Clarity Movement Co. (Clarity), a United States-based environmental sensing and data platform company empowering the world to combat air pollution and climate change, announced Wednesday it has successfully closed a $9.6 million Series A+ funding round.
The round was co-led by Amasia, a global thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in sustainability via behavior change, and the Active Fund, one of Southeast Asia’s top corporate venture capital firms, Clarity said in a statement.
Other participating investors include Spero Ventures, SOSV’s HAX program, Jason Calacanis’s Launch Fund and The Climate Syndicate.
“Our motivation is simple – if you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it. Air pollution is one of the greatest risks to global health and a major factor contributing to climate change,
“We focus on providing localized, real-time and accurate air quality data by combining the latest technology advances and our expertise to make our solutions cost- effective, easy to implement, and accurate,” said David Lu, Chief Executive Officer of Clarity.
Clarity is an air quality monitoring solution to provide continuous, real-time localized monitoring and expert services that are affordable, scalable and calibrated. The Series A+ will support growth worldwide and accelerate product development to address climate change.
According to the statement, air pollution is a major driver of climate change, and globally, more than seven million die every year of causes related to air pollution – that’s five times the number of people who die from car accidents.
The impact is concentrated in rapidly industrializing regions like Southeast Asia, which accounts for two million of those deaths. In many places, there is hyper-local variance in
the presence of pollutants. The size and expense of traditional measurement stations make it difficult to increase the resolution of air pollution data across an entire region.
Clarity nodes extend the resolution of traditional measurement stations with small, inexpensive, easy-to-install nodes that provide reliable and accurate results within minutes using solar power and cellular communication.
Thousands of Clarity nodes have been successfully installed in hundreds of cities in more than 60 countries, including London, Los Angeles, Singapore, and the Philippines. Customers include cities, states, school districts, mining companies, ports, sporting leagues, automobile clubs and more.
“We realized that 24 Clarity nodes would cost the same as it takes to maintain one mile of highway for a single year. At relatively low cost, governments and businesses can determine the kind of pollutants in the air, the concentration of these pollutants, and where they are coming from,
“Accurate and locally relevant data are critical in catalyzing behavior changes to minimize exposure to harmful pollutants,” said Ramanan Raghavendran, Managing Partner at Amasia.
According to the statement, governments worldwide are integrating climate change and air pollution strategies to deliver enhanced benefits for climate change mitigation.
The Greater London Authority, for instance, worked with Clarity to build out one of the densest air quality monitoring networks in the world to inform their air pollution and emission reduction policies, and the Los Angeles Unified School District recently unveiled the largest air quality monitoring network of any school system in the United States to better prepare for rising wildfire smoke episodes.
In Asia, the Philippines’ Quezon City Government partnered with Clarity to expand air quality monitoring to marginalized and vulnerable communities through Clarity nodes.
Clarity networks can incorporate add-on modules to supplement data collected with additional air pollutant measurements. The first three add-on modules, for Wind, Ozone, and Black Carbon, were introduced in 2021 in response to customer demand.
“Air pollution is a health, climate, and environmental justice problem that will escalate in the coming years and, indeed, decades. This problem is increasingly pressing globally, and especially in emerging markets where solutions must be swift, precise, and affordable. We are keen to see Clarity’s technology empowering superior air quality monitoring: better data for better decisions from both the public and private sectors,
“Our investment in Clarity builds on our commitment to environmental sustainability while at the same time backing a rapidly growing business addressing a huge market,” said Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart Ventures, the firm responsible for the Active Fund. She will be joining Clarity’s Board of Directors, advising Clarity’s regional expansion in Southeast Asia.