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How AI makes sense of sustainability
Building clarity and a sustainable, measurable future of sustainability with AI
Peter Juel Jensen
October 24, 2024
Pioneer AI: Checking the Nordic AI Pulse
Welcome to Pioneer AI’s newsletter, The Nordic AI Pulse.
We are a Nordics-focused AI investment fund.
We track, share, and analyse information and insights on Nordic-related AI news, deals, and trends.
📚 In This Issue:
How AI makes sense of sustainability
Top Global AI News
Nordic AI Funding News
Podcast Insights
Upcoming: Nordic AI Events
How AI Makes Sense of Sustainability
Thomas Buch Andersson (far right) and members of the Responsibly team.
Responsibly is bringing AI to the fragmented world of sustainability data and information. The company closed a US$2.3 million seed round in 2023. Here, co-founder and CEO Thomas Buch Andersson shares the journey to building AI solutions for sustainability and offers insights on how startups can leverage AI for competitive advantage.
Pioneer AI: What was the starting point for using AI in relation to sustainability?
Thomas: Before Responsibly, I worked at one of the world’s biggest consultancy companies and founded Ofload in Australia.
Ofload focuses on reducing the carbon footprint of freight logistics. At the time, a third of all trucks on Australian roads were driving around without any freight in them, going to and from other jobs.
I came back to Denmark and wanted to continue working with impact-focused technology. Both previous experiences showed me how fragmented sustainability information and data are, which laid the foundation for Responsibly.
Pioneer AI: If you were to outline what Responsibly does, what would you say?
Thomas: Sustainability suffers from a lack of objective, broad, in-depth data and insights. Most companies struggle to know the actual sustainability performance of collaborators across their supply and value chains.
AI is a way of moving from a primarily analogue process with time lags and uncertainties to a digital setup with real-time insights.
Traditionally, companies have relied on sustainability information gathered via things like questionnaires. This leads to a fragmented and slow process, especially for mid-size and larger enterprises with thousands of collaborators.
We use AI and technology to make the process more intelligent. With us, a company can type in who they are considering working with, and we instantly supply them with in-depth information regarding their sustainability performance and any potential risks.
Pioneer AI: It sounds like you are doing much more than presenting the same information online?
Thomas: Yes, we use a broad range of data sources. This is where the AI aspect comes into play. Large language models are great at managing and smoothing out inconsistencies at scale and generating clarity.
Let's say you're searching for violations and scandals across news articles, and one of your suppliers might be Norwegian (the airline company - chosen completely at random to illustrate a point). As you can probably imagine, there are a lot of entities named "Norwegian", so what large language models do well is that we can create a logical flow where we analyze the context of the company "Norwegian" in the news articles and compare with the industry we expect to see, and use that to call a match.
In this process, AI is like a hammer; it’s a tool, not a product. It enables us to do human-level verification and analysis at scale across millions of data items, spanning broad, deep data sources, correlate information, and provide clients with in-depth, actionable insights.
Pioneer AI: What have been some of your key learnings from working with AI?
Thomas: Focus on the problem first – and then objectively look at how AI might be able to help you solve it.
Many try to build AI systems internally, but even mid to large-scale enterprises find it tricky to make something with clear ROIs. Vertical knowledge, clear focus, and a solution with a transparent, understandable ROI for your target audience will be worth their weight in gold for your go-to-market strategy and success.
I also think that making solutions accessible and understandable to everyone in your target group is critical. Be clear about your product and pricing model and open about AI's ability to support those. Also, be open about any weaknesses and how you address them.
For example, we process 98% to 99% of all data with proprietary systems and AI. The rest is quality-checked manually to ensure the data quality and the interpretation that AI provides, thereby checking for hallucination risks.
Pioneer AI: What are some things you would share with other AI founders or others considering starting an AI company?
Thomas: Start by understanding your target audience's problems and how to address those.
The speed of AI developments is fundamentally changing how startups operate. There is not the same need to hire data scientists and AI specialists as just a few years ago. It is more about full-stack engineering and the ability to create orchestration workflows that tap into different models.
