Context Labs Announces the Closing of Strategic Investor Financing Round

Launches Joint Venture for Energy Industry Decarbonization Platform with BP Energy Partners

CAMBRIDGE, MA, and AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS - 9 February 2022 - Context Labs, an Enterprise Data Fabric technology company in Cambridge, MA, and Amsterdam, announced today the closing of USD $28M million in funding with strategic investors BP Energy Partners (BPEP), Equinor Ventures, KPMG LLP (US), Shamrock Ventures, Neglected Climate Opportunities LLC, and i(x) investments.

Concurrently, Context Labs announced a joint venture (Context Labs Energy) with BPEP to provide a comprehensive trusted-data solution for the energy sector for decarbonization measurement, monitoring, and mitigation. The company’s DaaS™ (Decarbonization as a Service™) platform, based on the Context Labs Immutably™ technology stack, aims to leverage its leading machine learning/AI-driven capabilities with the deep industry relationships developed by BPEP over decades.

“We’re excited about the validation and support of these globally significant firms in our mission to provide transparency and trust in the data that underlies the march toward global decarbonization,” stated Context Labs Founder and CEO, Dan Harple. “Our Immutably™ data fabric platform enables trusted data, digitally provenanced and cryptographically attested, as a bedrock for Climate Tech. This trusted ‘supply chain of data’ will reduce greenwashing, transform ESG into a data-driven quantitative tool, and accelerate the deployment of trillions in capital targeted at addressing climate change.”

This announcement of strategic investors and joint venture partners comes together at an opportune time following COP26 and the increased demand from energy sector stakeholders to apply “asset-grade” guidance to their disclosure and transition to net zero. Context Labs’ data fabric tech stack, leveraging a contextualized distributed ledger, is central to supporting this acceleration. Rendering the provenance and veracity of the data as irrefutably trusted will better inform decisions directed at the net zero transition.

“Energy sector participants want to make practical and rewarding investments that demonstrate a clear commitment to carbon reduction. Those investments must promote transparency and trust with stakeholders to be successful through the energy transition,” says Nathan Brawn, Managing Director of BP Energy Partners. “We are excited to be partnered with the world-class team at Context Labs to deliver a robust solution that meets these growing demands for environmental performance, compliance, and reporting.”

“Equinor Ventures is pleased to invest in Context Labs as they develop digital tools to support decarbonization and certification in energy markets. High-quality, verifiable information about energy systems is essential to driving the energy transition,” says Timothy Krysiek, Managing Director of Equinor Ventures Americas.

“All organizations are on a unique decarbonization journey, and by working with Context Labs technology solutions, KPMG IMPACT will best help leaders move from strategy to implementation and transformation to meet their ESG goals,” said Rob Fisher, KPMG US IMPACT Leader. “Context Labs’ blockchain technology will enhance the sophistication and rigor of ESG reporting, helping organizations actively measure and tell their ESG story to all stakeholders to gain an ESG advantage.”

“The Context Labs mission began with our founder’s research at MIT on innovation ecosystems, advancing a framework for change called Pentalytics™. Context Labs has applied this framework in its Immutably™ enterprise data fabric technology, to show the global interconnection of climate data. This, in effect, is building a ‘climate graph’ of the planet, that interconnects companies and their locations with their climate and environmental impacts. This creation of new context-based knowledge can now be rapidly commercialized with our world-class partners to accelerate global decarbonization,” stated Bruce Hathaway, Partner, Shamrock Ventures.

Ramsay Ravenel, manager of Neglected Climate Opportunities, added: “In a world of increasingly bold claims about climate progress, it will be important to identify and track real progress, not PR. Context Labs will help customers, partners and investors to do precisely that.”

The Right Honourable Nick Hurd, Chairman of i(x) investments, commented: “We are pleased to be an investor in Context Labs. It is at the forefront of environmentally responsible business investment with its rigorous industry-standard benchmarks for carbon reduction activity, something the world direly needs. 

“i(x) investments believes in Context Labs’ ability to drive through verifiable change in energy transition and sustainability in the built environment. We look forward to seeing Context Labs continue its impact thanks to this new round of investment from all its strategic partners. We are eager to explore opportunities for i(x) investments and Context Labs to collaborate on scalable businesses.”

