Q Insights #012

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This week’s read time: 6 minutes

Welcome to this edition of Q Insights — our bi-weekly newsletter for sustainability and ESG professionals looking to make smarter solution decisions.

Each edition brings you concise, relevant updates on the tools, trends, and technologies driving the sustainable transition. We filter the noise, highlight what matters, and help you navigate the sustainability solution landscape with clarity and confidence.

In this edition, we’ll cover: 

• Q Intelligence: What Drives Action in ESG? KanataQ's Lead-to-Profile View Ratios Reveal the Answers 📊

• Q Interview: How Socialsuite is making materiality assessments accessible and actionable (An interview with Seth Forman, CEO of Socialsuite) 💬

• Q Signals: Diginex bought Matter in a $13M deal, Novata acquired Atlas Metrics, Sunhat raised €9.2M, and other news 🟢

• KanataQ Corner: New Listed Providers on KanataQ ✅

• and other insights 💡

Q INTELLIGENCE

What Drives Action in ESG? KanataQ's Lead-to-Profile View Ratios Reveal the Answers

We crunched the numbers across our Master Sustainability Categories on KanataQ, and the results speak volumes about where interest is converting into real engagement.

💥 Top 3 Converters:

Governance & Accountability – 44%
Sustainable Finance – 42%
Social & Human Capital – 41%

📚 Education & Training (39%) and Reporting & Disclosure (38%) also show strong engagement, signaling demand for capacity-building and transparent ESG practices.

🌍 Climate Action sits at 35% — slightly below the platform average (36%) — suggesting high interest but room to refine messaging or solutions.

🔍 Lagging Categories:

Circular Economy – 27%
Impact & Stakeholders – 27%

These numbers help us understand not just what people are viewing, but what’s driving them to take the next step. In short, this is where ESG interest meets commercial intent.

If you're developing services, thought leadership, or partnerships in these areas, now you know where the heat is. 🔥

Q INTERVIEW

This week’s guest:

Seth Forman

CEO of Socialsuite

1. Can you walk us through the key products and solutions that Socialsuite offers, and how they help clients? What makes your offerings stand out?

Socialsuite is an AI-driven sustainability risk and impact management software platform helping companies to identify, manage, and monitor ESG-driven risks and impacts based on double materiality principles. 

Our software and AI empower sustainability teams to streamline CSRD and IFRS materiality assessments, cutting time and costs by up to 80%, improving outcomes, and creating business value.

We’ve taken a decade of stakeholder engagement technology expertise, combined with powerful AI benchmarking capabilities, to deliver an end to end platform for both sustainability teams and consultants. We set ourselves apart by making materiality assessments accessible and actionable – replacing six-figure, one-off engagements with cost-effective, easy to use, cutting-edge software that organizations can confidently use year after year.

2. Who typically uses Socialsuite’s solutions - what types of organizations or industries do you serve most today?

We’re focused on serving Fortune 5000 multinational companies in intensive sectors with complex value chains, such as Logistics, Manufacturing, Industrials, Mining, Energy, Biotech, CPG, and Agriculture. These are sectors with significant sustainability-driven impacts and risks across their value chains that manual processes with tools like Excel are simply too cumbersome and ineffective. Our clients rely on Socialsuite to streamline their risk assessment practices, comply with sustainability regulations like CSRD and IFRS, meet materiality requirements associated with certifications like B Corp, or simply to set a strong foundational sustainability strategy.  

Because every organization’s priorities and stakeholders are unique, our platform is built for flexibility – tailoring each materiality assessment while delivering a consistent, credible, and repeatable process year after year.

3. What kind of impact are your customers seeing in practice? Any stories or results you’re particularly proud of?

We frequently hear positive feedback from our customers about the time savings and efficiencies gained from using our software compared to prior manual and costly traditional  methods. 

For example, one of our larger manufacturing customers conducted a CSRD double materiality assessment with a major consultancy in 2024, investing mid-six figures and 300+ hours for a final deliverable of a 20+ sheet confusing, error-prone Excel template. By leveraging Socialsuite, the company drastically cut time spent managing their double materiality issue registry, saved significant budget, and used our AI tools to benchmark risks with peers while developing strategic sustainability workflows across the company. 

