Climate Corp raises $50M to insure against climate change

Climate Corporation, the company helping businesses adapt to climate change, has raised a $50 million funding round.

The company primarily works with farmers to offer “weather insurance,” which insures against bad weather caused by climate changes that can destroy crops. Since farmers heavily depend on sales from their crops to keep them afloat, the insurance makes sure they don’t go into the red because of a drought or too-heavy rainfall.

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Founders Fund led the round with, participation from Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, NEA, Index
Ventures, Atomico, Glynn Capital, and Western Technology Investment. The full press release is below.

The Climate Corporation Raises $50 Million in Financing Round Led by Founders Fund Capital supports effort to protect the $3 trillion global agriculture industry from the financial impact of adverse weather

SAN FRANCISCO, June 14, 2012 – The Climate Corporation, the technology pioneer that aims to help all the world’s people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change, announced it closed a $50 million round of funding led by new investor Founders Fund, with participation by existing and new investors Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, NEA, Index
Ventures, Atomico, Glynn Capital, and Western Technology Investment. The company also announced plans to hire more than 50 quantitative researchers, data scientists, and software engineers to expand its world-class team. Over the past year, thousands of farmers have used The Climate Corporation’s Total Weather Insurance™ program to protect profits. The Climate Corporation’s technology measures the weather at a hyper-local level and pays farmers when bad weather occurs, based on a proprietary understanding of the exact impact local weather events will have on a farmer’s profits.

“The Climate Corporation has developed a unique technology to tackle one of the world’s most important challenges,” said Peter Thiel, partner at Founders Fund. “Climate variability poses a giant and growing risk to the world’s ability to feed itself – and for farmers to survive. The company can develop a global business that will change how the world feeds itself.”

The Climate Corporation acquires and generates vast sets of structured and unstructured environmental and agricultural data, through the development of data acquisition and processing systems, proprietary quantitative research, and advanced machine learning. Today, the company’s technology platform enables a powerful and simple product that helps farmers protect their profits. With this additional capital, the company aims to expand its set of customer applications, helping farmers plan, manage, and protect their operations.

“The Climate Corporation redefines the economics of global agriculture with software,” said Brian Singerman, partner at Founders Fund. “There is nothing easy about what they are doing – nothing less than simulating the weather on a hyper-local basis and codifying the precise relationship between weather events and the outcome of a farmer’s operation. It will transform the economics of agriculture, making farming and the global food supply more secure in the face of climate change.”

“The United Nations estimates that 45% of the global workforce are farmers, making farming the largest professional activity in the world,” said David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation. “Every farmer can see their profit and their livelihood disappear in a single season as a result of the weather. With such a large affected population, and the potential to help undergird a $3 trillion global industry, we are privileged to have an opportunity to make a lasting and meaningful real-world impact through our work.”The financing follows the February 2011 $42 million Series B financing round, bringing total investment in the company to over $110 million.