Plan A raises $27M from Lightspeed, Visa, and further global financial institutions to scale its business decarbonisation platform

Europe’s leading corporate carbon accounting, decarbonisation, and ESG reporting software provider, has closed a $27M funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Visa, with whom Plan A signed an exclusive global partnership in December 2022, also joined the round, along with Deutsche Bank, Opera Tech Ventures (VC arm of BNP Paribas), and a large number of unicorn founders, including those of Supercell, Aiven, Zalando, and Wolt.

All existing investors such as HV Capital, Keen Venture Partners, Demeter IM, and coparion have also participated. Plan A was able to secure the investment as it has demonstrated significant growth in customer base (1,500+ clients) and software revenues (>600% YoY Dec 2021–22), a pan-European partnership network, and a market-leading climate data processing and business decarbonisation technology.

The funding now heralds the next growth phase. With the fresh capital, Plan A will double its headcount to 240+ employees to expand its market penetration in Europe with a strong focus on France, the UK, and Scandinavia, as well as deepen its platform capabilities. For the latter, the aim is to further advance its platform’s decarbonisation tooling, Scope 3 coverage and actionability, as well as policy alignment capabilities. With this, Plan A will further its mission to empower hundreds of thousands of businesses to self-manage their net-zero journey by using its end-to-end SaaS platform.

Plan A Sustainability Platform: science-based SaaS covers entire decarbonisation journey

By automatically mapping all necessary data across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 and merging them with national emission factors and datasets, the Plan A Sustainability Platform is able to provide granular emissions profiles and ESG insights in dynamic dashboard overviews. Based on the indicators with the most significant reduction potential, the software empowers companies to set science-based net-zero targets and achieve them through 1,000+ decarbonisation solutions and activities, best practices, as well as a network of service providers and sustainability professionals. At the end of this holistic process, the platform produces regulation-proof ESG reporting. Due to the high degree of automation, deep decarbonisation and compliance in a highly fragmented regulatory market becomes manageable, less complex, and cost efficient.

To meet the highest scientific standards, all platform-embedded calculations and decarbonisation solutions are fully aligned with internationally recognised scientific methodologies and standards such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The scientific accurateness of the applied Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) calculation methodology is certified by TÜV Rheinland, one of the world’s leading verification bodies.

“Climate change and the associated impacts pose an existential risk to businesses. It’s our mission at Plan A to provide made-to-measure software solutions and services to empower large and complex companies to decarbonise their operations and value chains and respond to the regulatory shift. We are over the moon to bring these stellar investors onboard the Plan A journey today to back us in navigating the complexity of corporate decarbonisation and address climate change on a global scale.”

Lubomila Jordanova, CEO of Plan A

“At Lightspeed, we strongly believe in the power of technology and unique founding teams to attack one of the most important challenges our society faces today – climate change. We’ve been closely following the journey of Lubomila and the entire Plan A team over the past years and it has become incredibly clear to us that they have positioned themselves as a leader in this space. The strength and flexibility of their platform truly has the capabilities to drive change and impact within organisations from across any sector and on a global scale, and to guide organisations both small and large on a holistic decarbonisation journey.”

Julie Kainz, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations in the enterprise, consumer, fintech, and health sectors. Over the past two decades, we’ve backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 500 companies globally.

About Plan A

Plan A is Europe’s leading corporate carbon accounting, decarbonisation, and ESG reporting software provider. Founded in 2017, the Greentech has developed a SaaS platform that combines cutting-edge technologies and the latest scientific standards and methodologies (compliant with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol; certified by TÜV Rheinland). The end-to-end software solution enables businesses to self-manage their entire net-zero journey – from data collection over emissions calculation, target setting, and decarbonisation planning to non-financial reporting – in one central hub. The Berlin, Paris, and London-based company counts Chloé, BMW, Deutsche Bank, Visa, GANNI, N26, HomeToGo, trivago, Personio, Sorare, KFC, and DFB among its customers. In September 2023, Plan A raised $27M in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Leading by example, Plan A has established its own Sustainability Initiative team to define, manage, and steer the company’s sustainability journey. As a first milestone, Plan A disclosed its corporate carbon footprint for the base year 2021 (44.29 t CO₂e). Plan A is B Corp-certified and thus demonstrably adheres to strict social and environmental standards. In fact, with the top score achieved, Plan A is among the top 5 percent of all certified companies worldwide in the impact area “Governance”. For more information, visit plana.earth.

Photo © Nadine Stenzel