Carbon accounting platform from London, Zevero has announced a $7 million seed investment. The round was led by Japan-based VC focused on investments in technology, sustainability — Spiral Capital and the round also saw participation from East Ventures as well as several angel investors.
The investment will enable Zevero to continue its growth, as well as support further product development, as they help the world’s businesses meet their sustainability goals. The investment will also accelerate Zevero’s scaling efforts in global key markets
such as Japan, US, Australia, and Asia-Pacific countries.
TFN spoke to George Wade, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Zevero to learn more about the startup and the difference they want to make to sustainability.
From consultancy to ambitious innovation
Zevero was founded in 2021 when Wade and his co-founder Ben Richardson were working as sustainability consultants and became disenchanted with the way the model worked. “It was expensive for big companies, and it was only big companies that could do it,” he explained. “We saw this massive opportunity. I had previously worked with SMEs and my co-founder, working in carbon consulting, realised that thousands and thousands if not millions of companies are going to need a solution.”
They aimed to digitise the process, making it easier and more accessible, so businesses could take more action as a result. “The whole goal was that instead of spending 10 hours on sustainability and it being nine hours measurement and one hour action, you have one hour of measurement and nine hours of action,” he said.
Wade admits that in seeking to invert those proportions they were ambitious, something he puts down to the fact that not only were he and his co-founders passionate about sustainability, they were also young, only 23 when the business was founded. “We were 23, we were naive enough to think that we could solve that problem,” he joked. “But that’s what is the fantastic thing about being a founder: sometimes, you have to be just naive enough. If you knew how hard it would be, you wouldn’t do it.”
Global expansion to have a global impact
Whether naive or not, Wade and his co-founders developed a successful platform that attracted interest and clients from major consumer-goods brands like DEYA, Delphis Eco and MOTH. In February, the company he started was acquired by Levelup Climate Tech, which renamed as Zevero globally, a change that he thinks can only increase its impact.
“We came together with a shared purpose and mission,” Wade explained, “to help companies have the biggest impact, wherever in the world they are.” It also meant that Zevero was operating in the regions that had the biggest emissions. “So we work across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and that means that we can have the biggest impact where emissions are produced,” Wade told us. “51% of emissions in the world are produced in Asia, so we can have the biggest impact there as well.”
The company now has a global reach. Using AI, supply chain data integration, and real-time, granular analytics, they are giving its users accurate emissions data across their full product lifecycle, empowering them to take action to improve their sustainability. They now have operations spanning twenty countries managing over 100 million kilograms of CO₂ emissions.
“As demand for transparent, reliable sustainability data grows, Zevero is addressing business challenges with its carbon accounting tool and LCA solutions,” said Tomokazu Okuno, General Partner, CEO of Spiral Capital. “Zevero’s leadership highlights its global reach.”
Tech-driven solution to carbon accounting
Zevero’s platform seeks to do all the hard-work of carbon accounting, a task that was previously largely manual. However, it’s also designed for a global economy. A key factor is its multilingual ability, essential when dealing with global supply chains.
“We can work with any country, get their data, whether it’s different language, and that allows us to be able to have that centralised expertise, but apply it to a global and a local context,” Wade explained. “There’s increasing demand in Asia for solutions like ours. The regulatory market is limited there, so we find that companies that want to export to the EU know they need to measure their emissions to the standard of a European company.”
They also use a proprietary AI to help with calculations. “When you’re taking emissions inputs from a business with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of data records, we can quickly put it together through what we call our emission engine,” Wade explained. “It allows us to handle millions of records within minutes, rather than having to pay consultants thousands of pounds a day to be able to do that.”
Users will also see the benefits, the Zevero AI will make interaction with the data easier. “We’re making it easier for people to engage with sustainability and know what it is,” Wade said. The platform goes beyond just making it easier to interrogate data using natural language, but also provides suggestions, offering advice on how emissions might be reduced. “We’re in the business of helping companies solve sustainability problems,” Wade told us.
Wade is keen to continue Zevero’s growth as it helps address the sustainability challenge, and discussions with other potential investors continue. The latest investment will fund further growth and development, as Zevero solidifies its position in key markets, but for Wade, the most important aspect is the sustainability they empower. “We care passionately about helping companies reduce their impact,” he said. “That is going to drive us forward as a company, but also as a society as well.”
