Lyon, June 4th 2024.
If nothing changes by 2030, digital pollution could account for 10% of total pollution, five times that of air travel, or the equivalent of the third-largest polluting country.
Beyond the ecological urgency and increasing regulatory pressure, this issue is also becoming a competitiveness challenge for companies. For instance, by 2030, 40% of a car’s cost is expected to be based on embedded software.
According to a 2023 IDC report, this explains why by 2026, 50% of tenders will include specific metrics for the environmental impact of the services and/or products offered.
In this ontext, Sopht, a French GreenTech startup specializing in IT decarbonization, has just raised €3.3 million in a funding round co-led by Ternel and Axeleo Capital. This funding will enable Sopht to intensify its efforts to help companies tackle the challenge of digital decarbonization.
Ring Capital and Climate Club, which are also committed to tech and impact themes, supported this round alongside Sopht’s historical investors: Wind Capital, Evolem, and Plug&Play.
An observation: the explosion of IT’s environmental footprint
Companies are investing heavily in new technologies to support their activities’ growth and deploy new innovations such as AI. The direct consequence is twofold: a significant increase in the environmental footprint of IT and the associated budgets.
As some of Sopht’s major clients have noted, the IT ecosystem of companies, which includes on-premise infrastructure, cloud, hardware, networks, and web services, can account for up to 45% of their total carbon footprint.
With the first reporting exercises related to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) due in January 2025, companies, and more specifically CIOs, will have no choice but to measure and manage their digital ecosystem’s environmental footprint. This is precisely what Sopht offers with its solution.
Sustainable IT: the winning CO2/euro equation
Sopht’s vision goes beyond more precise and dynamic measurement. It aims to guide its clients automatically towards reducing their footprint. How? By integrating AI into its solution to recommend reduction levers and scenarios from both an environmental and monetary perspective. This is Sopht’s definition of “Green ITOps.”
“IT investments have never been as significant as in 2024. Gartner has revised its projections, with global IT spending expected to reach $5.06 trillion, an 18% increase from previous estimates, surpassing Germany’s GDP. However, there has never been such an overconsumption of IT resources. Knowing that the average holding period for a PC in a company is just over three years or that 35% of cloud expenditures are overinvested, the CO2-Euro ratio becomes almost a no-brainer for IT organizations,” explains Jérémie VEG, CEO & Co-founder of Sopht. “CIOs manage their digital transformation on the triad: Performance / Security / Costs, but it is urgent to add a fourth dimension, ‘Green ITOps,’ focused on the frugality of IT operations,” he adds.
Ambitious goals: tripling clients and becoming Europe’s leading Green ITOps solution by 2026
Sopht currently has around twenty clients in France and internationally, including BNP Paribas, VINCI, ADECCO, VEOLIA, and EDENRED.
With this funding, the goal is to significantly accelerate its commercial development in Europe, triple its portfolio of key accounts, and reach the symbolic figure of 1 million tons of CO2 under management within four years.
Sopht currently has around twenty employees based in Paris, Lyon, and London and aims to double its workforce in the next 24 months with specialized hires in cloud, data, and infrastructure.
About Sopht:
Founded in December 2021, Sopht is a SaaS solution that addresses IT’s environmental measurement and reduction from all angles: infrastructure, cloud, hardware, network, web, and IT services. Through its API catalog, agnostic to the solutions deployed by its clients (Azure, AWS, OCI, GCP, ServiceNow, InTune, HyperV, etc.), Sopht enables automated data collection and provides granular and dynamic environmental observability of IT impacts. Its AI engine allows clients to receive contextualized recommendations and thus script the most relevant action to optimize the CO2-euro impact ratio.
About Ternel:
Ternel is an investment fund that reconciles positive contribution and performance, supporting startups that regenerate the planet, people, and communities. Addressing a new wave of entrepreneurs and investors, Ternel invests in Europe at the seed stage with tickets ranging from €500k to €5m. Alongside investment, Ternel supports its participations in their journey towards regeneration, backed by an advisory board of experts and its support framework.
For more information: https://www.ternel.vc/
About Axeleo Capital:
Axeleo Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm (pre-seed, seed), created in January 2017, investing in France and Europe in Enterprise Software, Cybersecurity, B2B Fintech, Crypto & Web 3.0, Proptech & Construction tech. It offers startup founders a unique support framework combining capital investment from pre-seed/seed phases, operational and strategic support up to series B, and an active ecosystem of over 100 high-level partners and mentors involved in several success stories in France and Europe. Axeleo Capital manages €135M to date on thematic VC funds and has over 45 portfolio companies including Alsid (acquired by Tenable), Cloudskiff (acquired by Snyk), Jenji (acquired by Silae), Trustpair, 365Talents, Cumul.io, Joko, Garantme Beantsock, and Prello.
For more information: www.axc.vc
Press contact : Corentin Moutel / E. corentin.moutel@sopht.com
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Lyon, June 4th 2024.
