Investor demand for ESG data is fueling the growth of SaaS

Sustainability software is evolving

Like the world, the market for climate reporting software is heating up.

A company’s sustainability strategy can make or break its investment prospects, because shareholders have made it quite clear over the past few years. In response, companies are working for ways to collect, aggregate and report environmental data to their investors.

• In just the first six months of 2021, investors spent more than $ 570 million on environmental data startups.
• Last year, JPMorgan bought ESG startup OpenInvest, and Blackstone acquired sustainability software Sphera for $ 1.4 billion.
• At the beginning of 2022, IBM acquired environmental data startup Envizi, and SAP launched new products to improve its sustainability outcome measures.
• The cloud giants are not well new to the rodeo: ServiceNow, Salesforce and Microsoft all have growing retention offerings.
• The market driver for all this activity is not so much about goodwill but about money, as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in a recent letter: “We are focused on sustainability not because we are environmentalists , but because we are capitalists, “he wrote.

But there is a problem with the data: Clashing data on emissions from diverse sources and reporting it in a way that meets investors is more difficult than it seems.

• “The amount of information is really vast and their information is not fundamentally structured,” explains Reinhilde Weidacher, head of ESG Data Strategy at Institutional Shareholder Services.
• In the industrial sector for one, there aren’t many sensors, monitors, and meters capable of capturing sustainability data in the first place.
• Then comes the challenge of aggregating data that can stay at multiple refineries or chemical sites, and include everything from carbon emissions and land use to water use and renewable content.
• Putting it all together is the prospect that investors will want to see sustainability reports more often.
• “If you can only monitor it once a year, how will you take corrective actions? How do you run it? ”Asked IBM’s Kareem Yusuf.

There is still room to grow. The scale of these unresolved challenges means that the market for environmental data is not cooling any time soon.

• It’s no surprise that more SaaS companies are getting startups that can help them compete with environmental data this year-especially as markets have contracted and valuations have dropped.
• Right now, emerging technologies are being explored as answers to the data problem: IBM is exploring blockchain-based capabilities to help verify indirect leaks, NGOs use of drones to study methane emissions, and the ISS is applying machine learning and NLP for mining large environmental data sets. .

Regardless of how companies enter the environmental data market, it won’t be easy. Expectations are high, scrutiny is intense and standards are complex. And it’s not enough for businesses to say they’re sustainable – now they have to prove it.

– Aisha counts (email | kaba)

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Dataiku is the only AI platform that connects data and makers, allowing anyone to turn data into real business results-from mediocre to lunar. Because AI can do so much, but there is no soul in the machine, just in front of it. If you don’t, it’s just data.

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Attacks on the head and tail of open-source security

A few weeks after the White House brought together leading open-source software companies and organizations to discuss better ways to secure open-source projects, OpenSSF released a new effort to address this serious problem. .

The Alpha-Omega Project will be launched with a $ 5 million contribution from Microsoft and Google to “improve the security posture of open source software through direct interaction of software security experts and automated security testing,” he said. of the Linux Foundation division on Tuesday. The idea is to identify and secure the most important open-source projects (Alpha) as well as the “long tail” of open-source projects (Omega) through a combination of automated code scanning, analysis of people and better reporting processes.

The amount of money involved is a rounding error for both Big Cloud companies and is unlikely to satisfy callers for more direct compensation for maintainers of open-source projects, a surprising number of them. are unpaid volunteers. However, if OpenSSF can establish a process for finding and organizing a massive number of projects among so many commercial and government software, there will be more money in the future.

– Tom Krazit (email | kaba)

Buying locally (from 3D-printed robots)

While more and more people are delivering their groceries with minimal human interaction, technology-centric retail service companies such as the UK’s Ocado Group aim to incorporate more AI and robotics into fulfillment of the order.

3D printers can even help in building robot parts. Robots featuring 3D-printed components will select products within existing, local distribution centers that incorporate Ocado’s proprietary packing grid system. “Known as the 600 Series, the new bot will feature approximately 300 3D printed components, resulting in a significant reduction in overall weight, cheaper construction and operation costs, and better service,” he said. reported by The Engineer.

Expect what Brits euphemistically call “redundancies.” The robots and updated fulfillment processes will reduce labor costs by up to 40% in the long run and eliminate “some of the most physically demanding jobs,” according to Ocado CEO Tim Steiner , as reported by The Stack.

Of course, AI also helps run distro centers. The company will run the updated process using its own grocery fulfillment software, which is also used by grocery retailers around the world.

– Kate Kaye (email | kaba)

A MESSAGE FROM DATAIKU

Dataiku is the only AI platform that connects data and makers, allowing anyone to turn data into real business results-from mediocre to lunar. Because AI can do so much, but there is no soul in the machine, just in front of it. If you don’t, it’s just data.

Learn more