SINAI Technologies
Our Investment in SINAI Technologies
Empowering companies to calculate, strategize, and eliminate inefficient, carbon-intensive operations
Absent the kind of governmental commitments to climate policy we would all hope for, many corporations have started to set out on their own missions of achieving net zero emissions in a timeline that keeps global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5℃. Particularly motivated to launch big announcements in time for last fall’s COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow, companies like American Airlines and General Motors announced bold plans to achieve net zero emissions.
These commitments have bolstered a surge in ESG department staffing across industries, which face the first critical challenge of simply accounting for the entirety of a company’s emissions. Those that have climbed that hurdle have largely been focusing on offsetting their footprint with carbon credits and not actually reducing their emissions head on. But California’s state legislature is proposing to require all companies in the state with gross revenues north of $1 billion to disclose their emissions and set science-based reduction targets, and the SEC’s incoming requirements for climate risk disclosure similarly push the issue of corporate carbon accounting and reduction to the forefront.
Seeking to simplify the status quo of manually-updated Excel sheets in corporate ESG teams, SINAI Technologies has built the first decarbonization intelligence platform that delivers automated carbon accounting and management. Its software does this by empowering corporate clients to explore and set operational strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A graduate of Y Combinator, SINAI already has powerful partnerships with Siemens and Rocky Mountain Institute and is set to make an impact in the critical decarbonization intelligence landscape. We’re thrilled to share our investment in SINAI whose founders, CEO Maria Fujihara and CTO Alain Rodriguez, are building a platform to help companies, that are operating in the most highly-emitting sectors, price and reduce their emissions.
What is SINAI?
SINAI offers a decarbonization intelligence software platform that enables companies to measure, analyze, price, and reduce their emissions footprint. To this end, SINAI provides companies with visibility into emissions across their operations (e.g. Scope 1 - 3), the ability to create carbon reduction targets, and compliance with national and international policies and accounting standards. Connecting disparate points of data collection within a company, SINAI serves as a source of truth and relieves the problem of manual emissions data sourcing. It creates a marginal abatement cost curve unique to each business or industry to meet their carbon reduction goals, defining an internal cost on carbon used to measure project return. Moreover, it helps operations managers explore the impact of different mitigation strategies — as an example, by switching fuels or delivery vehicle types — so they can invest in ones that actually make a measurable difference on emissions. SINAI is focusing initially on manufacturing, transportation, apparel, retail, food & beverage and real estate. As it was mentioned earlier, the company has forged strategic partnerships with a number of companies in those industries. One such industry is agriculture, a sector that is one of the most carbon-intensive in the world.
Why did we invest?
Compelling Founder-Market Fit
Founder & CEO Maria Fujihara got her start in sustainability as a technical advisor to Brazil’s Green Building Council and has worked as an advisor to Project Drawdown. Her experience in sustainability certifications offers domain expertise when working with companies around their decarbonization challenges. CTO Alain Rodriquez was an early employee at Uber and developed software that tackled dispatching, fraud, risk, and real-time data. He brings the background necessary to develop a scalable data-driven software solution. Collectively, they represent a great combination of industry knowledge and software prowess.
Enabling Companies to Achieve Their Climate Commitments
Amid a flurry of recent corporate climate commitments, many companies, as reported in The New York Times, have been challenged by demonstrating meaningful action. A major hurdle is simply gathering the emissions data that would serve as the basis for establishing reduction targets. This is exacerbated by the fact that Scope 3 emissions — resulting from suppliers and customers — are challenging to measure.
SINAI is well-positioned to be a leading solution to companies seeking to fulfill their net zero emissions pledge. We’re excited to back the team as it continues to expand the number of companies aiming to decarbonize their business.