About Context Labs

Context Labs provides solutions for customers who demand trusted provenance in their data, tracked veracity through the data’s supply chain of use, and a requirement for trusted insights. Its purpose is to provide the world’s trusted data fabric platform for asset-grade data (AGD), using its ImmutablyTM Data Fabric platform, deploying machine learning, AI-driven asset-grade analytics (AGA), and cryptographic blockchain technologies, for context-driven insights. It is dedicated to sourcing, organizing, and contextualizing the world’s ESG information, enabling data to become trusted, shared, and utilized as AGD to provide insights and solutions through AGA that informs markets. Context Labs was formed out of MIT research and its leadership team has been instrumental in the at-scale growth of the Internet, in prior companies.

Contact: press@contextlabs.com | www.contextlabs.com | @contextlabsbv

Strategic Partnerships and Investors

BP Energy Partners, LLC (BPEP), is a Dallas, Texas-based growth-oriented investment firm. Since inception, BPEP has made investments in companies that provide practical solutions focused on decarbonization and environmental sustainability. BPEP is actively investing in new opportunities that accelerate energy transition and decarbonization efforts within the energy sector and other hard-to-decarbonize sectors including utilities, manufacturing, chemicals, metals & mining, materials, agriculture, transportation, and recycling. BPEP currently manages over $560 million in committed capital. More information can be found at www.bpenergypartners.com.

Equinor Ventures is Equinor’s corporate venture capital arm dedicated to investing in ambitious early phase and growth companies. We believe that the innovation, creativity, and agility of start-ups can drive change, and transition the energy industry towards a low carbon future. Equinor is a broad energy company with more than 21,000 colleagues committed to providing affordable energy for societies worldwide and taking a leading role in the energy transition. For more information, please visit Equinor Ventures.

KPMG LLP is the U.S. member firm of the KPMG global organization of independent professional services firms providing audit, tax, and advisory services. The KPMG global organization operates in 145 countries and territories and has close to 236,000 people working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients.

KPMG is widely recognized for being a great place to work and build a career. Our people share a sense of purpose in the work we do, and a strong commitment to community service, inclusion and diversity, and eradicating childhood illiteracy. Learn more at www.kpmg.com/us.

Shamrock Ventures is the founding lead investor in Context Labs BV. Operating its own private IP and business model incubator, in Amsterdam and Cambridge, MA, the firm works with leading inventors, entrepreneurs, and technologies to create innovative and sustainable businesses that create global impact.

The Grantham Environmental Trust’s Neglected Climate Opportunities LLC

Neglected Climate Opportunities, LLC is a mission-driven venture capital vehicle that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, a U.S. public charity. NCO invests in climate mitigation efforts that redesign energy systems, improve soil health, spare the ocean from acidification, and directly recapture carbon from the atmosphere. The Grantham Environmental Trust and its affiliate, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, believe that innovation and technology are the best hope for an enduring future. The Grantham Trust and Foundation have, for over 15 years, focused almost exclusively on climate change mitigation and currently support over eighty grantees and forty portfolio companies around the world.

i(x) investments, founded in 2015, is a permanently capitalized holding company for investors who want to create long-term economic growth in combination with positive, measurable social impact. i(x) believes the world’s biggest problems are also the biggest market opportunities and invests in areas of human need. i(x)’s current holdings focus on the Energy Transition and Sustainability in the Built Environment. The company uses a multi-strategy investment approach through the entire capital structure. For more information, please visit i(x) investments.

Context Labs Announces Mark McDivitt to Join as Chief Operating Officer

Distinguished thought leadership and guidance will help position Context Labs' Immutably™ Data Fabric Platform in ESG and Sustainability markets.

PRESS RELEASE  SEP 29, 2020 09:00 EDT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & AMSTERDAM, September 29, 2020 (Newswire.com) - Context Labs today announced that Mark McDivitt, a leading expert on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and financial markets, has joined the team as Chief Operating Officer.

Mark McDivitt, COO of Context Labs and Spherical|Analytics

Mark comes to the company from State Street Corporation, where he spent the last decade of his career, demonstrating global thought leadership in ESG, culminating in his tenure as global head of ESG at State Street, where he focused on data analytics and carbon trading. Prior to that, Mark served as the head of ESG Solutions for State Street Global Exchange and Managing Director of US Hedge Fund Sales. Mark also served on the advisory boards of Greentown Labs, CECP’s Strategic Investor Initiative, Self Help Africa and was a SASB Alliance member and remains an active Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society program.

Before joining State Street in 2010, Mark was Founder and President of CarbonCCY Management executing environmental attributes on behalf of renewable energy infrastructure companies. Mark began his career with Fuji Bank in Tokyo, Japan trading interest rate swaps followed by fifteen years with Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in Tokyo, Singapore and London as Head of Hedge Fund Sales. In addition, he held an eight-year term with AIG and CS in Hedge Fund FX & Derivative Sales.