If nothing changes by 2030, digital pollution could account for 10% of total pollution, five times that of air travel, or the equivalent of the third-largest polluting country.
Beyond the ecological urgency and increasing regulatory pressure, this issue is also becoming a competitiveness challenge for companies. For instance, by 2030, 40% of a car’s cost is expected to be based on embedded software.
According to a 2023 IDC report, this explains why by 2026, 50% of tenders will include specific metrics for the environmental impact of the services and/or products offered.
In this ontext, Sopht, a French GreenTech startup specializing in IT decarbonization, has just raised €3.3 million in a funding round co-led by Ternel and Axeleo Capital. This funding will enable Sopht to intensify its efforts to help companies tackle the challenge of digital decarbonization.
Ring Capital and Climate Club, which are also committed to tech and impact themes, supported this round alongside Sopht’s historical investors: Wind Capital, Evolem, and Plug&Play.
An observation: the explosion of IT’s environmental footprint
Companies are investing heavily in new technologies to support their activities’ growth and deploy new innovations such as AI. The direct consequence is twofold: a significant increase in the environmental footprint of IT and the associated budgets.
As some of Sopht’s major clients have noted, the IT ecosystem of companies, which includes on-premise infrastructure, cloud, hardware, networks, and web services, can account for up to 45% of their total carbon footprint.
With the first reporting exercises related to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) due in January 2025, companies, and more specifically CIOs, will have no choice but to measure and manage their digital ecosystem’s environmental footprint. This is precisely what Sopht offers with its solution.
Sustainable IT: the winning CO2/euro equation
Sopht’s vision goes beyond more precise and dynamic measurement. It aims to guide its clients automatically towards reducing their footprint. How? By integrating AI into its solution to recommend reduction levers and scenarios from both an environmental and monetary perspective. This is Sopht’s definition of “Green ITOps.”
“IT investments have never been as significant as in 2024. Gartner has revised its projections, with global IT spending expected to reach $5.06 trillion, an 18% increase from previous estimates, surpassing Germany’s GDP. However, there has never been such an overconsumption of IT resources. Knowing that the average holding period for a PC in a company is just over three years or that 35% of cloud expenditures are overinvested, the CO2-Euro ratio becomes almost a no-brainer for IT organizations,” explains Jérémie VEG, CEO & Co-founder of Sopht. “CIOs manage their digital transformation on the triad: Performance / Security / Costs, but it is urgent to add a fourth dimension, ‘Green ITOps,’ focused on the frugality of IT operations,” he adds.
Ambitious goals: tripling clients and becoming Europe’s leading Green ITOps solution by 2026
Sopht currently has around twenty clients in France and internationally, including BNP Paribas, VINCI, ADECCO, VEOLIA, and EDENRED.
With this funding, the goal is to significantly accelerate its commercial development in Europe, triple its portfolio of key accounts, and reach the symbolic figure of 1 million tons of CO2 under management within four years.
Sopht currently has around twenty employees based in Paris, Lyon, and London and aims to double its workforce in the next 24 months with specialized hires in cloud, data, and infrastructure.
About Sopht:
Founded in December 2021, Sopht is a SaaS solution that addresses IT’s environmental measurement and reduction from all angles: infrastructure, cloud, hardware, network, web, and IT services. Through its API catalog, agnostic to the solutions deployed by its clients (Azure, AWS, OCI, GCP, ServiceNow, InTune, HyperV, etc.), Sopht enables automated data collection and provides granular and dynamic environmental observability of IT impacts. Its AI engine allows clients to receive contextualized recommendations and thus script the most relevant action to optimize the CO2-euro impact ratio.
About Ternel:
Ternel is an investment fund that reconciles positive contribution and performance, supporting startups that regenerate the planet, people, and communities. Addressing a new wave of entrepreneurs and investors, Ternel invests in Europe at the seed stage with tickets ranging from €500k to €5m. Alongside investment, Ternel supports its participations in their journey towards regeneration, backed by an advisory board of experts and its support framework.
For more information: https://www.ternel.vc/
About Axeleo Capital:
Axeleo Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm (pre-seed, seed), created in January 2017, investing in France and Europe in Enterprise Software, Cybersecurity, B2B Fintech, Crypto & Web 3.0, Proptech & Construction tech. It offers startup founders a unique support framework combining capital investment from pre-seed/seed phases, operational and strategic support up to series B, and an active ecosystem of over 100 high-level partners and mentors involved in several success stories in France and Europe. Axeleo Capital manages €135M to date on thematic VC funds and has over 45 portfolio companies including Alsid (acquired by Tenable), Cloudskiff (acquired by Snyk), Jenji (acquired by Silae), Trustpair, 365Talents, Cumul.io, Joko, Garantme Beantsock, and Prello.
For more information: www.axc.vc
Press contact : Corentin Moutel / E. corentin.moutel@sopht.com
