If you’re reading this article on Impact Loop then chances are you’re onboard with integrating environmental and social benefit into the business models underlying companies of the future.
Even if you’re not totally onboard, you’re probably aware of the various pressures on companies to clean and green up their act, from the activist investor movement to stringent incoming EU regulations. All this month we’ve been profiling companies that are taking different approaches to tackling one or more causes. Just as important, if a lot less visible, are those companies working to track the impacts various firms have.
This tracking is of course critical for the impact model to work - investors and other stakeholders need to know if the company really is making progress in mitigating its negative externalities, or creating positive ones, as well as bringing returns to investors to make sure the machine keeps going.
That’s why, for this final round-up, here are ten impact tracking or analytics companies we here at Impact Loop have our eye on.
Darwin
Darwin was only founded in March 2024, by Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, Cyprien Hallé and Antoine Vallier, but they have a proposal that is already receiving a lot of attention. With requirements of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) looming, many large companies will, for the first time, be obliged to report on their impact on biodiversity. That’s a big step from simple carbon reporting, and much more nuanced, as Falque-Pierrotin explained to Impact Loop: "It’s impossible to do it on excel." With €1.5m in pre-seed funding, she and her co-founders have developed an AI-backed SaaS platform to help companies and consultants get a handle on their biodiversity impacts.
Deepki
Next up is one of the really big players in impact tracking across Europe. Deepki specialises in ESG reporting for the real estate sector, helping clients monitor investments to keep track of whether they are actually on the path to net zero targets. “We recognized that addressing climate change needed solutions that were underpinned by high quality data if real estate asset owners were to fully understand the challenges they faced,” co-founder Vincent Bryant told Impact Loop. “The urgency of the situation means that action must be taken based on bespoke decarbonization strategies that tackle both individual assets and complex portfolios.” Founded in 2014 by Bryant and Emmanuel Blanchet, Deepki netted €150m in Series C funding in 2022 and are now operating across Europe.
Carbon Maps
Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between one carbon emissions tracker and another. Fortunately Carbon Maps makes it a bit easier by selling itself specifically to the food sector. Founded in 2023 by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain and Estelle Huynh, the company uses its own models, backed by AI, to help food producers measure impact at every stage of their supply chain and production process. The company has already raised over €7m since founding. Interestingly enough, and to illustrate just how interconnected this sector is, one of Carbon Maps’ early backers was VC firm Samaipata. None other than Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, now-CEO of Darwin mentioned above, was with Samaipata at the time and described Carbon Maps’ potential as “clear and vast.”
ValueCo
With €1.5m in funding as of November 2024, ValueCo may be one of the smaller startups on this list, but they come with a very unique proposal. Winner of a ‘Fintech for Tomorrow Challenge’ prize from the Paris-based Institut de la Finance Durable, ValueCo’s speciality is providing ESG data based on a synthesis of anonymised investor evaluations. If that makes your head spin a little, ValueCo’s data offer, in theory, unbiased markers for the ESG performance of a company or portfolio, producing data that shows whether or not entities are actually living up to the ESG expectations of the market. All the more important as more attention, and regulatory pressure, is put on the ESG performance of companies and investors.
Greenly
Another big player in carbon accounting, and one of the more high-profile ones, Greenly was founded in 2019 and has been making headlines consistently ever since. Most recently, the firm attracted attention with a report into the staggering carbon emissions behind the digital infrastructure allowing people to scroll TikTok. Greenly did something similar for the Qatar World Cup. As for the day-to-day operations, Greenly offers all-in-one software for companies - particularly SMEs - who are anxious to get an overview of, and in theory mitigate, their carbon emissions. Founded by Alexis Normand, Arnaud Delubac and Matthieu Vegreville, the company has offices in Paris and New York, and has raised around €70m in several funding rounds.
Trace for Good
Trace For Good was founded in 2022 by Léa Gillet and Laura Bréban, with backgrounds in finance and consumer goods, respectively. The company raised €3.5m in seed funding in late 2024 and pitches itself to the textile, fashion and consumer goods industries. Supply chains are a thorny issue for companies in these fields, with some of the worst stories of corporate negligence emerging from there. Trace For Good takes a two-way approach to compliance, offering tools to brands and retailers to track their supply chains and also tools for suppliers to respond to transparency requests. Aided by French and EU laws hurrying up companies to get more compliant about things like waste and deforestation, the company is looking to expand across Europe.
Apiday
One of the founders of Apiday has no problem engaging with the current anti-ESG backlash. In 2022, Edouard Audi made headlines in TechCrunch and elsewhere when he took to LinkedIn with a post beginning: “Elon Musk thinks that my startup is bullshit.” He went on to explain how he thinks current ESG models are often more to the benefit of shareholders than actual social or environmental benefit. An interesting position for someone who runs an ESG reporting platform. But Audi, along with co-founders Charles Moury and Erol Hoke (the latter of whom appears to have moved on) clearly still believe in ESG reporting as a tool to improve companies’ impact. They offer software solutions to companies and investors, and have raised over €13m since 2022.
Sweep
Another major player. Founded in 2020 by Rachel Delacour, Yannick Chaze and Raphael Gueller, Sweep might sound a lot like all the other sustainability accounting platforms, but where it stands out is the company it keeps. Already working with heavy hitters such as Amazon Web Services, L’Oreal, Lacoste, SSE and Hewlett Packard, the company has become a leader in helping big companies get ahead of the various legislations - CSRD in particular - putting pressure on them to clean up their reporting. The company has raised around €95m in multiple rounds. Co-founder Delacour, herself a long-time investor, has become a regular sighting on US and European news channels, commenting on climate change and sustainability.
CarbonFarm
A lot of the start-ups we’ve looked at have been fairly all-in-one impact monitoring. CarbonFarm stands out for offering a tool to monitor impact in a specific industry. The company works with agribusinesses, specifically large buyers of rice, to introduce satellite-backed monitoring of methane emissions from paddies. Turns out rice production involves a lot of methane going into the atmosphere. CarbonFarm offers companies the ability to get oversight over the carbon footprint of their rice suppliers, as well as strategies to mitigate it. The company, founded by James Hastwell and Vassily Carantino in 2022, already counts Mars Food and Danone as clients. After a €2.5m funding round in late-2023, they’re working to partner with more companies with operations in Asia in particular.
Searoutes
The final startup on our list is again a more focussed tool than the all-in-one monitoring platforms. Scope 3 emissions - those generated by a companies’ economic activity but not in theory directly under its control - are notoriously difficult to track. The Marseille-based Searoutes, founded in 2019 by Pierre Garreau and Carsten Bullemer, offers a software tool for companies to track, among other things, the emissions of downstream shipping. This, according to Searoutes’ pitchdeck, gives them the ability to fully calculate the carbon emissions of their logistics operations. Supported by ZEBOX, the incubator of shipping behemoth CMA CGM, the company raised €2.4m in 2021 and recently announced it has landed chemicals giant BASF as a client.