Q Insights #025

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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 Interview: How Briink builds a reusable ESG data foundation from existing documents (an interview with Tomas van der Heijden, co-founder & CEO at Briink)

• Q Signals: Makersite, SLR, and Diginex announced new acquisitions, Watershed launched its AI agents, Carbon+Alt+Delete launched its MCP, and other news 🗞️

• KanataQ Corner: Newly Listed Providers on KanataQ ✅

• and other insights 💡

Q INTERVIEW

Tomas van der Heijden, Co-Founder & CEO, Brink

Tomas van der Heijden is the Co-founder and CEO of Briink, an AI company focused on transforming how organizations manage ESG and sustainability data. He brings a unique combination of experience across regulated industries, product development, and applied artificial intelligence.

Tomas began his career as a renewable energy M&A lawyer at Stikeman Elliott LLP, where he worked on complex transactions in highly regulated environments. He later joined ROSS Intelligence, a Y Combinator–backed legal AI company, where he served as VP of Product. At ROSS, he helped pioneer the application of large language models to legal workflows, gaining deep expertise in building AI systems for professional use cases.

Today, Tomas leads Briink’s mission to automate ESG data workflows—enabling organizations to extract, structure, and reuse sustainability data from existing documents with accuracy and traceability.

How do you define Briink today, and where do you position it within the sustainability solutions landscape?

Briink is a purpose-built AI platform for ESG. We built an engine that extracts, structures, and verifies ESG data from different documents so teams can pre-fill disclosures, complete questionnaires, answer investor or customer questions, and screen suppliers or portfolio companies without rebuilding answers from scratch every time.

We founded Briink in 2021 because we saw a clear gap: generic AI tools weren’t fit for the rigor that ESG data demands. Our positioning is simple, people working in the sustainability field should not be spending most of their time finding data or structuring, but driving impact. Whether it’s a CDP disclosure, an ESRS submission, a supplier questionnaire, or an investor DDQ, the underlying data is largely the same. Briink turns your existing documents into a centralized intelligence hub.

We’re available as a web platform for sustainability, risk, and procurement teams, but a large portion of our customers integrate our AI into their existing solutions via API to embed ESG intelligence directly for their end-customers without building in-house.

What changes most for teams after implementing Briink, and where do you see the most measurable impact?

After implementing Briink, teams stop spending most of their time and efforts finding data points and providing an auditable track for them. Instead of searching across reports and chasing inputs, they rely on pre-filled, source-cited answers grounded in their existing documents.

The most measurable impact is in time savings, increasing scale and reducing human error. Teams typically reduce questionnaire and disclosure preparation time by 60–80%, while improving accuracy through verifiable, audit-ready data. This also shortens review cycles and reduces back-and-forth with auditors or stakeholders. The goal here is not to replace the human eye, but to enable human-in-the-loop processes that enhance their work.

How are you integrating AI into ESG workflows today, and which use cases are delivering the most value so far?

We’ve significantly expanded how we integrate AI into ESG workflows this year. For corporates, our goal is to provide a single platform where teams can collaborate on ESG questionnaires, answering across ratings, reporting, customer, and investor requests. We’re working with companies like Heidelberg Materials and Bayer, starting with CDP preparation and expanding into disclosures and ratings such as EcoVadis, S&P and CSRD.

At the same time, a growing part of our impact comes from API workflows. Many of our customers — including other ESG platforms, advisory firms, and standard bodies — embed Briink directly into their own products. This allows them to offer AI-powered ESG intelligence to their end customers without building these capabilities in-house, whether for automated questionnaire answering, document verification, or large-scale portfolio and supplier screening.

What we’re building at Briink is the connective layer between disclosures: a structured, reusable ESG data foundation that organizations prepare once and deploy across every framework they face. One dataset, multiple disclosures, full visibility, and enabled collaboration — both within organizations and across entire ecosystems via API.

Ultimately, ESG intelligence should be verifiable, compliance should scale with your business rather than your headcount, and traceability should replace the opacity that makes greenwashing possible in the first place. That’s the infrastructure we’re building.

As companies move beyond reporting, where do you see ESG data starting to influence real operational or investment decisions?

ESG data is starting to move upstream, beyond reporting into decision-making across operations, procurement, and capital allocation. On the operational side, companies use structured ESG data to screen suppliers, identify emissions hotspots, and prioritize decarbonization actions. In procurement, it informs supplier selection and risk management, not just compliance. On the investment side, ESG data is increasingly used for pre-screening portfolios, due diligence, and ongoing monitoring. The shift happens when ESG data becomes structured, reusable, and trusted. That’s when it moves from a reporting output to an input for real decisions, guiding where to allocate resources, who to work with, and where risks and opportunities sit.

Q SIGNALS

Latest developments, insights, and trends

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

Makersite (KanataQ listed) acquired SiGREEN from Siemens, a leading platform for product carbon footprint data exchange across global supply chains. The deal strengthens Makersite’s capabilities in supplier data and enables seamless sharing of verified emissions data across major frameworks, helping manufacturers better measure and reduce product-level environmental impact. (link)

Diginex (KanataQ listed) announced an all-share acquisition of AI firm Resulticks, expanding into customer intelligence and enterprise AI solutions. Resulticks reported around $150 million in 2025 revenue and projects up to $280 million by 2027, with the deal expected to close within 30 to 45 days, subject to conditions. (link)

Carbon+Alt+Delete (KanataQ listed) launched its MCP, enabling users to connect carbon accounting data directly to LLM tools like ChatGPT and Claude. The tool allows automated tasks such as generating summaries, building mitigation plans, and running SBTi readiness checks, while offering flexibility across platforms and the ability to combine workflows with other data sources like finance. (link)

Apave (KanataQ listed) launched Apave Impact, a new sustainability-focused unit, supported by its acquisition of Dutch consulting firm De Duurzame Adviseurs. The platform brings together over 100 experts to offer services including emissions measurement, decarbonization strategies, and CSRD compliance, strengthening Apave’s global sustainability advisory capabilities. (link)

Watershed launched AI “agents” to automate data cleaning, analysis, and ESG reporting. The tools can process complex datasets, standardize inputs, identify emissions hotspots, and generate disclosure-ready outputs and draft reports. The launch is paired with a new 8-week AI Fellowship to train teams, as Watershed expands its AI capabilities across its sustainability platform. The goal is to reduce time spent on data management and enable faster, more effective decarbonization decisions. (link)

SLR acquired climate analytics platforms Planetrics and ClimSystems to strengthen its digital services offering and enhance climate risk modelling capabilities. The move responds to growing demand for asset-level insights on physical and transition risks, enabling clients to better assess value-at-risk, anticipate regulatory changes, and make more informed investment and resilience decisions. (link)

Glass Lewis launched Climate Intelligence, a new tool to help investors assess the credibility and financial impact of companies’ climate transition strategies across 4,000 firms. The product focuses on forward-looking risks and opportunities, moving beyond emissions data to evaluate how climate decisions affect long-term value, as the firm expands beyond traditional proxy advisory services. (link)

KANATAQ CORNER

What’s new on KanataQ?

📈 KanataQ Growing Family

Providers that joined KanataQ since our last edition: Tapio (Climate Action).

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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