Feeding the world’s growing population and adapting to climate change are expected to require at least €1.3 trillion annually until 2050, a 40% increase compared to levels being invested nowadays. The public sector’s resources alone will be insufficient to meet this challenge, and private sector actors will be instrumental to close this widening gap.
In this context, private actors face two opposing forces: the willingness to lend more to help adapt and feed a growing population, against the increasing exposure to climate and price risks. Offering a solution to help navigate this dilemma, finres’ advanced AI and scientific capabilities integrate climate and price risks into investment decision-making, bring opportunities to light, and therefore reconcile financial and extra-financial performance.
Funding to launch its platform
French startup finres, a digital platform, which informs and guides decision-making in resilient agricultural investments, has successfully closed a €4.1 million in seed round led by Speedinvest (that backed One Trading and Smiler) alongside Illuminate Financial Management.
Other major investors include AFI Ventures – Ventech’s early-stage impact fund, Kima Ventures, Plug & Play, Raise Sherpas, Tiny VC, and Better Angle, in addition to business angels, Anna Katharina Alex, Michael Diguet, Renaud Visage, and Valentine Baudouin.
The new funds will empower finres to accelerate the launch of its platform, ResADM, which is already in an advanced stage of development, scale its presence more widely in Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe, and intensify its R&D efforts.
“The challenge to ensure resilience in the agriculture industry calls for new solutions and more collaboration between scientists, and both public and private investors. With the support provided by our investors in this Seed round, finres is well positioned to accelerate the deployment of our solutions globally and help make our societies and food systems more resilient to climate change,” added Florent Baarsch, CEO and founder of Finres.
“Climate change is the most pressing issue challenging our world today, and the importance of developing solutions to help agriculture thrive and meet growing requirements is becoming increasingly clear. finres is the only solution bridging the gap between science and investment, helping financial institutions uncover investment opportunities to support agricultural resilience. We couldn’t be more excited for the future of finres as it continues to expand its solution line in this space,” stated Alexis Majos, Senior Associate at Speedinvest.
Revolutionises decision-making in agricultural finance
finres was founded in 2019 by Florent Baarsch, formerly a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, then senior economist at the World Bank and the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). His scientific publications have been cited more than 1,400 times.
finres offers the first AI-assisted decision-making platform to underwrite climate risks and highlight investment opportunities that support agricultural resilience. Bridging the gap between science and investment, finres offers real-time loan underwriting which accounts for climate and price risks for any crop and location globally. The platform also suggests priority investments in agricultural technologies and practices following a logic of profitability and robustness, as well as ex-ante evaluate the positive impact of investments.