Context Labs Founder and CEO, Dan Harple, stated, “Mark brings a wealth of financial markets experience to the Context Labs/Spherical|Analytics team. His leadership, guidance and passion for ESG will help drive the evolution of our Immutably™ Data Fabric platform, providing a new higher-trust/higher resolution for ESG. His deep understanding of the need for ESG in financial markets will accelerate the competitive differentiation of our AI and machine learning-enabled Asset Grade Data, Analytics, and ESG signal. We couldn’t be more excited about adding a leader and expert of Mark’s caliber to our growing team.”

“Understanding ESG is like learning a new language; a narrative derived from the evolution of disclosure seeking greater transparency into the value drivers of a company. It’s all about the Data; the provenance and veracity of that data, to be able to quantify risk and generate quantifiable insights. Context Labs/Spherical|Analytics is transforming ESG into a real-time quantitative AI-driven signal, based on Asset Grade Data, a journey that I am thrilled to be joining. This team is moving the needle on ‘Measurement’ to better ‘Monitor and Manage’ the environmental and societal challenges that we face today,” according to Mark.

About Context Labs

Context Labs provides solutions for customers who demand trusted provenance in their data, tracked veracity through the data’s supply chain of use, and a requirement for trusted insights. Its purpose is to provide the world’s trusted data fabric platform for asset grade data, using its Immutably™ Data Fabric platform, deploying machine learning, and AI-driven asset grade analytics, for context-driven insights. With its subsidiary company, Spherical|Analytics, it is dedicated to sourcing, organizing, and contextualizing the world’s ESG information, enabling data to become trusted, shared, and utilized as asset grade data (AGD) to provide insights and solutions through asset grade analytics (AGA) that informs markets.

Contact: press@contextlabs.com | www.contextlabs.com |@contextlabsbv​

Read the full release on Newswire

Rocky Mountain Institute Launches Platform to Accurately Measure and Visualize Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The Climate Action Engine (CAE) will help oil and gas companies in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by providing high-quality, real-time data and trusted climate intelligence to inform decision- making and evaluate whether climate actions are having an impact.

Boulder, CO — September 17, 2020 Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), in partnership with Spherical|Analytics (S|A), today released the Climate Action Engine (CAE), a new platform that will produce accurate, timely and actionable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data to inform planning and action related to reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry in the Texas Permian Basin.

A data and analytics platform, the CAE is uniquely positioned to meet and respond to the oil and gas industry’s need to make methane emissions-reduction actionable. As measured by carbon dioxide equivalency, over half of global energy-related emissions come from the production, transportation and use of oil and gas products. Of this, 84 million tons per year of methane emissions can be directly attributed to oil and gas production activities.

As a result, reducing global methane emissions is of increasing importance to all actors and investors in the oil and gas value chain. By connecting industry, finance and other stakeholders with high-quality data, the CAE will help them understand how to meet emissions reduction targets collaboratively and will help move capital to support climate mitigation.

“By bringing data, intelligence and people together onto one, single platform RMI is enabling climate solutions for the oil and gas industry that work for the benefit of the climate, companies, countries, and people,” said Taku Ide, principal at Rocky Mountain Institute. “With extensive connections into a comprehensive and growing ecosystem of climate-relevant data and partners, our hope is that the CAE will grow to be the go-to for high-value insights across all human-made GHG emissions sources, across all geographies.”

“RMI’s deployment of our enterprise data fabric platform, ImmutablyTM, brings the power of machine learning for the generation of asset grade data (AGD) and AI-enablement for asset grade analytics (AGA) to provide critical insights into climate intelligence. Our partnership on the CAE enables industry partners to utilize trusted auditable AGD and AGA to reduce global GHG emissions, which then drive sustainable operational and financial decisions,” said Dan Harple, founder and CEO of Spherical|Analytics, a Context Labs company.

Specifically, the CAE will:

• Enable oil and gas operators to ensure that they are prioritizing emissions reduction initiatives

  that have the largest methane emissions reduction potential

• Track emissions reduction initiatives to ensure changes before and after their implementation

• Pull together emissions reporting that is aligned with various guidelines such as those stipulated by Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and CDP

• Allow users to explore what-if scenarios such as identifying sub-economic assets under a carbon tax scenario and other climate related impacts, such as increased floods or hurricanes for stranded assets risk

• Allow synthesis of public and proprietary data to clearly formulate emissions reduction strategies

Operators including Shell, Origin Energy, Exxon, and Chevron will be providing valuable feedback to shape the CAE’s outputs and use cases to help identify opportunities to reduce methane emissions that are under operational control in Texas.

