DURHAM – An award-winning Durham startup that developed a methodology for analyzing climate risk has been acquired by S&P Global, a publicly traded company.
The deal was announced in a statement issued by the company. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Climate Service raised $3.825 million in 2020, and was raising capital earlier this year. The company, which won a 2021 ESG Investing award and was named to a list of world changing ideas by Fast Company, also appeared on the Triangle Tweener List in 2020 and 2021.
In 2021, following an executive order signed by President Joe Biden, The Climate Service co-founder and CEO, James McMahon, told WRAL TechWire that the company was seeing “an uptick in demand across all sectors.”
McMahon noted that the company’s platform, which it calls Climanomics®, provides companies a mechanism to meet the requirements of the executive order that pertains to financial-related climate risk. “That’s exactly what our platform does,” said McMahon.
The company, co-founded by McMahon, began in 2017. The company developed the application for physical climate risk analytics, which it provides to corporate entities, government departments, and investors, the outputs of which are “aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD),” according to the company’s statement.
“We are passionate about providing the market with the essential information it needs to make smart decisions in the face of climate change,” said McMahon, in the company’s statement. “Together with S&P Global, we will take our climate risk capabilities to the next level and be able to deliver insights at scale that the world urgently needs.”
S&P Global is acquiring the company in order to provide its clients “transparent, robust and comprehensive climate data, models and analytics,” the statement reads, and to add capabilities to the company’s portfolio of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) insights.
“More than ever, investors and companies seek evidence-based insights, high quality data and advanced analytics to support the decisions driving their strategies linking sustainability and business performance,” said Dr. Richard Mattison, the president of S&P Global Sustainable, in the statement.
