Upright raises 5M to make net impact data openly available for all

Upright has just raised €5M to scale its impact data engine and make net impact data openly accessible for all. Comparable data on the largest impacts of companies should be available not just for institutional investors and sustainability professionals, but also anyone interested in understanding the actual science-based impact of businesses and industries. Upright is on a mission to build the world's first truly open impact data platform around its proprietary net impact model.

With the ongoing climate crisis, one question has remained central: how do companies impact the world around us? ESG reporting, the most commonly used method to assess this, solely focuses on the company's financial risks associated with environmental or social issues. Upright brings new analytical rigour and comparability to companies' impact evaluations by measuring the sum of a company's positive and negative impacts on the environment, health, society and knowledge.

“The global ESG and impact discourse is in dire need of common sense and understanding of what is big and what is not. Currently the largest impacts of a company's core business are buried under masses of details on ways of working and reporting. Apples are compared to oranges and facts are replaced by opinions in Twitter feuds. We need a transparent impact data platform with comparable data that is accessible for all”, says Upright's Founder and CEO Annu Nieminen.

While there are several providers for ESG reporting or carbon accounting, Upright is the first open-access platform to compare companies across industries not only based on their financial results but also their overall net impact. Upright's net impact model is the first to contextualize the disclosures and sustainability targets of companies with estimates of the EU taxonomy alignment, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and Upright's proprietary net impact quantifications.

Examples of choices Upright helps guide include:

• ⤷ An asset manager chooses how much to invest in PepsiCo and how much in Walmart.
• ⤷ A student chooses whether to accept a job offer from Goldman Sachs or General Electric.
• ⤷ A consumer chooses whether to buy regular milk from Nestle or oat drink from Oatly.
• ⤷ A CEO decides whether to recommend product strategy X or product strategy Y to the board.

“With 42% of companies exaggerating their sustainability claims, we need a new impact course. Enabling powerful stakeholders, from boards and investors to talent and consumers, to understand the net impact of companies and make informed decisions will lead to a step-change in companies' actions and their effect on our planet. Upright's technology isn't just `nice to have` but will become business critical.” says Nick de la Forge, Co-founder and Partner at Planet A.

“Upright's goal is in their name: make impact assessments more honest and reputable. They are solving one of the most complex challenges businesses face by removing the blind spots in our current assessment of impact, while also democratizing it. When they asked me to invest I did not need to think twice,” says investor Risto Siilasmaa.

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