- Epoch raised $4.25m in seed funding, led by Burnt Island Ventures and Sand River.
- The EU deforestation rules will apply to large and medium operators from 30th December 2026.
- Epoch’s self-serve tool uses supplier names rather than plot coordinates.
Jinal Surti began his career working on moving capital into emerging markets. In 2023, he co-founded Epoch to get capital to farmers at the very start of supply chains and to drive emissions reductions.
The London-based startup now verifies the origin of cocoa, coffee and rubber and has raised $4.25 million in seed funding, led by Burnt Island Ventures and Sand River, to provide this service to small importers. This brings total funding to $6.26 million.
The company also launched a self-serve product to automate compliance for SMBs, starting with the EU Deforestation Regulation.
From paying farmers to proving where goods are grown
Prior to founding Epoch, Surti was an early employee at Ripple and a founding exec at Menai. Co-founder and CTO William Ouellette previously co-founded Soilwatch, which helped developers design projects for the voluntary carbon market.
The company now focuses on the first-mile data layer for supply chains and lists carbon removal as one of five use cases, alongside EUDR compliance. That aligns with the regulatory timeline: the EU law came into force in June 2023 and now has enforcement dates in place.
Epoch uses geospatial AI and software agents to map the first mile of a supply chain, identifying the farms, plantations, and mines where raw materials originate. Users can start with a list of supplier names, and Epoch will find the supplier facilities, identify the relevant plots, and check for deforestation and legality risks.
The outcome is a due diligence statement with all the findings cited, which can be submitted to the EU’s TRACES system. Compliance teams can use the Epoch platform or work via assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Epoch states that the customer’s sensitive business data remains in their own environment.
For example, a small coffee importer could upload the names of three exporters and, according to Epoch, receive a statement ready to file without waiting for any replies.
Small importers face the same regulations
The EUDR requires companies placing cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya or wood products on the EU market to demonstrate that their products are both deforestation-free and legally produced. This will involve tracing each product back to the plot of land where it was produced and submitting a due diligence statement.
The rules will apply to all large and medium operators from 30 December 2026 and to most micro and small operators from 30 June 2027. The big issue is getting the data.
“Supply chain compliance has been built on questionnaires, audits and certifications, and that toolkit is incomplete: regulations keep multiplying while suppliers increasingly can’t, or aren’t allowed to answer. We’ve built a compliance solution for the AI era. One sweep across a supply chain, using geospatial AI and agentic research, produces evidence that can be packaged for every regulation a company faces, including the ones not written yet. Enterprises get it inside the platforms they already run, and from today on, so does any SMB,” said Surti, Epoch’s co-founder and chief executive.
The Achilles heel is accuracy. In a June 2026 analysis, Epoch said the EU’s forest map incorrectly flagged 75% of the coffee plots it surveyed and that no single map should arbitrate compliance.
AI-driven compliance is attracting early investment across Europe. General Catalyst led an $11 million seed round for Complir in Copenhagen in September. Lifeline Ventures invested €1.4 million in Helsinki-based CRACI in May.
Market competition and what’s next
The category is very competitive. osapiens raised a $120 million Series B in July 2024, led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, for a platform in the EUDR space. Sourcemap closed a $20 million Series B in June 2023 and is in the EUDR software space. Meanwhile, Satelligence raised c.€1.9 million in a seed round in 2020.
Unlike rivals, Epoch provides the data that platforms such as Assent and Resilinc embed and now also has its own tool. The money will fund product development, infrastructure, and the commercial team.
“Large companies rely on their supply chains to operate their businesses, and they are often operating in the dark as to the local conditions around drought, flood, and forest health. The Epoch platform leverages AI, earth observation data and proprietary models to enable visibility into risk mitigation, and compliance. Epoch is a team of 14 that operates like a team of 140, punching way above their weight! It’s a transformative approach to managing supply chain risk and compliance,” said Christine Boyle, Burnt Island partner.
“A team of truly exceptional capability and experience underpins our belief that Epoch is best placed to be the single source of truth for the first mile. Compliance data becomes business intelligence and enables healthier, more resilient supply chains,” added Greg Robson, founding partner at Sand River.
The real test will be after Dec 30. If the authorities are prepared to accept satellite plot data from importers whose suppliers have not responded, then a 14-person company will have affected the compliance of smaller firms.
