Fintech climate startup Unwritten, previously known as Dovetail Finance, has completed a seed funding round, raising $3.5 mn.
The funding is aimed at advancing Unwritten’s solutions that integrate climate risk and opportunities into capital allocation decisions, supporting a transition to a low-carbon economy.
The funding round was led by venture capital firm Connect Ventures, which focuses on software investments.
Planet A Ventures, a climate-focused venture capital firm, also participated, along with other notable investors such as Sand River, Adapt Nation Capital, and a mix of academic and industry angel investors.
Founded in 2022 by Dr. Phillip Marks and Amos Wittenberg, the company has developed technology that enables investors, lenders, and companies to factor climate-related opportunities and risks into their financial models.
This technology translates complex data on climate change impacts into actionable financial insights, covering over 40,000 firms.
Prior to this round, Unwritten had raised $922k in pre-seed funding, setting the stage for the seed round investment.
Unwritten’s platform assesses the impact of climate change on companies worldwide. By utilising big data analytics, the company models the interactions between regional climates, market sectors, policy developments, and technological advancements, providing comprehensive insights into macroeconomic trends.
Unwritten has focused on integrating climate change considerations into insurance, financial and investment decisions.
Analytics help people ask the right questions in the right language, to inform the decisions their organisations make
Amos Wittenberg, Unwritten co-founder and CEO
Unwritten makes financial sense of the climate transition — not to predict the future, but so our clients can make the capital allocation decisions to build it.
The platform is updated automatically with new information, keeping the data current and relevant.
Examples of how Unwritten is shaping the future of capital allocation, in a global economy that is being rewired by climate change:
- A private equity firm can diligence prospective deals and assess existing portfolio companies for climate risk and opportunities, without reliance on uncertain emissions data or opaque ESG labels.
- An asset manager can understand the value and directionality of climate risks for portfolios and quantify climate factors in firm-level valuation modelling.
- A bank can effectively integrate material financial risks from the climate transition into lending decisions and pricing, enabled by analytics that is well-understood by all team members.
- A mining company can quantify and communicate the climate transition-driven opportunities for growth in its existing business lines to investors.
“New approaches are quickly emerging to predict the impact of the climate transition on markets around the world. Unwritten brings climate economics into financial decision-making, helping investors react to these seismic shifts” says Prof. Cameron Hepburn (Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Oxford).
Professor Hepburn sits on Unwritten’s advisory board alongside Dr. Alex Edmans (Professor of Finance at London Business School), Dr. Ashby Monk (Director of the Stanford Research Initiative on Long-Term Investing), and Daniel Firger (Advisor for Sustainable Finance at the Bezos Earth Fund).
The newly secured funds will support the continued development of Unwritten’s climate risk analytics software. The company plans to enhance its tools to help investors understand and mitigate climate-related risks in their portfolios.
Unwritten’s co-founders previously developed their climate analytics expertise at Palantir Technologies, specialising in high-tech espionage analysis. This unique background highlights Unwritten’s strong analytical capabilities.
by Peter Sonner
