Danish AI startup Responsibly raises $2.4 million in funding to expand access to sustainable procurement

Responsibly, a Danish AI startup has secured $2.4 million in seed funding to invest in its proprietary AI engine to achieve its mission to democratize access to sustainable procurement. The round was led by prominent venture capital firms Hambro Perks and Pi Labs.

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Responsibly’s platform seamlessly integrates AI technology with expert data to deliver in-depth assessments of a supplier’s sustainability initiatives. This empowers businesses to automate their interactions with suppliers and guide them toward a path of continuous improvement.

Over the past months, artificial intelligence (AI) has garnered significant attention in the media since the launch of ChatGPT. Much of the focus has revolved around the utilization of AI chatbot tools such as ChatGPT for tasks like content generation, image and video creation, and even software coding. However, AI startups like Responsibly are harnessing generative AI to tackle intricate challenges in the corporate world and address global issues.

Founded in 2021 by Thomas Buch Andersson, a seasoned entrepreneur with a strong track record in impact and technology ventures, Responsibly has made significant strides. Thomas Buch Andersson, who previously served as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and founded Ofload, a green startup dedicated to reducing the carbon footprint in the trucking industry, which has garnered over $80 million in funding to date and successfully closed a $60 million Series B round last year, is at the helm of Responsibly.

Responsibly boasts a client list that includes renowned institutions such as CERN, the renowned international research facility, and Chr. Hansen, the world’s largest producer of food cultures and dairy enzymes. Its proprietary AI software plays a crucial role in shedding light on critical sustainability aspects such as carbon emissions, the gender pay gap, human rights, and deforestation, within the supply chains of various sectors, including retailers, real estate, and manufacturing. This is achieved through the collection and evaluation of supplier sustainability data.

The practical application of AI by Responsibly is instrumental in navigating the vast landscape of sustainability data. This aids buyers in expediting their impact by providing immediate access to supplier sustainability and risk data. Concurrently, it assists suppliers in redirecting resources away from data compliance tasks and toward actionable guidance on enhancing their sustainability practices.

In a statement, Responsibly founder and CEO Thomas Buch Andersson said: “Our mission is to make every b2b purchase in the world truly sustainable and ethically responsible by leveraging cutting-edge AI-driven technology.”

“As more buyers push suppliers for sustainability data to achieve scope 3 targets or regulatory compliance, we want companies to spend less time manually collecting sustainability data – which is completely unscalable – so they can focus on actually making an impact where it matters the most by building a more sustainable supply chain which complies with increasing regulation.

Andersson continued:  “The funding from Hambro Perks and Pi Labs will allow us to further invest in our proprietary AI engine, so we can expand our functionality to capture more data types, democratizing access to sustainable procurement.”

Laura Noorani, investment manager at Hambro Perks, said: “We know that supply chains generate the bulk of most companies’ sustainability risks and opportunities. But understanding and influencing the myriad of issues across the supply chain is a notoriously challenging task, given the far-reaching and interdisciplinary nature of the problem.”

Noorani added: “Responsibly’s automated approach, which leverages a wealth of existing data and certifications from Sedex to B Corp certifications to ISO, strikes us as the most efficient, realistic way to address an enormous challenge at scale. We are excited to see Responsibly become the one-click, single source of truth for information on a company’s ESG credentials.”