Carbon Management Software Carbonfact Secures €13.9 Million in Series A Round Funding – FUNDING NEWS

This round was led by existing investor Alven. Headline is joining as a new investor and also joins the board. Existing investor Y Combinator also participated.

Founded in 2021 with the mission to decarbonize fashion, Carbonfact’s automation 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).

Marc Laurent, CEO and Co-founder says: After meeting with hundreds of textile brands and suppliers we realized that collecting data and reporting on all product and supply-chain information is a complex task that requires more comprehensive data management than spreadsheets allow. We believe that fashion brands should be able to measure and report on climate progress with limited manual work.”

In the 18 months since its seed funding, Carbonfact has onboarded more than 150 customers, including leading apparel and footwear brands like Columbia, New Balance, and Carhartt. The company saw a surge in demand in Q1 this year, which speaks to the increased regulatory pressure on the textile sector to measure and disclose emissions.

Measuring carbon emissions in the fashion industry is a complex task. The regulatory landscape has become difficult to navigate due to constantly evolving standards, such as the EU's Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR), which require expert knowledge.

To calculate the environmental impact of a single garment, more than 100 data points are required, including weight, origin, and energy usage during manufacturing.

Fashion companies face a significant challenge in tracking emissions due to the intricate, multi-layered nature of their supply chains. Manually gathering and consolidating data across the outsourced manufacturing and own business is not only error-prone but also unsustainable as new laws increase reporting requirements.

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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.

Carbonfact 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.

Aileen Lerch, Director of Sustainability at Allbirds, one of Carbonfact’s first customers says: "Carbonfact's product-level focus ensures we can both measure our carbon footprint and actively find ways to reduce it. Carbonfact has been instrumental in helping us model different scenarios and make informed decisions that align with our sustainability goals."

Bartosz Jakubowski, Partner at lead investor Alven, says: "We strongly believe the future is about vertical and product-centric Carbon Management Platforms, and we were impressed by the leadership position that Carbonfact has been able to take on the fashion industry”.

Jonathan Userovici, General Partner at Headline, says, “The fashion industry is worth $1,900B globally. It also emits some of the highest amounts of emissions for each dollar spent. Carbonfact is the only platform that offers a product deep enough to satisfy today’s increasingly complex supply chains. Carbonfact’s customers were the first ones to tell us about the incredible value the platform provides. Some of them were even able to access more attractive lending rates and sustainability incentives by being able to show real sustainability efforts.”

About Carbonfact

The fashion industry-specific carbon management software. Carbonfact helps luxury, footwear, and clothing businesses monitor, report, and cut emissions without requiring physical labour.

At Carbonfact, it is their goal to assist brands in determining the source of their carbon emissions and the most cost-effective ways to cut them.