US climate tech start-up Persefoni secures $50m in Series C-1 funding round
US climate tech start-up Persefoni, which offers a climate management and accounting platform (CMAP) for financial institutions and other businesses, has secured $50 million in a Series C-1 funding round.
Persefoni secures funding, launches PersefoniGPT
The company, which is based out of Tempe, Arizona, is also leveraging its latest round of funding to launch PersefoniGPT, a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that combines the capabilities of generative AI with environmental, social and governance (ESG) corporate responsibilities.
The company says its tech enables users “to simplify the calculation of their carbon footprint, identify decarbonisation strategies and perform climate trajectory modelling”.
Led by TPG Rise, a climate investor with a focus on companies that can “enable carbon aversion in a quantifiable way”, the funding round also saw participation from Alumni Ventures, Bain & Co., Clearvision Ventures, EDF, ENEOS Innovation Partners, NGP Energy Technology Partners, Parkway Ventures, Prelude Ventures and Rice Investment Group.
Following the company’s Series B of November 2021, which raised $101 million, this latest injection of capital brings its total amount raised to just over $150 million.
Reflecting on the latest round, Kentaro Kawamori, Persefoni’s CEO and co-founder, says it represents “a significant vote of confidence in our strategic vision” and that it enables the company to “double down on our existing, successful AI developments”.
Its latest effort to “double down” on AI developments now includes the launch of PersefoniGPT, which it describes as a “near-autonomous AI agent whose technical knowledge across carbon accounting, climate management and the Persefoni platform” will seek to simplify the application of data within carbon accounting, assurance and audit processes.
Persefoni’s core platform currently features “several AI capabilities” for enterprise data management, including anomaly detection, natural language data matching and automated data error resolution, which the company claims have been “employed to great fanfare”.
With increasing innovation within the AI space paired with the rising prominence of climate-first corporate agendas, LLM and GPT models are forecast to play a more central role in climate tech as firms look to use data to help mitigate carbon emissions.
“Our early shift to invest in the transformative power of AI and machine learning technologies continues to pay dividends,” acknowledges Kim Stroh, Persefoni’s co-founder and head of AI.
Some of Persefoni’s current partners include Workiva, Deloitte, ERM and its investor Bain & Co.
