnership creating critical decarbonization solutions for the private equity and institutional investing markets, the companies are also announcing the firm's participation in this round as a strategic investor.

"We've paired Bain & Company's expertise in carbon transitions and investor priorities with Persefoni's cutting-edge carbon accounting platform to deliver unprecedented solutions to our clients on their net-zero journeys, solutions that are linked to driving value and grounded in facts," said Torsten Lichtenau, global head of Bain & Company's Carbon Transition Impact Area. "This partnership helps Bain's clients to manage their carbon inventory with the same rigor and transparency as their financial metrics."

EDF Group, through its corporate venture arm EDF Pulse Holding, has also invested with Persefoni. "As a global, low-carbon energy leader, our clients rely on us to point them to the best carbon management solutions in the market. The first step to being able to reduce a carbon footprint is to continuously measure and understand it, and there is no better technology than Persefoni's platform for this purpose in the enterprise segment." said Julien Villeret, Chief Innovation Officer at EDF Group.

SMBC's investment coincides with Japan's Financial Services Agency announcing that approximately 4,000 companies, including those listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, must begin disclosing their carbon footprint in 2022. As a clear leader domestically in mobilizing efforts and investments to achieve net-zero, the partnership with SMBC is a joint statement to the innovation both companies will bring to the Japanese and Global Banking markets.

Persefoni is also announcing an additional $10m investment into the Japanese market over the next 12 months to finish localizing product capabilities and quickly expand its existing domestic presence across customer and partner support functions.

PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS

Persefoni has separately announced two material product releases:

1. A free tier of its base carbon accounting platform in Q1 2022 that will enable SMB organizations to quickly and reliably produce trusted carbon inventories with confidence and simplicity. More details in this press release.
2. Climate Scenario Modeling. Persefoni has integrated the Science-Based Target Initiatives (SBTi) Temperature Scoring Model to enable users to instantly create 1.5C or 2C implied temperature rise models for their organizations as they chart a path to aligning with Paris Agreement goals. More details in this press release.

"Persefoni is purpose-built to support the most complex use-cases across carbon footprinting and financed emissions calculations for global enterprises. Today, we are very excited to bring that innovation to a much larger set of the market with the announcement of our free-tier product, as Persefoni works to democratize carbon accounting to all companies around the globe," said Kawamori. More details in this press release.

For more information about Persefoni, please visit https://persefoni.com/.

About Persefoni

Persefoni is the leading Climate Management & Accounting Platform (CMAP). The company's Software-as-a-Service solutions enable enterprises and financial institutions to meet stakeholder and regulatory climate disclosure requirements with the highest degrees of trust, transparency, and ease. As the ERP of Carbon, the Persefoni platform provides users a single source of carbon truth across their organization, enabling them to manage their carbon transactions and inventory with the same rigor and confidence as their financial transactions. 

SOURCE Persefoni

Related Links

www.persefoni.com