Clearly secures $4.3m (£3.4m) seed round to drive Net Zero targets in global transportation

London, 13 August 2024 – Clearly, a climate intelligence platform using AI to provide fleet operators with unique and critical trip-level emission and energy insights, today announced the close of its $4.3 million seed round. The round, led by Pace Ventures and Nine Realms, also saw participation from existing mobility investors Mobilion, Next Gear and M1720 alongside notable angels Lord Nash and Margaux Primat.

The new investment will be used to enhance the company’s existing product offering and add to its growing suite of proprietary AI capabilities. Clearly will also be scaling its team further to meet the global demand for its product.

With the transport sector accounting for 25% of global emissions, decarbonising supply chains holds one of the largest keys to unlocking a reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. Road transportation alone requires an annual spend of $1.75 trillion to reach net-zero goals, explaining why more than half of CEOs are looking to improve data visibility to better reduce emissions, according to the United Nations.

Clearly tackles this challenge by providing logistics operators, fleet owners, and other supply chain participants with the critical insights needed to make real-time decisions capable of significantly enhancing operational and financial efficiency. Enabling global corporations to hit net zero targets, the company’s proprietary technology overcomes the limitations of existing approaches by integrating and blending data from a broad range of sources – covering vehicle movement and performance (gps, tracking, IoT), operations (weight, packages), assets (vehicle type, tyres), energy (fuel, electricity) and more, to generate actionable emission-related insights for fleet managers. These real-time insights help operators identify and choose the most effective decarbonisation initiatives, and facilitate access to financing for these.

By evaluating the true costs and risks of decarbonisation measures, leveraging external data sources, Clearly’s deeply integrated intelligence platform helps operators make millions in savings while ensuring they meet emission regulations and targets.

The company today already counts some of the world’s largest blue-chip companies across the US, Europe, and Asia, among its customers and partners, including Webfleet, Bridgestone’s globally trusted fleet management solution. It is already generating valuable insights from tracking over 100 million trips by working alongside consumer goods companies, international parcel delivery services, leading vehicle distributors, logistics operators, and fleet management firms.

“Decarbonising supply chains is not a new challenge, but one of the largest hurdles for businesses has been accessing and analysing comprehensive data, as a direct result of supply chain complexities and the nature in which this data has been collected up until now. We saw that by using our unique approach to collect, normalise and blend supply chain data, we could improve its interoperability and use it to provide actionable insights on transportation emissions down to the level of individual trips and packages.” commented Danielle Walsh, Founder and CEO of Clearly.

“We are deliberately hardware-agnostic, which means our platform is compatible with any data source, overcoming the significant initial challenge of data acquisition”, commented Pedro Baiz, Co-Founder and CDO.

Once integrated, Clearly’s powerful AI system runs thousands of scenarios to identify targeted interventions, enabling management teams to not only determine strategic options such as ideal vehicle configuration, but also guide individuals like drivers and optimise processes involved in operating them.

“While fleet electrification provides a significant step towards reducing emissions, our data was able to show that as much as 30% of fuel consumption is influenced by driving behaviour alone. By making actionable insights like these readily available, we’re able to help companies improve the way their businesses operate, highlighting strategic optionality beyond capital intensive adjustments to vehicle fleet mix, and recommend changes that can be made immediately to improve environmental and financial outcomes.” added Danielle Walsh, CEO of Clearly.

With transportation emissions on the rise, the urgency with which companies need to act has never been more critical. Without significant intervention, transportation emissions are projected to increase by 60% by 2050, causing severe weather, rising sea levels, ecosystem disruption, health risks, and economic instability – according to the International Energy Agency.

“This space is expanding rapidly and we were impressed by the significant demand from large corporates and the financing sector for Clearly’s product. As the transport sector transitions to using greener technologies, we see the need for data-driven procurement and AI-enabled operational decision making broadening at a fast pace. Clearly is making sustainable transportation more than just a choice for its customers, it’s making it a competitive advantage.” commented Marius Swart, Partner at Pace Ventures.

“Unlike other tools, Clearly offers actionable insights to help fleet operators achieve their goals in the most commercially viable way” added Christy McCaig, Partner at Nine Realms. “We were impressed with the team and their early traction with enterprise customers, and we’re thrilled to support them in their next stage of growth.”

As Clearly further deepens its leadership position in this large and important market, the goal of its next stage of growth is clear: to drive substantial environmental and economic benefits for organisations worldwide, and ensure global prosperity does not come at the expense of the planet.

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About Clearly

Clearly is a climate intelligence platform that uses proprietary AI algorithms to provide global blue-chip corporations in the transport sector with supply chain intelligence and data transparency capable of helping them achieve net zero targets. By providing the highest level of data security and integrating tightly with customer systems and data lakes, Clearly provides fleet owners, operators and suppliers with insights that give customers the information they need to make significant improvements to transport operations.

About Pace Ventures

Pace Ventures, a Berlin-based venture capital fund, focuses on investing in category-defining companies that enhance planetary and human health. Pace Ventures first invested in Clearly in December 2022.

About Nine Realms

Nine Realms invests at the intersection of supply chain and sustainability, targeting early-stage companies with strong product-market fit and rapid growth potential, primarily in Europe and the United States.