Pledge raises $4.5M seed round to build a carbon-measurement and removal API –
Summary
It’s now raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Visionaries Club with participation from Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital and Zinal Growth, the investment vehicle of Guillaume Pousaz (founder and CEO of Checkout.com). Founded by early Revolut employees David de Picciotto and Thomas Lucas, as well as Freetrade’s co-founder and former CTO André Mohamed, Pledge will start with logistics and transportation. David de Picciotto, co-founder and CEO of Pledge said: “Currently, there is no easy and scalable way exists for companies of any size to understand and remove their emissions. Similar to the flurry of financial infrastructure providers allowing any company to become a fintech, Pledge will become the enabler of climate initiatives by providing the relevant tools and software infrastructure to build on top of.” Clay Dumas, partner at Lowercarbon Capital added: “The biggest bottleneck to scaling carbon removal will be connecting supply with demand. The team at Pledge is applying what they learned building the world’s top financial products to unlock euros, dollars and pounds to suck carbon out of the sky.” Picciotto says that while working in a large private equity firm and sitting right next to the ESG team, he saw firsthand the increasing number of requests from LPs, mostly pension funds, requesting further transparency and reporting on ESG and specifically climate KPIs of portfolio companies.