What I love most, though, is seeing teams build the confidence to run these assessments themselves year after year. That’s why we created the Socialsuite Academy, our in-house training program, to help companies build lasting internal capacity.

4. What’s next for Socialsuite — in terms of product innovation, AI capabilities, or expanding support for different industries or company sizes?

We’re always innovating, and right now, a lot of our focus is on AI. We recently rolled out a new AI benchmarking technology that flags material topics a company might have overlooked. If all of your peers identify a topic as material, you need to understand why — and whether your company’s position is truly different. 

For CSRD reporters, we’re taking this even further by using AI to support Impact, Risk, and Opportunity (IRO) development. Our in-platform IRO rewriter aligns statements with ESRS guidance, and we’re collaborating with leading practitioners to keep refining it. The goal is to give companies both the insight and the tools they need to stay compliant and ahead of the curve.

We’re also focused on expanding our channel program, enabling partners to leverage Socialsuite’s powerful materiality technology. As an example of this strategy, we’re excited about our recent partnership with ServiceNow, integrating our double materiality software and AI for use by ServiceNow customers, amplifying our reach and impact.

Q SIGNALS

Latest developments, insights, and trends

📊 New tools, features, acquisitions, and funding rounds from solution providers

Diginex (KanataQ listed), a sustainability-focused RegTech company, acquired Copenhagen-based ESG data firm Matter (KanataQ listed) in a $13 million deal. The acquisition combines Diginex’s blockchain and AI technologies with Matter’s ESG data and analytics platform serving the investment industry. Diginex said the merger will enable it to offer end-to-end ESG data solutions for financial institutions, governments, and corporations, enhancing transparency, reporting accuracy, and sustainable investment decision-making. (link)

Novata (KanataQ listed) acquired Atlas Metrics, a European ESG reporting company, to expand its global reach and meet rising demand for scalable sustainability solutions. The merger unites over 400 clients and 13,000+ companies, combining Atlas Metrics’ AI-driven technology with Novata’s platform to enhance data collection, reporting, and regulatory readiness. (link)

Sunhat (KanataQ listed) raised €9.2 million in Series A funding to scale its compliance platform that tackles the costly “Proof Gap” in ESG and sustainability reporting. Sunhat’s Proof AI generates verified, audit-ready proof on demand, cutting response times by up to 80% with 95%+ accuracy. Founded in 2022, the company now supports clients like EnBW, Ingredion, and Geberit across 20+ countries. (link)

ECO-OS (KanataQ listed) launched the ESG AI Engine, an AI platform designed to help sustainability teams manage growing ESG reporting demands more efficiently. The tool combines a secure document hub, chat-based interface, and collaborative report editor to streamline responses to supplier surveys, climate questionnaires, and internal requests. It also supports alignment with major frameworks such as GRI, IFRS, CSRD, and SASB, offering KPI recommendations, disclosure gap analysis, and reusable response libraries to improve reporting accuracy and productivity. (link)

IBM launched a preview of its Envizi Emissions API, a tool that lets organizations integrate GHG calculations into existing data tools or new solutions. Part of the Envizi ESG Suite, the API offers access to 140,000+ global emissions datasets, enabling protocol-aligned, transparent calculations. It targets sustainability managers reliant on spreadsheets and software vendors seeking to avoid the cost of building emissions engines from scratch.

Climate fintech Connect Earth acquired ESG reporting platform Datia to advance its Sustainable Finance Operating System, uniting emissions data, reporting, and client engagement for financial institutions. By merging Connect Earth’s carbon infrastructure with Datia’s reporting tech, the platform will deliver emissions data, in-app tools, and SME eligibility checks for retail, business, and asset management use cases across Europe and North America.

KANATAQ CORNER

What’s new on KanataQ?

📈 KanataQ Growing Family

Here is the list of providers that joined KanataQ since our last edition: GREENDATA (Climate Action), Impact Maker (Social & Human Capital), and SAVE DCS (Circular Economy).

Come join us

Are you a sustainability solution provider? Join KanataQ, the platform where sustainability solution providers connect with high-intent buyers. Generate quality leads, gain market insights, and maximize ROI with our commission-free model. List with us today or contact us at [email protected] for inquiries.

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