“Shell has been able to reduce flaring in the Permian basin by around 80% since 2017 in large part to the integration of technology,” said Frits Klap, Shell VP Shales US. “Combining data and AI on a single platform is an innovation that could enhance our methane emissions management and supports Shell’s ambition to become a net zero emissions energy business by 2050 or sooner. We look forward to the potential additional benefits from participating in this CAE pilot.”

The CAE derives its insights from myriad sources, including satellites, aerial vehicles, public and private monitoring stations, compliance reporting, and other publicly available inputs and reports. Over time, RMI, along with S|A, will expand the CAE to cover all greenhouse gas emissions across critical sectors. For more information, visit www.rmi.org/CAE.

Additional Quotes

[Chevron] “By using data to inform priorities and decisions, Chevron has reduced methane emissions in our US onshore production operations by 85 percent since 2013,” said Daniel Droog, vice president, Energy Transition at Chevron, “As we continue our journey to actively address emissions, we are excited about the opportunity to partner with CAE to understand the potential for real-time emissions intelligence.”

[Exxon] “Climate change risks posed by methane and other greenhouse gas emissions are serious and warrant action,” said Bart Cahir, senior vice president of unconventionals at ExxonMobil. “The Climate Action Engine developed by RMI uses advanced science to provide enhanced, more comprehensive information to industry, regulators, and investors to help deliver actionable results to reduce methane emissions.”

[Deborah Gordon] "The trusted data provided by RMI's new Climate Action Engine is crucial to my research that models life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions and develops decarbonization pathways for the oil and gas sector," said Deborah Gordon, senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and principal investigator of the Oil Climate Project.

[Origin Energy] “Continuously improving business and operational performance starts with understanding what our data is telling us. Improving and reducing our emissions footprint is no different. Origin Energy is pleased to see the Climate Action Engine bringing transparency and access to actionable insights which will help lower the emissions of natural gas in its role in supporting the clean energy transition,” said Felicity Underhill, general manager, Future Fuels at Origin Energy.

[Questor Tech] “A problem cannot be solved effectively unless there is a thorough understanding of the challenge. The Climate Action Engine will help pinpoint methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, making them visible, and eventually eradicable. Questor Technology’s core business supports companies in their goal to reduce emissions, in the most cost-effective way. On our client’s behalf, we are always seeking high quality, timely data that we can trust, to support them in making impactful decisions and ensuring they are solving the largest emission sources to meet their goals.”—Audrey Mascarenhas, president / CEO, Questor

Media Inquiries please contact:

Alexandra Chin – Media Relations Associate T: +1 973-262-0002
E: achin@rmi.org

About Rocky Mountain Institute

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)—an independent nonprofit founded in 1982—transforms global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future. It engages businesses, communities, institutions, and entrepreneurs to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions that cost- effectively shift from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; the San Francisco Bay Area; Washington, D.C.; and Beijing. More information on RMI can be found at www.rmi.org or follow us on Twitter @RockyMtnInst

About Spherical | Analytics

Spherical | Analytics, a Context Labs company, is dedicated to sourcing and organizing the world’s environmental information, enabling data to become trusted, shared, and traded as asset grade data (AGD). Its Immutably platform utilizes machine learning technologies to source and attest to data, and AI-enhanced technologies to provide insights and solutions through asset grade analytics (AGA). Contact: press@sphericalanalytics.io | www.sphericalanalytics.io |@SphereAnalytics

Spherical Analytics Collaborates with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence

New Project to Demonstrate Approaches to Cybersecurity for the Industrial Internet of Things for Distributed Energy Resources

PRESS RELEASE - Cambridge, MA - Spherical Analytics (S|A), a Context Labs company, is excited to announce collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in their Securing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Cybersecurity for Distributed Energy Resources Use Case Consortium.

NCCoE to Address Cybersecurity Challenges of Distributed Energy Resources

This consortium was formed to develop practical, interoperable cybersecurity approaches that address the real-world needs of complex Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) systems. The capabilities demonstrated by the consortium will focus on helping energy companies secure the IIoT information exchanges of distributed energy resources (DERs) in their operating environments.

