Responsibly, a Copenhagen-based startup that’s employing AI to help companies act responsibly and evaluate, report, and act upon just how sustainable their suppliers are, has today announced the raise of $2.4 million in a Seed funding round. The capital is earmarked to help the startup further develop its AI engine in order to capture more data types and expand functionality.
London-based Hambro Perks and Pi Labs led Responsibly’s Seed round.
While Responsibly is by no means alone in the supply chain sustainability and accountability tracking business, the company’s unique angle lies in its guidance provided to suppliers in contrast to the defacto method of being buried with data request compliances.
In contrast, Responsibly is employing AI to find and understand the mountain of data generated within the sustainability sector. Factors that Responsibly incorporates in its analysis include carbon emissions, gender pay gap, human rights, and deforestation, and provides customers with a supplier sustainability data score.
Ultimately, the startup’s mechanism is aimed at helping purchasers instantly access supplier sustainability and risk data, and suppliers to spend less resources on complying with data requests and instead be guided by the Responsibly platform on how to improve.
The company counts CERN and food cultures and dairy enzymes producer Chr. Hansen amongst its client base, has been selected by Mastercard as one of the top five sustainability and social impact startups from across Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Estonia, and most recently introduced a free tool that allows anyone to assess ESG risk.
Founded in early 2021, the company is led by former BCG consultant and former co-founder and COO/CPO of startup Ofload, a Sydney, NSW-based startup that focuses on reducing the carbon footprint of the trucking industry, has raised over $80 million since early 2020 and closed a $60 million Series B round just shy of a year ago, Thomas Buch Andersson.
Buch Andersson further explains the raison d’être behind Responsibly:
“As more buyers push suppliers for sustainability data to achieve scope 3 targets or regulatory compliance, we want companies to spend less time manually collecting sustainability data – which is completely unscalable – so they can focus on actually making an impact where it matters the most by building a more sustainable supply chain which complies with increasing regulation.”
Full article here.