- Fashion is the second-largest industrial polluter, responsible for up to 10% of global CO2 emissions, surpassing even the air travel sector. Carbonfact automates the carbon management and reporting process for this industry.
- The Series A is led by existing investor Alven. Headline is joining as a new investor and also joins the board. Existing investor Y Combinator also participated.
- In the 18 months since its Seed round, Y Combinator-backed Carbonfact has onboarded 150+ apparel and footwear brands including New Balance, Columbia and Carhartt.
The fashion industry is responsible for up to 10% of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined (Source: EU Parliament).
Founded in 2021 with the mission to decarbonize fashion, Carbonfact’s automated carbon management software tackles this issue with tools to help fashion companies measure, reduce, and disclose their products’ emissions in line with upcoming regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
The company founders are Marc Laurent, who previously founded Kerala Ventures (one of the best performing French pre-seed funds having invested in Doctolib & Malt), Martin Daniel (formerly Data Science Lead at Airbnb), and Romain Champoulier (formerly CTO of JobTeaser).
Carbonfact stands out by automating this time and resource-intensive task, addressing the industry’s challenge of collecting accurate and primary data from multiple supply chain tiers. The software connects to the company’s IT systems and cleans and analyzes the data to then identify gaps and anomalies. Carbonfact employs machine learning to systematically fill in any missing details and provide reliable footprint calculations, even when data is incomplete. On the live platform, brands can identify emission-intensive manufacturing processes, build reduction plans and export automatically created reports for annual carbon disclosure, aligning with multiple frameworks, and ensuring compliance with new laws and standards.
Today’s $15M Series A is led by European VC Alven (Sézane, Dataiku, Qonto), who already led Carbonfact’s Seed round in mid-2022 and joined by global VC firm Headline who is also joining the board. The round also sees a follow-on investment from Y Combinator, whose 2021 batch the company was part of.
Carbonfact’s priorities over the next twelve months will focus on helping textile retailers and manufacturers measure and build plans to reduce their emissions in line with upcoming regulations and expanding global onboarding teams. The company has recently launched a new suite of modeling tools that enable fashion brands to understand how changes in product design or supplier selection can affect carbon footprints before products are made. This allows them to focus on reducing emissions instead of offsetting them.