Colorado-based Optera recently announced the completion of a Series Seed investment led by Mucker Capital, Blackhorn Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, SaaS VC, Valo Ventures, and Stout Street. Optera has leveraged the sustainability research and consulting expertise of its predecessor firm, Point380, to launch an innovative corporate climate and sustainability management platform (SMP).
The investment enables Optera to significantly expand its software-as-a-service (SaaS) business. These funds allow Optera to accelerate the build-out of next-generation features and enable rapid onboarding of new customers across every industry.
Software developed in partnership with industry leaders
The Optera team has worked with leading companies and NGOs, including the World Economic Forum, Rocky Mountain Institute, CDP, BSR, and WWF, to advance corporate action on climate change. Optera launched its software with a core group of customers in 2018. The platform was designed by Optera’s team of sustainability experts with close input and product testing by companies and NGOs. Beyond advancing internal sustainability efforts, Optera enables companies to set, manage, and achieve emissions targets across supply chains and investment portfolios. Optera creates a shared data platform between brands and suppliers and between investors and the companies in their portfolios, enabling coordinated emissions tracking and management at industry-scale.
Today, many Fortune 500 companies use Optera’s platform to capture and manage their emissions, energy, water, and waste data, and to implement programs to achieve ambitious sustainability goals, such as science-based and net-zero emissions targets.
Said Chris Wellise, former Chief Sustainability Officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, “Optera provides our team with the innovative solutions we need to deliver on the expectations of HPE’s stakeholders and executive leadership, helping us to remain a sustainability leader in our industry.”
Said Paul Robbins, Head of Partnerships at CDP, “Optera is a cutting-edge sustainability information platform that has diverse features essential to accelerating environmental action, from setting, tracking, and achieving energy and sustainability goals, to developing project budgets and investment plans.”
Sustainability is the new corporate standard
The market for corporate sustainability is growing exponentially. A decade ago, only a few hundred environmentally conscious companies conducted serious accounting of their environmental impacts. Today, through a combination of shareholder, employee, and customer activism, every major company around the globe is under pressure to disclose and manage sustainability risks across its operations and value chain. In 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 9,600 companies representing over 50% of global market capitalization voluntarily reported their environmental impact data to CDP, a non-for-profit that runs the most extensive global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states, and regions.
Akin to their public financial disclosures, companies are now expected to set ambitious, forward-looking goals for their sustainability programs and to report their progress. According to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) more than 1,300 companies, such as Walmart, Halliburton, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Facebook, Lenovo, Volkswagen, and Unilever have committed to or have set carbon emission reduction targets in-line with the latest climate science. These and many other companies are now in need of an SMP, such as Optera, capable of supporting increasingly ambitious sustainability goals.
About Optera
Optera’s mission is to enable the corporate sector to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The company’s founders contributed to the business case for climate action in ground-breaking publications such as The 3% Solution, The Climate Has Changed, Green Giants, and Reinventing Fire. Optera is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team to accelerate corporate climate action globally. Optera is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado USA.
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