According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, every rising degree Celsius is projected to cause at least a 5% decrease in global crop yield. To face these consequences, the agricultural sector requires urgent transformation. In the absence of adaptation, climate change will continue to weigh heavily on global food security and sovereignty, the economic viability of farming activities, and financial institutions lending to farmers.
Feeding the world’s growing population and adapting to climate change are expected to require at least €1.3 trillion annually until 2050, a 40% increase compared to levels being invested nowadays. The public sector’s resources alone will be insufficient to meet this challenge, and private sector actors will be instrumental to close this widening gap.
In this context, private actors face two opposing forces: the willingness to lend more to help adapt and feed a growing population, against the increasing exposure to climate and price risks. Offering a solution to help navigate this dilemma, French startup finres’ advanced AI and scientific capabilities integrate climate and price risks into investment decision-making, bring opportunities to light, and therefore reconcile financial and extra-financial performance.
This Paris-based startup has successfully closed a €4.1 million seed round led by Speedinvest alongside Illuminate Financial Management. Other major investors include AFI Ventures (Ventech’s early-stage impact fund), Kima Ventures, Plug & Play, Raise Sherpas, Tiny VC, and Better Angle, in addition to business angels Anna Katharina Alex, Michael Diguet, Renaud Visage, and Valentine Baudouin.
The platform is the first AI-assisted decision-making solution which underwrites climate and price risks to reveal investment opportunities that support agricultural resilience.
Founded in 2019 by Florent Baarsch, former senior economist at the World Bank and the United Nations, finres was formed with a mission to secure food sovereignty and security by mobilizing more resources for resilient agriculture, including those from private financial actors.
“The challenge to ensure resilience in the agriculture industry calls for new solutions and more collaboration between scientists, and both public and private investors. With the support provided by our investors in this seed round, finres is well positioned to accelerate the deployment of our solutions globally and help make our societies and food systems more resilient to climate change,” said Florent Baarsch, CEO and founder of Finres
Bridging the gap between science and investment, finres offers real-time loan underwriting which accounts for climate and price risks for any crop and location globally. The platform also suggests priority investments in agricultural technologies and practices following a logic of profitability and robustness, as well as ex-ante evaluate the positive impact of investments.
“Climate change is the most pressing issue challenging our world today, and the importance of developing solutions to help agriculture thrive and meet growing requirements is becoming increasingly clear. finres is the only solution bridging the gap between science and investment, helping financial institutions uncover investment opportunities to support agricultural resilience. We couldn’t be more excited for the future of finres as it continues to expand its solution line in this space,” said Alexis Majos, Senior Associate at Speedinvest
To date, finres has informed more than €1.3 billion worth of investments across 32 countries. The company already counts public and private sector clients including the World Bank, the United Nations, the French Development Agency (AFD), and CRDB, the largest bank in Tanzania.
The new funds will empower finres to accelerate the launch of its platform, ResADM, which is already in an advanced stage of development, scale its presence more widely in Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe, and intensify its R&D efforts.
