• ERM announced that it will integrate its ESG screening engine, ESG Fusion, with data from SESAMm.
• The integration will enable ESG Fusion to screen an additional 20 billion documents and four million sources for ESG-related adverse events.
• Headquartered in France, SESAMm won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022.

Sustainability advisory firm ERM announced a data partnership with Finovate Best of Show winner SESAMm. ERM will integrate data from SESAMm into its ESG screening engine, ESG Fusion. The result will boost the number of documents ESG Fusion screens for ESG-related adverse events by more than 20 billion and increase the number of sources by more than four million. The integration will also add to the engine’s coverage of languages, bringing ESG Fusion’s language coverage total to more than 100.

“A recurring challenge we see in the market is the capability to feed a state-of-the-art ESG methodology with extensive amounts of up-to-date raw data at pace and scale,” ESG Fusion Product Lead Marcel Leistenschneider explained. “Any informed ESG assessment must be built on as large a data foundation as possible. With this new partnership, we can confidently say that ‘if there is evidence on a company’s ESG performance out there, we will find it.”

ESG Fusion leverages AI to consume large amounts of unstructured data. Via a robust screening and analysis process, the engine transforms the data into an ESG Fusion report that is both intuitive and insightful. To ensure accountability, each report undergoes a review by an ERM expert before being distributed to customers. The new data capabilities from ERM’s partnership with SESAMm will enable ESG Fusion to reproduce “high-quality, outside-in-reports at scale on almost any company worldwide,” according to M&A Advisory Services Global Lead Andrew Radcliff.

In addition to ESG-related adverse events and controversies, ESG Fusion also provides assessments of industry-inherent risk of any given company. The technology also offers an assessment of the company’s management performance with regards to ESG issues, particularly disclosures.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Paris, France, SESAMm made its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope 2022 in London. At the conference, the company won Best of Show for its demo of TextReveal, an alternative data platform that leverages SESAMm’s Natural Language Processing powered engine to provide daily sentiment and ESG data mapped to public and private companies.

Earlier this year, SESAMm announced a partnership with Compass Financial Technologies to build a thematic index for cryptocurrencies. In July, the company announced that it was integrating Generative AI into its platform to enhance ESG risk mitigation. SESAMm has raised $54.5 million (€50.5 million) in funding, most recently securing $37.7 million (€35 million) as part of an overall $45.8 million (€42.5 million) Series B round. Sylvain Forté is co-founder and CEO.

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• Big data and AI company SESAMm announced the integration of Generative AI into its platform.
• The integration will enable SESAMm to offer enhanced ESG risk mitigation.
• Founded in 2014, and headquartered in Paris, France, SESAMm won Best of Show in its Finovate debut in 2022.

SESAMm, an AI company that provides investment firms with critical insights on ESG, risk controversies, and other significant events, has integrated Generative AI into its platform. The addition is designed to help financial institutions apply enhanced ESG risk mitigation. The integration also will enable the company to streamline the process with automated tools and other enabling technologies.

“With Generative AI, we are not only enhancing our internal processes but also focusing on the development of new features that redefine industry standards,” SESAMm co-founder and CEO Sylvain Forté explained. “These include intuitive dashboards, automated ESG/SDG event analysis tools, and a client interaction chatbot – all created to streamline data interaction and boost efficiency in risk management.”

SESAMm’s technology enables users to derive insights from web data on millions of companies in less than a minute. The company’s platform enables users to generate transparent, real-time ESG and SDG insights on portfolio companies, suppliers, as well as their own organization. Risk alerts and monitoring keep users abreast of potential controversies, and users can leverage the technology to build thematic strategies for ETFs and other index-related initiatives. SESAMm offers data from 20 billion articles and four million public and premium sources on five million public and private companies. More than 100+ languages are covered, as well.

This week’s announcement means quicker and more intuitive interaction with data on SESAMm’s platform. New functionality includes ESG/SDG event summarization and automatic competitor searches for both public and private companies. SESAMm announced that is will launch a suite of Generative AI-powered features in the second half of 2023. SESAMm’s Forté will host an online fireside chat on Generative AI and the Future of Finance later this month.

Founded in 2014, SESAMm won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2022. At the conference, the Paris, France-based company demoed its TextReveal solution. TextReveal is an alternative data platform that leverages NLP (Natural Language Processing) to provide daily sentiment and ESG data on public and private companies.

In May, SESAMm announced a partnership with Compass Financial Technologies. The two companies are collaborating to leverage web sentiment data to build a new cryptocurrency-based thematic index. In March, SESAMm closed a Series B2 round in March, securing $37 million. The investment took the firm’s total equity capital raised to more than $65 million (€50.5 million), according to Crunchbase. SESAMm counts Elaia, Opera Tech Ventures, and NewAlpha Asset Management among its investors.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk