Google Ventures has led an $18m (£14m) investment into London-based startup Climate X to fuel its expansion into the US.
The startup provides tools to financial institutions and asset managers to monitor climate risk to their physical portfolios.
Additional funding for the Series A round came from Pale Blue Dot, Blue Wire Capital, PT1, Unconventional Ventures and Western Technology Investment (WTI).
CommerzVentures and A/O PropTech, which invested in Climate X’s £4.1m seed funding round in 2022, also participated.
Climate X is now looking to continue its expansion in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific – starting with building a commercial team at its recently opened New York office.
“With the escalating risk of floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and other climate impacts, physical risks to properties are growing exponentially,” said Paul Morgenthaler, managing partner at CommerzVentures.
“Real estate as the world’s largest asset class is increasingly mispriced.”
Climate X’s platform creates digital twins of real-world assets and models the climate risk to them based on “500 trillion data points”.
Since it was founded in 2020 by Lukky Ahmed and Kamil Kluza, Climate X has brought on the likes of Legal & General, BRE and Virgin Money as clients.
“The climate adaptation market will be a vital economic enabler in the years ahead, yet to date, it has been dominated by expensive consultancies reliant on manual human analysis and black box solutions that reduce climate risk to a single rating or score,” said Kluza, who is the COO at Climate X.
“We’re breaking the mould with technology designed to drive business value by helping our clients answer critical questions about their asset portfolios and investment strategies: where to buy, where to sell, how to build portfolio resistance, reduce insurance premiums and protect asset values.”
Climate X is not alone in the climate intelligence market. However, one of its competitors – Cervest – collapsed earlier this year.