Q Insights #024

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This week’s read time: 5 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: 63% of organizations still rely on manual sustainability data systems 📊 

• Q Interview: How Unravel Carbon’s AI agents are transforming sustainability workflows (an interview with Grace Sai, co-founder & CEO at Unravel Carbon)

• Q Signals: Novisto acquired Minimum, Upright selected by Statista as its data partner for global impact rankings, Coolset launched an MCP integration, and other news 🗞️

• KanataQ Corner: Newly Listed Providers on KanataQ ✅

• and other insights 💡

Q INTELLIGENCE

63% of organizations still rely on spreadsheets

According to a new report by Reuters Events, 63% of organizations currently store most of their sustainability data in manual systems or spreadsheets, up from 57% from a year ago, indicating a continued reliance on non-integrated workflows.

At the same time, forward-looking expectations point in the opposite direction. Only 14% expect to still rely on manual systems in three years, while adoption of external platforms is projected to rise from 35% to 47%, and customized internal solutions from 28% to 36%.

The gap between current practices and future intent highlights a transition phase, where organizations are facing increasing data requirements while delaying or phasing platform adoption.

Q INTERVIEW

Grace Sai, Co-Founder & CEO, Unravel Carbon

Unravel Carbon is an AI-native sustainability advisory platform that combines sustainability experts with AI Agents, helping companies achieve a range of business outcomes through humans and compute.

Recently, it has launched a suite of AI agents trained for sustainability workflows such as data collection and transformation, emissions calculation, supplier engagement, product carbon footprinting, and reporting across global jurisdictions.

1. You’ve built a suite of AI agents for sustainability workflows. Where are you seeing the most immediate value today?

We have built 8 AI Agents across the sustainability journey of an enterprise and we are used by enterprises, consultancies and auditors. The biggest value comes from compressing not only a team’s time, but more importantly, their mental bandwidth from solving the messiest parts of that journey. For example, sustainability teams know that collecting emissions data is painful, but transforming it into ingestible data templates is worse. Nobody likes to do that work.

Hence, our Data Transformation Agent transforms data from any file, format, or location, identifies the right scopes and categories, and prepares the right files for engine calculation. The user only needs to drag a whole folder of raw files into the agent; the agent handles the transformation, and the user reviews and approves before it goes into calculation. The same applies to product-level analysis. What used to require consultants 4–6 months of work can now be done in 15 minutes, freeing your experts to focus on the decisions that actually require human judgment. The key is not just automation, but enabling teams to act on data much faster, which unlocks use cases beyond reporting.

2. Many platforms claim to use AI, but real use cases often stop at reporting and data aggregation. Where do your agents actually go further?

Most tools still focus on helping sustainability teams produce disclosures. Our focus is different. We build agents that plug into operational workflows and actual business decisions, oftentimes outside of the traditional sustainability teams. For example, ABB’s motor division researchers and designers use our Product Carbon Footprint agent to evaluate environmental impact alongside cost and performance when designing their signature motors. IKEA’s analytics arm used the same PCF agent to arrive at 62% emissions reduction ideas for the world’s most sold bookcase, the “Billy Bookcase”. 

That shifts sustainability from a back-office reporting function into a core business input, sitting alongside cost and performance as a live signal that shapes how products are designed, built, sourced, and sold. Similarly, our Data Collection Agent puts an AI assistant in the hands of every supplier respondent, guiding them through the questionnaire, extracting answers from their documents, quality-checking responses against evidence, and transforming the output into. The goal is not just better reports, but better outcomes.

3. You’ve positioned Unravel as an agent-based system rather than traditional SaaS. How does that change the way customers adopt and pay for the product?

It changes both the entry point and the economics. Instead of large upfront commitments or seat-based pricing, some of our agents are consumption-based. Customers pay based on what they actually use, for example, per product component analyzed or per supplier engaged. That lowers the barrier to adoption and allows teams to start small, gain trust, and scale. It also aligns better with how value is created. When you combine that with faster time-to-value, customers can see results early, which is critical in a space where traditional sustainability initiatives often have very long feedback loops. Some of our agents can also be used independently of our main corporate sustainability platform. This allows Unravel to serve enterprises that already have carbon platforms.

