SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Climate Corporation, the technology pioneer that aims to help all the world’s people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change, announced it closed a $50 million round of funding led by new investor Founders Fund, with participation by existing and new investors Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Atomico, Glynn Capital, and Western Technology Investment. The company also announced plans to hire more than 50 quantitative researchers, data scientists, and software engineers to expand its world-class team.
Over the past year, thousands of farmers have used The Climate Corporation’s Total Weather Insurance™ program to protect profits. The Climate Corporation’s technology measures the weather at a hyper-local level and pays farmers when bad weather occurs, based on a proprietary understanding of the exact impact local weather events will have on a farmer’s profits.
“The United Nations estimates that 45% of the global workforce are farmers, making farming the largest professional activity in the world,” said David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation. “Every farmer can see their profit and their livelihood disappear in a single season as a result of the weather. With such a large affected population, and the potential to help undergird a $3 trillion global industry, we are privileged to have an opportunity to make a lasting and meaningful real-world impact through our work.”
“The Climate Corporation has developed a unique technology to tackle one of the world’s most important challenges,” said Peter Thiel, partner at Founders Fund. “Climate variability poses a giant and growing risk to the world’s ability to feed itself – and for farmers to survive. The company can develop a global business that will change how the world feeds itself.”
The Climate Corporation acquires and generates vast sets of structured and unstructured environmental and agricultural data, through the development of data acquisition and processing systems, proprietary quantitative research, and advanced machine learning. Today, the company’s technology platform enables a powerful and simple product that helps farmers protect their profits. With this additional capital, the company aims to expand its set of customer applications, helping farmers plan, manage, and protect their operations.
“The Climate Corporation redefines the economics of global agriculture with software,” said Brian Singerman, partner at Founders Fund. “There is nothing easy about what they are doing - nothing less than simulating the weather on a hyper-local basis and codifying the precise relationship between weather events and the outcome of a farmer’s operation. It will transform the economics of agriculture, making farming and the global food supply more secure in the face of climate change.”
The financing follows the February 2011 $42 million Series B financing round, bringing total investment in the company to over $110 million.
About The Climate Corporation
The Climate Corporation's mission is to help all the world's people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change. The company protects the $3 trillion global agriculture industry from the financial impact of adverse weather—the cause of over 90 percent of crop loss—with fully automated weather insurance products. The company's unique technology platform enables the real-time pricing and purchasing of customizable weather insurance using proprietary global weather simulation modeling and local weather monitoring systems. Unlike traditional insurance, The Climate Corporation's products pay out automatically based solely on measured weather conditions, requiring no claims process and no waiting for payment. For more information, please visit www.climate.com or follow the company on Twitter @climatecorp.
About Founders Fund
Founders Fund provides capital to transformational businesses run by world-class entrepreneurs. The firm and its partners have been early supporters of some of the most prominent start-ups of the past decade, including Facebook, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Spotify, and Practice Fusion. The firm, headquartered in San Francisco, pursues a founder-friendly investment strategy that provides maximum support with minimum interference to world-class entrepreneurs. More information can be found at www.foundersfund.com.