Becoming one of the world’s best-funded climate tech SaaS startups, Altruistiq has just raised about €17.6 million. The London-based team aims to change the standard carbon reporting model into a carbon abatement model, effecting more beneficial climate action.
Sustainability SaaS solutions are growing in popularity and importance. It’s a sector that provides the vital tech needed to reach climate targets and, finally, reach zero. The market is reported to be worth almost €8 million and growing at more than 30% CAGR. Aiming to enter this market, and fundamentally change how we look at carbon reporting, Altrquistiq has now raised about €17.6 million.
The Funding
The €17.6 million capital boost is significant – it puts Altruistiq amongst the best-funded climate tech software companies globally. Molten led the funding alongside Norrsken and angel investors, Greg Jackson, Mudassir Sheikha and Siraj Khaliq, and Sir Ian Cheshire.
Altruistiq: Towards a ‘carbon abatement’ model
Founded in 2020, the London-based startup is pioneering a carbon abatement model. It’s a process that goes deeper than simply committing to carbon offsets through identifying emission and reduction initiatives. Instead, Altruistiq’s offering is directly impacting how clients do business – creating change that is better embedded in business processes, and, therefore, with greater long-term efficacy.
For example, using data generated by Altruistiq, leading UK recipe box provider, Gousto, is tackling decarbonisation on two fronts: suppliers’ farming methods and the mix of recipes and ingredients it sells. It’s surveying its suppliers to get a better understanding of their carbon footprint and is looking to see how it can use Altruistiq to help its suppliers make their practices more sustainable, which would improve Gousto’s footprint in turn.
The company has surfaced insights using Altruistiq that allow it to reduce the carbon impact of its current recipes down to the individual ingredient. For example, Gousto discovered that sourcing tomatoes from Seville had a lower carbon impact than sourcing from the UK. Such insights help Gousto make more informed sourcing and recipe-development decisions.
Saif Hameed, CEO & founder explained: “We’ve seen a big shift towards businesses embracing the ‘carbon accounting’ space. Whilst this is a helpful tailwind, inaccurate data sets and a resulting lack of granular calculation, leads to generic emission factors that can leave organisations open to charges of greenwashing. We, at Altruistiq, are focused on giving businesses the data engineering tools to better understand their actual impact, whilst also enhancing their credibility on sustainability.”
The impact
The climate tech startup believes that sustainability is the world’s biggest data issue. WIthout extreme accuracy, transparency and quality, business decisions can be misinformed, investment limited, and teamwork misaligned. The promised environmental impact won’t be achieved.
Through Altruistiq’s software, the aim is to bring about genuine change with enhanced data accuracy.
George Chalmers, Head of Climate at Molten Ventures said: “Altruistiq is already proving the power of its platform which we believe can be the category leader of a rapidly evolving market. There is an increasing need and demand for a carbon abatement solution to go beyond just reporting and Altruistiq is in a strong position to meet those needs. We are delighted to back such an exceptional team and look forward to joining them on this exciting journey.”
With this new funding boost, the young startup will continue to champion its abatement engine and empower more clients with its granular data reporting and business intelligent impact management.
Alexander Danielsson, Investment Director at Norrsken VC, added: “At Norrsken VC we back entrepreneurs that are solving the world’s biggest challenges. Altruistiq provides a sustainability platform where corporates can, among other metrics, measure, and plan initiatives to abate emissions in a simple and effective way. Enabling corporates to abate their emissions is the biggest lever to take us to net zero. We are delighted to be partnering up with Saif and the Altruistiq team to solve our climate crisis.”