4. In a crowded climate software market, where do you think Unravel is genuinely differentiated today?

I think the main difference is depth and specificity. We are not applying generic AI to sustainability. Our agents are built with deep domain knowledge across climate science, regulatory frameworks, and product-level methodologies. That allows them to perform tasks that require both technical and contextual understanding. The second difference is that we are pushing beyond the sustainability team. Many solutions are still designed for reporting functions, while our agents are increasingly used by R&D, procurement, and supply chain teams. That is where a lot of the real decarbonization impact sits, and where we see the next phase of this market evolving.

Q SIGNALS

Latest developments, insights, and trends

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

Novisto (KanataQ listed) acquired carbon management software company Minimum to deliver a fully integrated end-to-end sustainability and carbon management platform. The deal enhances Novisto’s capabilities across the entire ESG data lifecycle, combining granular carbon data collection and analysis with reporting tools, as companies face growing regulatory demands and seek unified, audit-ready sustainability systems. (link)

Statista selected Upright (KanataQ listed) as its data partner for global impact rankings, including TIME’s “World’s Most Impactful Companies of 2026.” The rankings use Upright’s net impact model to independently quantify companies’ real-world effects across environment, society, health, and knowledge, aiming to provide transparent and comparable impact assessments beyond self-reported ESG data. (link)

Coolset (KanataQ listed) launched an MCP integration that allows ESG data, reporting workflows, and compliance tasks to be accessed directly through AI assistants like Claude without switching platforms. The integration enables users to query emissions data, manage due diligence, update reports, and retrieve audit documentation via natural language, aiming to streamline workflows and make ESG processes more accessible across teams. (link)

Clarity AI (KanataQ listed) partnered with RiskThinking.ai to integrate asset-level physical climate risk data into its platform, enhancing transparency and decision-making for financial institutions. The collaboration combines geospatial data and advanced risk modeling to provide detailed insights into climate hazards, biodiversity impacts, and asset-level vulnerabilities, supporting regulatory compliance and enabling more precise, audit-ready climate risk analysis across portfolios. (link)

Carbon+Alt+Delete (KanataQ listed) and Ecodex partnered to integrate emission factor data with a validated carbon accounting engine, accessible directly through LLM tools like ChatGPT and Claude. The collaboration enables sustainability consultants to interact with carbon data and build inventories via natural language, reflecting a shift toward AI-native, modular workflows in carbon accounting. (link)

ESGenius! (KanataQ listed) announced deployments across public finance, manufacturing, and logistics focused on ESG data management and reporting. These include a national ESG tracking system developed with Hellenic Development Bank, used by over 13,000 SMEs in Greece to upload and process ESG data and generate reports, as well as implementations with Hulamin and PCT (COSCO). Across these cases, the platform is applied to automate data collection, provide real-time performance dashboards, and produce structured, audit-ready ESG reports. (link)

Watershed launched new platform capabilities to help companies manage ESG data and streamline sustainability reporting across all frameworks. The update expands its platform beyond emissions to cover full ESG metrics, adding tools like a flexible report builder, data automation, and AI-powered drafting and gap analysis. (link)

3E launched a new AI platform and solution suite to enhance product compliance through embedded AI, agentic data, and standalone AI agents built on its proprietary regulatory database. The platform integrates AI across compliance workflows, enables natural language interaction via tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, and emphasizes traceability, governance, and security, addressing growing demand for reliable, scalable compliance solutions amid increasing regulatory complexity. (link)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched a new Sustainability console to help users track and measure the carbon footprint of their cloud usage. The tool expands on AWS’s existing carbon footprint capabilities by enabling emissions tracking across Scope 1, 2, and 3, with breakdowns by region and service, and provides downloadable reports using market- and location-based methods. (link)

Kayrros launched its Nature Impact Platform to help financial institutions measure biodiversity risks and environmental impacts at the asset level using AI, satellite, and geospatial data. Designed to address fragmented data and rising regulatory demands, the platform enables better integration of nature-related risks into investment decisions, improving due diligence, portfolio management, and reporting, with early pilots showing enhanced risk assessment and capital allocation. (link)

Fairglow raised €3 million to scale its SaaS platform that helps cosmetics companies measure and reduce product-level environmental impacts. The platform integrates LCA, carbon accounting, and eco-design tools, using AI to fill data gaps across thousands of ingredients. (link)

KANATAQ CORNER

What’s new on KanataQ?

📈 KanataQ Growing Family

Providers that joined KanataQ since our last edition: Biotiq (Digital Solutions & Analytics).

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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