UK climate fintech Sylvera secures $57m Series B funding
London-based carbon ratings and intelligence start-up Sylvera has secured $57 million in Series B funding.
Sylvera raises $57 million in Series B funding round
The round saw participation from new investors Balderton Capital, Bain & Company, Fidelity Strategic Ventures, and 9Yards Capital, as well as existing investors Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Salesforce, Speedinvest, Seedcamp and LocalGlobe.
The latest funding follows Sylvera’s $32 million Series A round held in January 2022.
Launched in 2020, Sylvera operates a carbon intelligence platform and offers carbon credit ratings to organisations with net zero targets, ensuring the offsets they invest in are “legitimate and impactful”.
In the last few years, the company says it has made “significant” progress in making the carbon markets more transparent by showing firms what to avoid and helping deploy capital towards genuine projects.
With the new capital, Sylvera plans to augment its data about carbon credits and net zero activity and bringing more transparency to the net zero action. Additionally, the funding will also be used towards scaling its team and product offerings, and lead the company’s expansion into the US with an office in New York.
Need for data and transparency
“There is an urgent need to provide the most accurate and transparent views on the multitude of carbon projects around the world in order for corporations, governments and markets to trust in the carbon credits they are buying and effectively scale their climate contributions and head towards net zero,” says Daniel Waterhouse, partner at Balderton Capital.
In the span of over a year, Sylvera claims it has grown and expanded its customer base sevenfold, including forging partnerships with major financial firms and governments.
“As we’ve grown, it’s become increasingly apparent that there’s a serious lack of data to demonstrate progress against net zero targets, and to prove that carbon emissions are actually being reduced and past emissions removed,” Sylvera says.
The company adds that it aims to reverse this, by creating an incentive for investment in genuine climate action.
Erik Mostenicky, principal at Fidelity Strategic Ventures, says Sylvera’s data platform helps create new sustainable investment products while informing investors about the quality of carbon offsets.
“The institutionalisation of carbon markets is necessary to help corporates and investors achieve their net zero targets and we believe Sylvera will be a key driver in facilitating this,” Mostenicky adds.
