Climate risk intelligence company Climate X has raised $18 million in a Series A investment round led by Google Ventures with support from by Pale blue dot, CommerzVentures, A/O, Blue Wire Capital, PT1, Unconventional Ventures and Western Technology Investment (WTI).
UK-headquartered Climate X offers financial insights into the likely impact of climate risks on physical asset valuations, from residential and commercial properties to road, rail and power infrastructure.
The risk assessment model is based on a 'Digital Twin of the Earth', underpinned by more than 500 trillion data points, including a proprietary library of 1.5 billion individual assets and 44 million miles of infrastructure.
Climate X was co-founded by CEO Lukky Ahmed, who previously led stress testing and risk transformation programmes for HSBC Bank and Lloyds Banking Group and COO Kamil Kluza, who modelled risk for Barclays, MUFG, and Accenture.
The firm's Spectra platform quantifies the probability and severity of weather events decades before they happen. With a Google Maps-like interface, Climate X allows clients to model the future likelihood of 16 different climate hazards — from extreme heat to tropical cyclones and flooding — across eight warming scenarios over a 100-year time horizon, right down to an individual property holding.
Translating these risks into expected annual losses, Climate X’s technology then allows clients to determine the ROI of taking pre-emptive climate adaptation action based on a range of 22 different interventions.
Customers include the likes of Legal & General, CBRE, Virgin Money, and Federated Hermes.
Says Ahmed: “In just over one year since going to market, Climate X has become one of the world’s fastest growing providers of physical climate risk data and analytics, driving value for global financial services clients with over $6.5 trillion in combined AUM. Assessing the impact of physical climate risk on asset valuations and business operations is now a necessity, not a nice-to-have.”
He says the firm will use the new funding to accelerate its expansion in Europe, North America, and Apac, initally building out the commercial team in its recently opened New York office. The company will also look to augment its products in line with evolving commercial and regulatory requirements by incorporating additional data sources into its platform.
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