Highlights:

  • Data and business teams, including ESG (environmental, social, and governance) specialists, procurement teams, and deal teams, have used the SESAMm system.
  • This money will allow SESAMm to grow further into the U.S. and Asian markets, assist the development of AI-powered ESG and sentiment analytics, and employ necessary talent in sustainability, technology, sales, and marketing.

SESAMm, a company located in France, uses natural language processing (NLP) technology to extract insights from its data lake, which has over 20 billion articles from free and paid sources. The company has just announced the conclusion of a €35 million (USD 37 million) series B2 fundraising round. The series B2 round was co-led by deep tech VC company Elaia and BNP Paribas’s venture capital arm, Opera Tech Ventures.

ESG and sentiment analysis of over 5 million firms

Data and business teams, including ESG (environmental, social, and governance) specialists, procurement teams, and deal teams, have used the SESAMm system. The firm offers a variety of use cases, such as ESG controversy identification, positive-impact event recognition, competitive intelligence, and quantitative investment with NLP signals created on stocks and macroeconomic variables.

Forté, CEO and co-founder of SESAMm, said, “Raising a significant amount during challenging market conditions highlights the relevance of SESAMm’s focus on two key trends: AI and sustainability. In turn, these tools enable organizations to make better decisions and fill the data gaps, particularly in ESG, in both public and private companies.”

Conventional ESG scores have been scrutinized due to their outdated nature, methodological flaws, and lack of transparency. SESAMm strives to resolve these issues by delivering current and objective information on firms. Its extensive coverage of over five million public and private businesses covers small and mid-cap corporations in Europe and emerging countries and private companies globally.

The company’s off-the-shelf ESG and reputational risk measures fill data gaps for investors and organizations. Moreover, SESAMm helps organizations discover and safeguard against emerging threats in an increasingly complex macro environment with AI-powered real-time monitoring of inflation-related online mentions in all regions.

NLP for private equity, finance, and more

The company’s strategies for developing new goods emphasize sustainability frameworks, taxonomies, and standardized reputational ratings.

Forté told one of the leading publications, “SESAMm wants to become the premier NLP platform for financial firms and corporations looking to enhance their decision-making process by leveraging insights from the web. Our ultimate goal is to be an enabler for companies looking to maximize returns and mitigate risks. We aim to make web data a real source of business insights using advanced technology. With such a keen focus on sustainability, we can only fulfill our goal of helping firms of all types to achieve their goals if SESAMm itself is truly a sustainable, profitable and responsible company.”

Asset management Unigestion, Raiffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) venture capital subsidiary Elevator Ventures, CEGEE Capital, AFG Partners, and prior investors, including Carlyle (CG) and New Alpha Asset Management, are among the other organizations participating in SESAMm investment. Each competitor participated in the last series B1 round.

This current round of investment raises the amount to €50 million (USD 53 million). This money will allow SESAMm to grow further into the U.S. and Asian markets, assist the development of AI-powered ESG and sentiment analytics, and employ necessary talent in sustainability, technology, sales, and marketing.