July 25, 2024
NEW YORK, NY: First Street, the standard in physical climate risk data, announces the close of an oversubscribed Series A-1, five months after its oversubscribed Series A, bringing the total amount raised to $46 million. This round led by Innovation Endeavors, with other investors SE Ventures backed by global energy management and automation leader Schneider Electric and Nuveen Real Estate will be used to expedite the go-to-market plans of First Street’s scientific innovations with their new software solution, while simultaneously scaling their models for international markets.
Over the past eight years, First Street has integrated the most advanced climate science with state-of-the-art engineering approaches to create high resolution models to quantify risk, and economic impacts, at a property-level. This market leadership has allowed First Street to become the industry standard in the United States, trusted by the federal government, top banks, and asset managers alike.
Leveraging their scientific foundation, First Street is now set to launch a first-of-its-kind correlated risk model, able to instantly quantify the probability of material impact from multiple perils (floods, wildfires, hurricane winds) for a portfolio of properties. Similar to a catastrophe model in concept but able to run multiple perils together, under multiple climate scenarios and generate results in seconds, the correlated risk model represents a significant advancement in climate risk management. To democratize access to these models, First Street has created an enterprise SaaS solution that runs all the advanced calculations for a user, after they simply upload their portfolio.
“Our correlated risk models and enterprise software will change the way the country understands and manages climate related financial risk,” said Matthew Eby, Founder and CEO of First Street,“and with this new funding, we will be able to expand our models globally so that every country can benefit from this scientific breakthrough.”
With an influx of $46 million from the total Series A round, First Street is set to materially advance its two ambitious initiatives: global data coverage and the further build out of their new SaaS solution. Expanding data coverage to a global scale with the same data resolution and trusted methodologies, allows First Street to bring an understanding of climate risk previously only available in the United States to global markets. The SaaS component allows every company and government agency, regardless of their size or complexity, to harness the full power of the First Street data offering. What was previously only available to customers with full teams of dedicated data analysts is now available via the enterprise platform. With a full suite of features, users can run “what-if” climate scenario analysis by modeling different portfolio divestment, investment, and insurance options and export the data instantly to leverage for business decisions and regulatory reporting needs.
“The need to understand and precisely quantify the physical risk of climate change is only increasing. Financial institutions, asset managers, and corporations will need better tools to make optimal business decisions and face emerging reporting regulatory regimes,” stated Sam Smith-Eppsteiner, Partner at Innovation Endeavors. “We think First Street is uniquely positioned to meet this demand given its best-in-class, transparent modeling approach, and experienced leadership team. We are thrilled to invest in First Street and are eager to see the company’s enterprise SaaS solution become the global standard for managing climate risk.”
###
About First Street
First Street™ is the standard for physical climate risk data working to connect climate change to financial risk. First Street uses transparent, peer-reviewed methodologies to calculate the past, present, and future climate risk for properties globally and makes it available for citizens, industry and government.