She grew up a car enthusiast — now her startup has raised $4.3 million to reduce CO2 emissions from trucking

The irony was not lost on her. Growing up the daughter of a family obsessive about motor racing, Danielle Walsh became — in her late 20s — head of the Future Cities project at HSBC, a global banking giant that’s trying to address the climate change concerns of its customers.

It was 2018, and she or he reported to each the bank’s technology M&A department and its chief data officer.

“After a year and a half of living on airplanes and talking to customers, I realized the world would have to spend trillions a year to meet the ‘net zero’ climate goals that have been set for road transportation alone,” Walsh recalls. She saw the chance and launched her startup in 2021 to address the issue.

Fast forward to today, after I am the founder and CEO of my startup. ClearlyWalsh (pictured above, center, with two investors) just closed a $4.3 million seed funding round to bolster her flagship product: an AI-powered “climate intelligence” platform geared toward transportation fleet operators. The platform, Walsh says, is detailed enough to know when to notify a driver to pump up their vehicle’s tires for optimal climate-friendly performance.

The financing round was led by Pace Projects AND Nine Kingdomsand was attended by existing investors within the mobility sector: Mobilion, Next Gear and M1720, in addition to business angels including Lord Nash and Margaux Primat.

The problem Clearly solves could seem obvious, however the devil is in the main points. While we’re all aware of the trucks and vans on our streets and sometimes how much exhaust they emit, decarbonizing each the transportation fleet and provide chains is a huge and expensive conundrum.

The transport sector is chargeable for 25% of worldwide emissionsthus holding certainly one of the most important keys to unlocking the reduction of CO2 within the atmosphere. It will cost an estimated $1.75 trillion to decarbonize the sector, and meaning changing vehicles, modernizing power grids and more. Meanwhile, transportation emissions are set to rise by 60% by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

Founded in 2021, Clearly is trying to solve one a part of that puzzle. Its platform—based on anonymized data provided by its customers, which include logistics operators, fleet owners, and other participants within the transportation supply chain—includes vehicle movement and performance diagnostics, GPS, tracking, IoT data, cargo weight, and more. The resulting dashboard provides fleet managers with a number of emissions insights, in addition to alerts delivered through an app to drivers to “jog” their behavior. (These can include instructions like “Try to drive slower.”) The platform now tracks greater than 100 million customer trips.

The aim is to help operators lower your expenses while ensuring they meet emissions regulations and targets which can be now a part of legal compliance in lots of countries.

The company’s current largest clients include: Internet FleetBridgestone fleet management solution.

Walsh says Clearly’s data has shown that as much as 30% of fuel consumption is down to driver behaviour alone, so it is vital to provide drivers with data on how they’ll improve their performance.

“This space is growing rapidly, and we were impressed by the strong demand for Clearly’s product from large corporations and the financial sector,” Marius Swart, a partner at Pace Ventures, said in a statement. “We see demand for data-driven ordering and AI-powered operational decision-making expanding at a rapid pace.”

That said, Clearly is up against the large incumbents. Typically, those are the large telematics vendors, and that presents a challenge, Walsh says: They could have the info, but they’ve trouble creating platforms that fleet operators can put into practice.

“They’re tracking vehicles, tire pressure, driver behavior, but they don’t know how to add that extra data,” she told TechCrunch. While she acknowledges that any company that does operational efficiency or fleet management “could expand their product to our area,” she says they would wish a recent set of technologies that transcend that.

“If I can get 1% of the market, I can make a billion dollars in revenue,” she said. “I would welcome additional players. It’s a very large market.”

So what would she say to her family of racing enthusiasts, now that she has gone from being a car enthusiast to a “climate enthusiast”?

“Well, I just raised $4 million… What do you think?” Walsh jokes.