Climate X raises $1.5m to help the world tackle a multi trillion-dollar climate risk
Climate X, a London-based purpose-driven startup, has completed its pre-seed raise of $1.5m – ushering in a new era of climate intelligence that will help businesses, governments and individuals around the world build a stronger, climate-resilient future.
Pale Blue Dot, one of Europe’s premier climate-focused Venture Capital firms, led the oversubscribed round. Other investors include UK-based Blue Wire Capital, US-based VC’s A100x and Possibilian, Hong Kong’s Jennifer Cheng’s NewChic Family Office and strategic angel investors from around the world. Climate X were advised in their round by Eversheds Sutherland, led by Tom Jackson.
“Lukky and Kamil are two amazing founders with the domain expertise that we believe is necessary to win in this market. We are very excited to join them on this journey and see Climate X introduced to the world,” said Heidi Lindvall, General Partner at Pale Blue Dot.
Climate change is one of the most pressing and urgent challenges faced by the global community. The threat of physical risks like flooding, wildfire, hurricanes and drought is real and has been accelerating every year. In February 2021, a one-week long cold snap Texas, USA, is estimated to have cost $195bn in lost income and long-term economic outputs from supply chain failures. More than 4.5m homes and businesses were left without power. Over 100 lives were tragically lost. More recently, we’ve seen record breaking temperatures due to extreme heatwaves gripping cities around the world, resulting in electrical grid failures, extreme drought and devastating wildfires.
As we step into an uncertain future, the need to understand these risks not only now but also in decades to come has never been more critical.
Climate X addresses this need with their data and analytics. They use a blend of physical risk models and machine learning to automatically project how extreme weather events linked to climate change could impact millions of specific assets or locations anywhere in the world, up to 80 years into the future. To bring the impacts into the real-world, they also calculate how exposure to extreme weather events could impact the value of assets.
Critically, they are building infrastructure to ensure the tens of thousands of companies worldwide, who urgently need to assess their climate risks, can understand the data they’ll be using to inform their investments and business strategies. The final solution promises to be compliant with a swathe of incoming government regulations mandating large and listed companies to provide climate disclosures from as early as 2022, as well as Central Bank requirements for financial institutions to undertake climate scenario analysis and stress testing for the first time.
Climate X is the brainchild of two purpose-driven founders with a vision for a better future, Lukky Ahmed and Kamil Kluza. Combined, they have 30 years of experience in financial services, regulatory delivery and risk modelling from leading international institutions and consulting firms.
Kamil Kluza, co-founder and chief product officer, said “Climate X is bridging a gap between regulatory requirements and latest technology. We’ve built a ‘glass box’ solution combining remote sensing, a digital twin of the Earth and machine learning. By carefully balancing these components, we help satisfy both regulators, who require transparency, and users, who need detailed and understandable climate intelligence at asset-level scales.”
Lukky Ahmed, chief executive officer of Climate X, reflected on how the company was born in response to the need to connect the world of physical risks that can destroy assets, infrastructures and livelihoods with financial markets and broader risk management.
“It simply doesn’t make sense that climate risks aren’t factored into pricing, valuations or investment strategies. The limited data available in the market was fragmented or assembled in ways that didn’t stand up to our scrutiny, so we decided to partner with leading climate scientists and academia to create it ourselves. Climate X creates the vital link between macro-level climate change events and location-specific intelligence, enabling pro-active actions to build a more climate-resilient world,” he said.
Lukky also described how “a purpose bigger than any one person drives the company and the entire team forward. As founders from diverse backgrounds ourselves, we have seen how disruption caused by breaking the financial system adversely impacts the most disadvantaged members of society.
The consequences of failing to act on climate risk will be far more wide-reaching and significant. Climate X will unlock data that lets the world predict, prepare and protect against future climate-related risks – transforming the lives of millions of people.”
Climate X has already garnered unprecedented attention from globally significant institutions, across multiple industries, joining their Proof-of-Concept programme over this summer – eager to take advantage of a unique opportunity to be the first to see Climate X’s data in action.
The company is set to release its final product to the UK market by the end of 2021, with plans for rapid international expansion in 2022.