Participated · Equity · Feb 2024

Climate Policy Radar builds an open-source knowledge base that converts complex policy documents into structured information to track global climate change policies. The company applies data science and AI to organize and analyze laws and regulations, providing concise, accurate data to support decision-making. Led by founder Dr. Michal Nachmany, the platform is accessible to a broad audience and is used by nearly 350,000 users across over 100 countries. The recent funding will be used to accelerate the company’s work mapping and analyzing the global climate law and policy landscape. The startup is focused on improving its data infrastructure and analytic capabilities to expand coverage and usability. Financially, it secured over €6.8M in new funding in February 2024 to support those efforts. Founded and led by Dr. Michal Nachmany, Climate Policy Radar has spent roughly 1.5 years developing an open-data and open-source search platform that uses machine learning and natural language processing to collect and analyse massive amounts of policy data at scale. The platform is designed to equip decision-makers with high-quality data to replicate successful policies, avoid failed ones, and increase accountability. The startup has welcomed over 250 civil servants, academics, members of international organisations, and civil society users in its first group and today launched an alpha release. A full commercial launch of services is planned later this year. The team plans to add data on climate litigation cases later this year to track court actions against governments and corporates. Climate Policy Radar has raised £2.1 million to date, primarily via Quadrature Climate Foundation, and is preparing for a new funding round.

Led · Grant · Nov 2023

Bower offers a mobile app that leverages machine learning and computer vision to let users scan, identify, and better understand their waste, including package type, material composition, size and CO2e per item. The app rewards users for accurately sorting and depositing consumer packaging at regular recycling bins and provides real-time guidance and disposal instructions to local recycling facilities. Bower plans to open-source its computer vision model to benefit the wider recycling ecosystem and is developing a machine learning-powered waste collection experience with Google.org support. With backing from Google.org, the company aspires to save roughly 500,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalents annually by promoting sustainable behaviors and recycling practices. Operational metrics in the article note over half a million users, endorsements from more than 200 global and local brands, and over 80 million packages incentivized since the company started in 2019. Bower is a Stockholm-based green tech app that pays users money or coupons when they recycle everyday items by scanning barcodes. The platform lets users scan products—from milk cartons to crisp packets—and receive rewards when they take packaging to a recycling point. Brands using Bower can track product life cycles and use app data to understand item types, recycling times and locations. The company was founded in 2015 by siblings Suwar Mert (CEO) and Berfin Roza Mert (COO). Bower has partnerships with Nestlé, L’Oréal and Unilever and operates a free-to-use app with 300,000 users in the Nordics. Those users recycle more than 1.4 million packages monthly, and the platform says it has helped save over 1,000 tonnes of CO2; Bower raised €4.1M to expand internationally, starting with the U.K., and has raised €5M in total to date.

Led · Equity · Oct 2023

InnovateUS provides free online courses and weekly live workshops designed to upskill public sector professionals in areas such as data, digital, human-centered design, and responsible AI. The program is managed by public sector leaders and aims to improve trust in governance by making learning accessible to public workers. Current and upcoming offerings include Innovation Skills and Public Problem Solving, Human-Centered Design, Fast Field Scanning, and Responsible AI for Public Professionals. InnovateUS plans to use new support to expand training reach, awarding Google Career Certificates and delivering synchronous and asynchronous training at scale. As part of its educational ecosystem, the program connects certificate graduates to an employer consortium of more than 150 companies, including Google. The initiative will run expanded activities free-of-charge over the next three years and has secured financial and in-kind support to execute that plan.

Led · Equity · Sep 2023

Climasens is a Melbourne-based climate intelligence startup that specializes in real-time decision-support tools for urban heat adaptation. It is developing ClimateIQ, an AI-powered climate risk evaluation tool that integrates machine learning with multiple urban climate hazard models to produce real-time, high-resolution climate risk information. A $5 million award from Google.org's Impact Challenge on Climate Innovation is funding the current stage of ClimateIQ's development. Climasens is partnering with The New School’s Urban Systems Lab (USL) and Google.org on the project. The company plans to scale the tool internationally to provide climate risk data for cities around the world. CEO Joseph Glesta said the startup is thrilled about the partnership as Climate Week NYC approaches.