Today—and even more in the near future—your ideas and ability with ideation, design thinking, product development, and optimising workflows are more vital to your success than ever.
From the technical side, the most critical position is that of a full-stack engineer capable of rapidly iterating and developing solutions.
What do you think? Any comments or thoughts? Let us know via email or contact us on the Pioneer AI LinkedIn page here.
🌍Top Global AI News🌏
Select recent global AI news stories - and why they matter.
1: OpenAI Breaks Records with Historic Funding Round
What happened: OpenAI has secured $6.6 billion in new funding at a valuation of $157 billion. The capital will be used to advance AI research, increase compute capacity, and develop tools that help businesses and individuals leverage AI in new ways.
Why it matters: Over 250 million people now use ChatGPT weekly. The investment supports the development of AI solutions, including some that can be the foundation of new solutions for AI startups.
What remains to be seen is whether the broadening field of AI LLM builders (many of whom have previously worked closely with Sam Altman) can catch up - and if OpenAI can turn technical prowess into a sustainable business.
2: Google’s NotebookLM Adds Podcast Customization for AI Deep Dives
What happened: Google's NotebookLM, an AI-powered tool for generating audio overviews from documents, has introduced a new customization feature. Users can now prompt the AI to focus on specific themes or tailor content for different audiences in its podcast-like outputs.
Why it matters: The podcast tool allows for deeper, personalized explorations of source materials, whether for education or entertainment. It also enhances user control over AI content generation, making NotebookLM a versatile tool for students, professionals, and creatives.
This is another example of AI creating in-depth content and “translating” between content types. A bold bet would be that within a year or two, we will be hearing about multimedia AI tools that can take your ideas and writings and turn them into different kinds of content, including short films and podcasts.
🚀AI Funding News🚀
Select Nordic AI-related deals, investments, acquisitions and insights.
Congratulations to all of the founders and teams!
Pioneer AI’s top Nordic AI funding insights and highlights:
Kapa makes the technical intelligent
Kapa’s recent $3.2M seed funding round highlights the immense potential of turning existing documentation into something usable. In the case of Kapa, the startup turns technical documentation into AI-driven assistants that provide accurate, real-time responses, reducing support ticket volumes. It has already attracted an impressive list of clients, and we expect that list to grow further soon.
Do what you have been doing - just better
Helsinki-based Cambri has raised €8 million in a new funding round led by Octopus Ventures and S4S Ventures, with participation from existing investors. Cambri’s AI-powered consumer insights platform is designed to significantly improve the success rate of product launches by providing more accurate and actionable insights. We are big fans of the approach where AI is used to hone the effectiveness of existing processes and see good things in Cambri’s future.
🎧Listen To🎧
Nordic AI news and analysis for your ears.
Prompt [DK] - Work related to AI won multiple Nobel prizes this year. A deep dive into what AI means to scientific discovery.
Digitaliseringspodden [NO] - What does the future of work look like? And what role will AI play in your professional life?
AI Sweden Podcast [SE] - Examines how AI can improve municipal services and save time for the public sector.
📅Training, Meetups & Conferences📅
Nordic AI events for everyone.
Conferences
October 30-31: Digital Tech Summit: Denmark's largest deep tech conference, exhibition, and meeting place for researchers and Danish companies. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
November 6: AI Summit 2024: Explore real-life use cases for AI in businesses with input from leading Danish companies on their experiences and initiatives. [Aarhus, Denmark]
November 13: AI Day 2024: The latest AI knowledge from 35 Danish and international experts and inspiration for your company on implementing AI tools. [Aarhus, Denmark]
November 13: AI in municipalities and civil society: AI lessons learned from public organisation and focus on what challenges and solutions look like going forward. [Stockholm, Sweden]
December 10-12: First International Conference in AI Music Studies: Explores the prospects, challenges and new methodologies required to study AI music. [Stockholm, Sweden]
Meetups
Do you know an event, meetup or similar that you think should be on the list? Let us know!
Got an AI story or insight from the Nordics? Share it with us!
Reply to this email or connect on LinkedIn.
Until next time,
Pioneer Venture AI,