YCombinator alumnus Carbonfact has raised a $15M Series A round. Carbonfact’s automated carbon management software tackles this issue with tools to help fashion companies measure, reduce, and disclose their products’ emissions in line with upcoming regulations, such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Measuring carbon emissions in the fashion industry is a complex task. To calculate the environmental impact of a single garment, more than 100 data points are required, including weight, origin, and energy usage during manufacturing. Fashion companies face a significant challenge in tracking emissions due to the intricate, multi-layered nature of their supply chains, and reporting requirements are increasing all the time.

Carbonfact’s software cleans and analyses companies’ own data before identifying gaps and anomalies. Using machine learning, it claims to provide missing details to generate reliable footprint calculations even when data is incomplete. This allows brands to identify emission-intensive manufacturing processes, build reduction plans and export automatically created reports for annual carbon disclosure.

Today’s $15M Series A is led by European VC Alven, who already led Carbonfact’s Seed round in mid-2022 and joined by global VC firm Headline who is also joining the board. Y Combinator have invested once again after Carbonfact graduated as part of their 2021 cohort.

Bartosz Jakubowski, Partner at Alven, says: “We strongly believe the future is about vertical and product-centric Carbon Management Platforms, and we were impressed by the leadership position that Carbonfact has been able to take on the fashion industry.”

Jonathan Userovici, General Partner at Headline, says, “The fashion industry is worth $1,900B globally. It also emits some of the highest amounts of emissions for each dollar spent. Carbonfact is the only platform that offers a product deep enough to satisfy today’s increasingly complex supply chains. Carbonfact’s customers were the first ones to tell us about the incredible value the platform provides. Some of them were even able to access more attractive lending rates and sustainability incentives by being able to show real sustainability efforts.”