Mitiga Solutions raises €13M to predict and prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters
Barcelona-based Mitiga Solutions, a science-based climate-tech company that applies science and technology to improve prevention, resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards using AI and high-performance computing, has raised a €13.25M Series A. The investment was led by Kibo Ventures alongside Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Nationwide Ventures, Faber Ventures, and CREAS Impacto.
The funding will enable the company to become the market standard for Climate Score, providing companies with the necessary tools to assess, measure and report climate hazard-associated risks while scaling the use of its physics-based models to help prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters.
Dr. Alejandro Martí, CEO and Co-Founder of Mitiga Solutions, comments, “We're on a mission to prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters and push the boundaries of how risks are managed and mitigated. But most importantly, we want to make the world a more resilient and safer place under a changing climate.”
Global warming is happening at a rate unseen for 10,000 years. In the last century, human activity has increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, resulting in a rise of one degree Celsius in the planet's average surface temperature. Almost 90 percent of the extra heat has been absorbed by the ocean, which has warmed by over 0.33 degrees Celsius since 1969.2
As the world changes, Mitiga Solutions takes into consideration various dynamic factors, such as weather and geophysical conditions to better evaluate the impact of natural hazards as a result of climate change. By adopting this approach, it more precisely analyses risks across time, which helps insurance companies, real estate, and financial institutions better understand and address risks and uncertainties.
Mitiga Solutions’ founders have been working on solving complex environmental problems for over 20 years from different technological disciplines like AI, HPC, geophysics and numerical weather prediction (NWP). The team currently includes 30 employees, 40 percent of which have a PhD degree.
They recognised the gap in commercial risk modelling capabilities for the insurance sector and proposed to build a science-based HPC company. Mitiga Solutions was officially founded in 2018 as a spin-off of the National Supercomputing Center in Barcelona.
By 2023, all regulated market-listed companies and EU-based entities with at least 500 employees must report physical risk impacts associated with climate change adaptation and mitigation under the EU Taxonomy. Companies must conduct climate risk vulnerability assessments to ensure they do not cause significant harm to the environment.3
Several voluntary reporting disclosure and guidance frameworks exist, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Moving beyond greenwashing, these regulations are pushing for state-of-the-art risk modelling based on physics-based modelling4, as defined by the IPCC.
Martí continued, “Traditional risk management tools that rely on past events to predict the future are no longer sufficient, leaving businesses exposed, assets stranded, and reputations at risk. As a business, we value transparency above all. This is why we work with our clients to quantify uncertainty and allow them to make informed decisions. Our risk models and climate score solutions are not black boxes and contribute to more resilient and adaptable businesses and societies. ”
Javier Torremocha, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kibo Ventures added, “There is a lot of potential and resilience in climate technology. We have been impressed by what Alex and the team have built; a proprietary state-of-the-art technology with multiple applications. We are delighted to support Mitiga with its vision to become a category leader while helping to reduce climate change disasters.”
In 2020, Mitiga Solutions joined Microsoft's Startup Program and continued with the Founder's and Fast-Track programs the following year. The company became a Microsoft ISV Co-Sell partner in 2022.
Brandon Middaugh, Senior Director at Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, added, “The ability to predict and manage the effects of climate-related hazards is a critical need to adapt to a changing ecosystem. Mitiga's use of AI and high-performance computing is a valuable tool to assess climate-related risk across a variety of hazards to mitigate threats and build a more resilient future.”
Mitiga Solutions has collaborated with leading groups to publish over 300 peer-review papers, led over 50 European grants, and contributed over €500M in R&D projects with 400 partners worldwide.
The company is operating in Europe with a team of 30 based in the UK and Spain. Customers include insurance companies AXA Climate, Howden Group, Willis Tower Watson, asset managers and operators like Group Suez, INDRA, Safran, and governmental organisations like EUROCONTROL, UNDP, and non-profits like the Danish Red Cross.
In addition to scaling its risk modelling offering, the funding will also be used to expand its science and business team worldwide, invest in its cloud architecture and security, and continue pushing the envelope of climate science. Mitiga expects to more than triple revenues in 2023.