Participation places CXL/S|A technology at the forefront of Cybersecurity for IIOT and DERs. The collaboration will result in a publicly available NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide (Special Publication 1800 series), which will document the reference design for securing IIoT in commercial- and/or utility-scale DER environments and will include an example solution that uses existing, commercially available cybersecurity products.*

Spherical Analytics Contributions

S|A plans to contribute the Immutably™ platform, Proofworks™ service layer, Scrivener™ distributed transaction ledger, and EdgeShare™ security layer to support the mission of accelerating the adoption of secure technologies and providing real-world standards-based cybersecurity capabilities. These core technology innovations were developed in partnership with Context Labs, and specifically fine-tuned and targeted for cybersecurity, IIoT, and DERs.  Further, the S|A/Context Labs teams have deep and at-scale experience in establishing and influencing global standards. 

The Immutably™ platform provides all-source data ingestion, cryptographic proofing services, blockchain-based distributed ledgers, graph analytics, machine learning and other AI enablement from its microservices architecture to help establish and persist high levels of cyber-resilience, information security, and trust in the solutions Immutably™ enables.

ProofWorks™ is a simple to use, configurable digital trust platform with a secure API that allows users to generate and apply multi-point cryptographic proofs of critical digital assets across their lifecycles.

Scrivener™ is the distributed transaction ledger that offers multiple consensus and reconciliation methodologies, as well as interoperability with many other popular ledger approaches.

The S|A Immutably™ platform and associated services deliver pedigree through source attestation services, provenance through the persistent proofing services, and enables the secure discovery, application and distribution of critical digital asses, such as the command communications among DERs controllers. S|A can simultaneously safeguard and share data, analytics, and findings while continuing to ensure its provenance and immutability, via its EdgeShare™ services layer.

Chris Rezendes, Chief Business Officer for Spherical | Analytics, has nearly three decades experience in national security, infrastructure and industrial cyberphysical systems. “The central importance of energy security – secure, mission-available, climate-resilient, cost-effective, power – cannot be overstated. With digital capabilities permeating every facet of our most critical and complex systems, the key to energy security from national to individual level, is rooted in our ability to deploy, operate and upgrade Cyberphysical security services for the emerging, highly distributed /decentralized and privately-financed DER-driven energy grid,” Rezendes stated.

S|A CEO & Co-Founder, inventor and Internet pioneer Dan Harple shared, “The power and the beauty of the NIST /NCCOE CRADA is its emphasis on standards-based commercial off-the-shelf offerings as core elements of a reference architecture that will support myriad implementations. They too will all share the critical requirement that they trust the data that is enabling their systems to become intelligent and resilient. We are proud to be a key part of this Consortium and eager to put our team and technology in position to make Asset-Grade-Data and Asset-Grade-Analytics core elements of the future of DERs management and EP grid Cyberphysical security.”

The project will address the following areas of interest:

·      the information exchanges between and among DER systems and distribution facilities/entities

·      and the cybersecurity considerations involved in these interactions

·      the processes and cybersecurity technologies needed for trusted device identification and

·      communication with other devices

·      the ability to provide malware prevention, detection, and mitigation in operating environments

·      where information exchanges are occurring

·      the mechanisms that can be used for protecting both system and data transmission

·      components 

·      data-driven cybersecurity analytics to help owners and operators securely perform necessary tasks

Additional information on this consortium can be found at:

Project webpage

NCCoE Press Release

Learn more about other CXL and S|A Immutably™ offerings:

·      Immutably™ Product Family

·      CXL Product Overview

·      Immutably™ for Opportunity Zones

·      Immutably™ for Asset Grade Data

·      Immutably™ for Maritime

·      Immutably™ for Climate

To learn more about Immutably™, Proofworks™, Scrivener™, Edgeshare™, and S|A, our work with NCCoE, or any of our partners, visit us at:

Website:  www.sphericalanalytics.io.

Twitter: @SphereAnalytics

​E-mail: press@sphericalanalytics.io

Spherical | Analytics (S|A), with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts; New Bedford, Massachusetts and Amsterdam, The Netherlands, mission is to source and organize the world’s environmental information, with embedded blockchain-enabled provenance and veracity, to radically accelerate positive impacts and outcomes to Planet Earth. 

S|A develops environmental impact solutions that combine blockchain technologies with analytics attestation tools and machine learning, big data and IoT. The company’s platform is called Impact Analytics™, a powerful platform for ingesting, cleansing and deriving intelligence from diverse datasets within the context of environmental impact. The company uses blockchain technologies to ensure provenance and authenticity of data – crucial at a time of alternative facts and diminishing transparency.

* The NCCoE is a public-private partnership that brings together industry organizations, government agencies and academic institutions under cooperative research and development agreements to collaborate in the creation of practical cybersecurity solutions that address the needs of specific industries as well as broad, cross-sector technology challenges. NIST does not evaluate commercial products under this project and does not endorse any product or service used.